Friday, February 8, 2019

Lifting and HIITing, Scuba and Sailing

We're working on being healthy and our new hobbies for retirement.

Santa Rosa and Blue Hole got us set up for being able to scuba dive and enjoy it. We now have much or our equipment and the ability to go to 130 feet deep in our full face masks with some decent buoyancy control. We'll get better as time goes by, but the basics are all set.

Our next trip will be to Bonaire, one of the Dutch Caribbean islands not too many miles from Venezuela. (like 89 water miles). It's a scuba shore diving spot that's supposed to have some really cool things to see. We've got a place to stay (The Caribbean Chillout Apartments) and have figured out how to get around to the various dive sites. We'll be using AB Drive & Dive, an outfit that bundles rent-a-truck with Nitrox/EAN air tank swap outs. It's kinda cool, they have lanes set up NASCAR style where you pull in, they run out and swap your tanks with a minute or two to verify enhanced oxygen content, and you race off to the next spot. They claim it takes less than 3 minutes! Since you're supposed to do an orientation dive when you go somewhere new we'll be taking a little class PADI style with 2 dives to learn to hunt Lion Fish. It would seem that in the late 80's a hurricane dumped lots of salt water aquariums into the Atlantic Ocean and lion fish escaped. In the Atlantic ocean they have no natural predators, eat 3 times their body weight each day and live from the surface to 1,000 feet deep. In short they're hell on the coral reefs biodiversity so the scuba world is now actively hunting them. They're also rumored to be delicious. Crystal will let us know, since she actually eats fish. We'll do 2 tank dives and learn to use the ELF speargun to hunt the buggers. (ELF = Eliminate Lion Fish) catchy huh?

In addition to that we're keeping up with dieting and LIIFT4, which is killing me personally. I'd much rather drink beer and get fat.

Early summer will find us learning to sail a keel boat. Right now we're doing the book work for that.

Lots going on, but we don't like to be busy. It's mostly just fun!

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