HIGH SEAS DRIFTER
Diving West Palm Beach, Florida

By Alison Boler

Diving the reefs off West Palm Beach in Florida could scarcely be lazier or more relaxing! The Gulf Stream sweeps in so close to the shore that a friendly 1 knot current sweeps north to south every day of the week, just the right pace for a leisurely drift. After a couple of weeks of this sort of diving, it felt really wrong - an outrage! - when we went somewhere else and actually had to fin!!

West Palm Beach is roughly 60 miles north of Miami, 40 miles north of Fort Lauderdale on the eastern - Atlantic - coast of Florida. It's a rather sleepy place in comparison to its more southerly neighbours. Very laid back - rather an old-fashioned holiday resort. We had spent some time in Fort Lauderdale before moving north and we liked WPB much better. The beach is white sand, wide and fairly gently shelving and it stretches forever. The sea is blue and fairly warm - around 23°C in April - and there are just enough waves to make it interesting, without there being any question of anything as strenuous as surf.

There are plenty of beaches around - we liked Riviera Beach best - plus of course the inter-coastal waterway, but the best beaches in the area and most of the hotels are found on Singer Island which is just offshore of the mainland and linked to WPB by a big road bridge across the inter-coastal waterway. It feels like an island immediately you cross to it, but in terms of distance, it's barely offshore.

It's a wealthy area - no question. I don't think I've seen so many huge privately owned yachts in such a small area of coast anywhere else - and that includes the south of France. Most houses seemed to have a massive motor yacht moored up outside. I promise you that I have taken groups of 20 people on live-aboard dive boats smaller than most of these!!

West Palm Beach just may be the most perfect place for a family diving holiday. Why? Read on.....

Firstly and most importantly, the diving is really enjoyable. Good. Well, actually, it was surprisingly excellent. We had dived Fort Lauderdale before and whilst the reefs there are good and the new wreck trails are interesting, frankly we've always been a bit disappointed with the visibility and the amount of fish life. Don't get me wrong: you can have some really enjoyable diving off Fort Lauderdale. If you like diving on wrecks then you'll like it best, but if you're looking for diving quality, West Palm Beach is much, much better.

For a start, the visibility is great. It's not glassy clear - it's not Cayman or the Red Sea. But it's a good 20m vis and if the current is running right, it could be more. Then, the reefs are much healthier - at least to my unqualified eye. The sponge life is prolific as is the hard coral. But, what really sets it apart is the huge number of fish - of all sizes - that you see on every dive. I was amazed to be honest. I expected average but enjoyable and found exciting and enjoyable. We've dived places in the Caribbean and not seen the quality and quantity of creatures we saw regularly here.

Back to the beginning, though. We wanted to go somewhere where we could have a relaxing, beach-based holiday with plenty of other activities and where we could also get in some diving. We are fortunate enough to be going on an extended live aboard trip to the Sea of Cortez in the summer, and we wanted to make sure that the girls in particular had a few more dives under their belts before we set off for Mexico. Having said that, it had been a long winter and we were all tired, so we didn't want to lock into anything too strenuous - we wanted to come back feeling like we'd had a holiday. We are veterans at Florida holidays and we've dived a bit there before and it seemed the obvious choice. We didn't want to go down to the Keys because that's a bit too isolated. We wanted the option to go to the Parks if we got fed up with the beach life (we didn't) and we also wanted to be within striking distance of the freshwater springs in the northern central part of the state so we could have some diving there too - greedy aren't we? Oh, yes and we also wanted to be near Crystal River so we could see the Manatees and the girls wanted to be near enough to South Beach that we could go and see if Mr J Timberlake, Mr E Iglesias or Mr P. Diddy were in town. West Palm Beach fitted the bill exactly.

There are a lot of dive operators in this area. We did some research before we went and picked Pura Vida Divers of Singer Island, WPB. They get consistently fabulous reviews from the web diving community, we liked their website, we liked their small boat numbers, and we liked them when we got in contact. They have a fantastic shop/classroom base with really good facilities about 5 minutes from the small harbour on Singer Island where they keep their boat. Pura Vida is run by two young Americans, Dean and Trevor, both diving instructors and Coastguard approved captains - they largely alternate as divemasters/skippers. They also employ a couple of other super divemasters on the weekend - Victor and Susan - who possess vast amounts of marine biology knowledge which they are more than willing to pass on. It's a very friendly, family feeling sort of operation, but totally professional.

At the weekend, they run 2 Two-tank dives a day at 0830 and 1330. On weekdays they run a Two Tank at 0930 which can be extended to a Three Tank which includes lunch. They offer Nitrox as well as Air fills and a full range of Tech and Sports diver training courses.

Trevor and Dean are really, really nice and great to dive with. We had such a good time with them that we will definitely be back. In particular, they were very good with the girls in a definitely non-condescending way that was much appreciated.

Their dive boat is a 30 foot Island Hopper with a flying bridge, plenty of kitting up space, a good platform and two excellent Xmas tree style dive ladders. There's a shaded area plus a small cabin with a head. On the back deck is a freshwater shower and they supply shampoo, conditioner and sunblock!!! The conditioner is particularly nice almond cream (yum!). The boat is named Sirena and it launches from Phil Foster Park which is just on the Singer Island side of the causeway from West Palm Beach. There's plenty of secure, shaded parking right there at the dockside. The other facilities supplied foc on the boat are towels, music, a whole load of ice cold drinks, snacks and a big bowl of fruit. Pura Vida are nothing short of hospitable!

The boat also comes equipped with all the safety equipment you would imagine including a life raft, EPIRB, life jackets, radio, first aid and oxygen.

A two tank dives costs $65. If you pre-purchase a 6 day set of Two Tanks, the cost lowers considerably - its well worth doing, so we did!

The drill seemed to be that after our first meeting with Trevor at the dive shop when we signed all the papers, got our qualifications checked and paid, we just had to turn up to the boat. They looked after all our kit, rinsing it for us at the end of every day, unloading it from the boat and having it back again next day. We put it all together ourselves. I think they would have done that too - they did for some other divers - but frankly Bob and I prefer to do our own and we believe its good practice for the girls to do so too. Anyway, not having to hump two enormous sets of kit back and forth certainly made our lives a lot easier. We could have hired from Pura Vida too of course - they offer a full service if you need it.

There's a well-rehearsed and practiced drill. Most sites are about a 20 minute steam from the dock. As you leave, you get a boat briefing and then a site briefing - good one, with maps and pictures. Then you get a ten minute warning. The skipper gets the boat in position, all divers stand up and shuffle to the back and wait for the slightly tongue in cheek (at least I think it was!) command "Dive, Dive Dive", then the dive master steps off carrying a blob and you step out after him. The current tends to pick you up so a quickish descent is preferable, but it's not so raging that you need to worry about it. We always carried a DSMB on a reel anyway.

We were diving air. Probably we were the only people on the boat who were - nearly everyone else dived nitrox. Not surprising really - Florida is just about the birthplace of that gas. I can remember people diving it 15 years ago, when people in England would tell you it was dangerous. We dived air because a. the girls had to, b. habit c. Cheapness! Ah, those Yorkshire habits die hard... The profiles here are perfect for Nitrox. The most popular reefs start in about 65 feet and nowhere go beneath 95 feet (and that's if you take a shovel!). Most of the diving was in about 85 foot max. The profiles are pretty square though so even with a computer, you soon eat into your no stop time by the end of the second dive. We were finding that 2 forty minute dives with about a 50 minute surface interval and including 5 minutes at 3m safety stop on each was about the norm. We generally always needed the second safety stop.

Getting back on the boat was easy. You surface under your blob, signal the captain and he comes and picks you up. No swimming to the boat allowed! The ladders are a blessing, step right up and sit down at your dive station!

The reefs are so under-visited, they feel like a secret. They are, in comparison to the Keys, I suppose, but they don't deserve to be. Let me tell you about our second dive, which was on the "check out" first day. We were just off the Breakers Hotel in about 65 feet of water on a reef called South Breakers.

It's a patch reef, like all the formations here and liberally covered in hard coral and many varieties of sponge. There are hordes of grunts, spadefish, batfish, plus frequent encounters with southern stingrays, Atlantic stingrays, pipefish, huge barracuda (I mean GIANTS), groupers, angelfish, loggerhead turtles, moray eels. There was only our family group plus one other diver on the boat and we were following Victor over the reef. The current was friendly - it was a lovely place.

About half way through the dive, Bob stopped to clear his mask and I took the opportunity to point out something - quite what now escapes me - to the girls. It was only momentary. It was time to move on - we looked up and there it was, right in front of us: the largest hammerhead shark I have ever seen. I mean it was HUGE - 10 or 12 feet long with a 3 foot scalloped hammer head. It was so close I could have touched it with my hand but that would probably have been a very serious mistake! I'm sure Bob had purged his mask at this point. Let me just tell you that I nearly purged my wetsuit!!! It merely glanced at us and cruised right on by.....

That marked the type of diving we enjoyed over the next week or so. Big fish on every dive. We said we wanted to see sharks - by jove we saw sharks! We saw lemon sharks, nurse sharks, reef sharks. Sadly, a return encounter with Mr BigHead eluded us, but we were thrilled to have seen him at all. Loggerheads were also there on almost every dive, lovely creatures with large sad eyes.
And of course those massive barracuda, generally in pairs, sometimes alone.

Some memorable sites were North West Double Ledges (sharks always there), Jolly Jacks, The Elevator Shaft, and The Cut and of course.... Boler Reef.

Some days we took an underwater scooter in and played on that. It wasn't expensive and the girls really enjoyed it - another skill learned. In the end we called it The Shark Attractor, because they always seemed to come when we had it turned on. Most weekdays, there would only be one or maybe two other divers on the boat - absolute luxury in comparison to some of the crowded boats further south. At the weekends it grew to about 10, but the boat never takes more than 12. The other divers were all a good bunch - most of them regulars with Pura Vida and a lot of them regular posters on the www.scubadiving.com bulletin board. It was quite interesting to put a face to an email id! They were pretty good divers too - you could tell they had been at it a while or at least regularly. No problems at all - with anyone - free flying the 3m decompression stop. Probably the best group of divers I have met overseas in a long time. The camaraderie was fun. One of the things the girls always remark about is how much they like to meet the other divers on the boat and listen to their stories and jokes.

An interesting sight on several of the dives are the transatlantic or transcaribbean telephone cables that run out from the shore. Great thick cables, covered in marine growth - they provide useful underwater markers for progress along the reef on some of the dives. It's said that if you listen closely you can hear some of the calls and that teams of black suited men are often observed tapping in to them!!! (no, just joking on that....)

For the suitably equipped and qualified there are deeper sites to visit - some much deeper. There are also some really good shore dives from Phil Foster Park - ask Trevor or Dean to show you. The Park is tidal but the water is clear, there's lots of fish and some rare anemones and sea horses to be seen.

West Palm Beach and its surrounding shoreline are one of the top spots in the world for seeing nesting leatherback turtles - they start coming in during late April/early May. There are research stations around in the park where you can learn more. In the winter, it is also a popular spot for manatees who come in to escape the cold. And of course there are many types of shark to be seen. It is now illegal to feed sharks in Florida waters, but the creatures are still in evidence. If you want a full on shark feeding encounter, you will have to go to the Bahamas - only a short ferry cruise away. Some of the operators run trips out there combined with a live-aboard experience.

Sometimes there are night dives - if enough people want to do them.

Pura Vida seem to go to some trouble to make you feel special and to fit things in around your circumstances and desires. They knew we wanted to see sharks - we saw them! We dived with them over the Easter Weekend, and there were chocolate Easter eggs on the boat as a treat. On Easter Sunday, the second dive was at a location which contained a short "lane" through the reef created by some past cable layers. Dean and Trevor had gone to the trouble of seeding this passageway with about 20 highly coloured and weighted plastic eggs, as an Easter Egg Hunt. They were interchangeable for store prizes at the end.

Now, I am slightly ashamed about this next part.... There were 10 people on the boat that day including ourselves. We came to the break in the coral where we had been told we should hunt for the eggs and our two girls hoovered through the passage like a pair of scavenging bottom feeders! Between the two of them, they recovered 16 of the 20 eggs. I can only excuse such greed by saying that the blood of a Yorkshire wreck-hound clearly flows thickly through their veins! I've not seen such a focussed descent and eagle eyed search since I had the fortune to dive the Castle wrecks outside Dartmouth in the company of two much more senior - nay, famous - British divers. They were down the shot-line so fast it was a wonder we didn't end up with a nosebleed instead of a porthole.... Anyway, I digress... It was a thoughtful and ingenious idea and made the dive even more special than it might have been anyway.

Another example, probably repeated with every group, but cute nonetheless: on the last dive, when they announced the dive site it was........ Boler Reef....... And all the listed features along the way were personalised to our group e.g. Daisy cave, Allie ledges, Bob dropoff etc....

There are plenty of accommodations around to suit everyone in West Palm Beach/Singer Island. You can choose from large condominium style resorts, the international chains to small mom and pop style motels. Singer Island in particular is an absolutely charming place. Restaurants also come in all shapes and sizes, to suit every pocket. You can spend a fortune on haute cuisine or have a bucket of Popeye chicken that'll stuff the family's stomachs for under $10. Many of the restaurants serve seafood - and it's really good, and really cheap. You can have a dozen oysters for under $10, so fresh that they're still wriggling! Clams, lobsters, crabs of various types, conch - it's all good.

The popularity of the Chinese buffet now stretches throughout Florida. Don't imagine the rather stewed and tepid offering we often face as a Sunday Lunch Special. Or those other American chain Buffet restaurants where the only hot thing on offer is some wizened chicken wings... These are high quality individually owned speciality buffet restaurants offering hundreds of dishes grouped into different "stations". There will be soups, salads, dim sum; there will be a raft of traditional Chinese dishes, Japanese BBQ, Sushi and Sashimi Bar, Roast Carvery e.g. Turkey, Prime Rib, American BBQ e.g. steaks, chicken, ribs, salmon, Fresh seafood e.g. oysters, clams, mussels, Alaskan King Crab, Snow Crab, shrimp, lobster, cooked seafood dishes and of course a dessert bar, make your own ice cream bar..... How on earth they do it for the money which ranges from about $10 per head to $19.99 per head for adults (much less for the under 12s) depending largely on location rather than choice of dishes, is a complete mystery. Whatever the secret, these restaurants are hugely popular with locals as well as tourists. They are great with a mixed group and families because everyone is going to find something they want to eat whether its oysters and sushi or burger and fries or steak and potatoes, or just ice cream! End of argument, end of stress...

We tend to ask around the divers for recommendations and we also look on the internet forums. Failing that, we prefer to look in the Yellow Pages rather than rely on the somewhat "tourist focussed" recommendations found in the hotel guides. There is always a Restaurant section in the Yellow Pages conveniently found in your hotel room bedside table, and often the section is nicely organised into cuisine types. Some of the entries go so far as to print the menu so you can really see what's on offer.

Quite a few restaurants overlook the water - either the beach or the inter-coastal waterway and it's great to eat outside on a balmy night. Americans tend to eat early. Many restaurants offer "early bird specials" and Happy Hours when meals and drinks are up to 50% cheaper. This can be very useful with a family. Also, portions are on the huge side of gargantuan! We often ate from the appetiser section of the menu because these were sized more like a European entrée and again, they're cheaper.

Over and above the diving there's plenty to do in West Palm Beach. Let's review some of the features of the area:

• Accommodations from $29 per night
  
• Restaurants from fast food upwards
  
• Huge safe sandy beaches
  
• One of the largest outlet malls in the States (Sawgrass Mills) about 30 miles away. Start your engines, ladies!
  
• Beach activities
  
• Jet skis
  
• Para sailing
  
• Towing
  
• Snorkelling
  
• Yachting
  
• Catamaran cruises
  
• Fishing trips of different sorts
  
• Excellent day trips possible
  
• Disney and the other theme Parks
  
• Upper Keys
  
• Miami
  
• Everglades
  
• Cruise to Bahamas
  
• Fresh water springs
  
• Manatee encounters
  
• Local trips
  
• Coastal and inland waterways cruising
  
• Water parks
  
• Cinemas
  
• Shopping malls
  
• Shelling