Diving on the Almirante was quite a treat! 

As we got to the site, Jody announced that there was a ripping current. I was briefed on the overall plan to be dropped off up current doing a live drop. Hopefully Jody's navigation skills and estimation of the current will allow us to get to the wreck as estimated. This was a first for me. As I understand it, we had about an 80% chance of getting to the wreck.

Gearing up, doing our "GUE EDGE" had a lot more meaning as the details of how we were to enter and what and when we were to shoot our SMB (surface marker buoy) and how the boat will be following us. Also, agreements on what would occur if we missed the wreck.

Hitting the water, we immediately descended as fast as we could. The plan was to descend and spend no more than 5 minutes looking for the wreck, if we missed it, we were to shoot an SMB (Surface Marker Buoy) ascend and perhaps try again later.

We descended and at 60 feet we could see the wreck!  We got to the midsection and the wreck was covered with life!  Large sea fans and as you can see from the videos, lots of fish.  Ralph and I took video of each other going thru the swim thrus:

Here I am going thru a swim thru. Notice that the large Angel fish don't even seem to notice us.

Here's Ralph going thru the swim thru:

Here's Ralph:

Fish Life on the Almirante:

Ralph Back Kicking

We basically swam up current toward the stern and explored. Moving back down current was easy, all you had to do was let go. When we got to the bow, we were at 23 minutes at an average depth of 110 feet. Ralph took out his large SMB, hooked his reel to it. I took the reel as he inflated it and we shot the bag!  I ran the ascent with our first deep stop at 60' with 1 minute ascents to 30' where we did some video, then up to 20' for 3 minutes, 10' for 3 minutes and a slow race to the top.

As expected, there was the boat waiting for us.

It was quite satisfying and surprising (but not surprising) that here I was, never dived with Ralph and yet we were in sync with effortless coordination in our dive and how we executed it!