In June 2007 fellow Ashford Dive Club member Chris Powell and I spent two nights in Palm Beach, Florida before joining MV Shear Water for an eleven night liveaboard trip. For most guys sharing accommodation with me for thirteen nights would be thirteen nights too long. So I asked Chris to let me know whenever I did anything to irritate him. But he said that the only thing likely to irritate him would be snoring. I resolved not to snore.

Arriving in Miami, Chris had a modest amount of luggage while I was weighed down under a huge collection of heavy suitcases. We took a taxi to the Super 8 Motel in Palm Beach. Starving, I haphazardly threw my luggage into our bedroom and we immediately set off to look for a restaurant. To my surprise Chris was unaware of the pleasure to be had from Jack Daniels which we then did our best to rectify. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep. Maybe it was the lack of food. But our copious volumes of Jack Daniels certainly affected me much more than I had expected. We returned to the Super 8 Motel. Without air conditioning our motel room was by now very humid but lack of sleep and the Jack Daniels that I had consumed ensured that I was soon happily snoring. Chris was not so fortunate. My loud snoring combined with the sauna-like conditions ensured that he had no chance of sleep. A pattern emerged. Chris would shake me until I stopped snoring and then retreat back to his bed. But before he could get to sleep I would start snoring again. So Chris would get out of bed and shake me until I stopped snoring and then return to his bed. And then I would start snoring again.

The next morning, after a good night’s sleep, I moved some of my suitcases and discovered an air conditioning unit. The room rapidly cooled but there was no time for a bleary-eyed Chris to have a lie-in as I had organised an early morning shore dive under the Blue Heron Bridge otherwise known as the Jerry Thomas Memorial Bridge. The current there can be strong and it is essential to dive only at slack. A local dive centre, Force-E trading as Riviera Beach Scuba Diving, was really helpful to us. After hiring tanks and weights from them, they kindly gave us a free lift both to the dive site and back to the dive centre after the dive. After some recent murky UK diving I was delighted firstly with the clarity of the water and then with the marine life. One of the main pleasures of diving for me is seeing new forms of marine life. And on this dive site there were several species which I had not seen before such as a Polka-Dot Batfish as well as new variations of marine life that I had seen elsewhere, for example a Seaweed Blenny. I thought that one particularly large Blenny was a Jawfish which again would have been another first for me. But subsequently our Shear Water dive leader Charles Hood corrected me explaining that "jawfish mouths are much wider and the eyes not as pronounced". Oh well, maybe I'll finally see a jawfish on some future dive.  I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this dive, my dive 1435 and could have happily spent the whole day under the bridge.

Having changed back into dry clothes, Chris and I decided that we would like to take some surface shots of the bridge and we set off on foot but light rain forced us to seek temporarily shelter in a nearby bar. Well that’s our excuse. Continuing Chris’s education from the previous evening, I introduced him to Jim Beam. We only intended to have one round but the light rain had become quite heavy so we had another. The rain grew stronger still so we had another. And then another. And another. Aided by Mr Beam we then had the inspired idea to add to the bar counter graffiti and there is now a permanent record of Ashford Dive Club’s “Boys On Tour” visit. By now Tropical Storm Barry was hitting Palm Beach with a vengeance so we reluctantly left the bar to shelter back at our motel.

We should have left Palm Beach early the next morning aboard MV Shear Water but thanks to Tropical Storm Barry, the seas were far too rough. The delay however did give Chris and I the chance of a night dive under the Jerry Thomas Memorial Bridge, the highlight of which for me were a pair of mating Horseshoe Crabs. I had not seen any Horseshoe Crabs before and wished I had a wide angle lens rather than my 60mm lens. And a wide angle lens would also have been ideal for other dive highlights such as an Octopus and a Southern Stingray.

The Blue Heron/Jerry Thomas Memorial Bridge is a highly enjoyable shore dive and one that I recommend to anyone looking for a shore dive in the area.