Key Largo, Florida, 9/31/99 - 10/7/99
Kelly’s on the Bay, Aqua-nut Divers
Author: George DeCamp

We had a couple of things in mind for this trip. One was naturally to head for some warm water south of here(NY) and also to finally do our AOW certification. We chose Kelly’s on the Bay in Key Largo based in information from the archives, Rodales magazine readers poll and meeting and speaking with the resort manager Mark at the “Beneath the Sea” Expo in NJ in March, 99. We had a great time! The staff was super, the rooms were nice and the diving fun and yes we did finish that AOW certification.

Kelly’s is a small resort with a real friendly staff. I’ll guess there are maybe 30 rooms or so. They are remodeling them one by one and we were shown one they had just completed a day before we left with an outdoor Jacuzzi and a privacy fence that enclosed it. Lots of ideas come to mind when I saw that, maybe next time! We wound up in 3H a nice size room, nothing fancy but certainly neat and clean. Wicker furniture, refrigerator, microwave, TV heck everything we needed including the King size bed. Actually looking around it may have been one of the larger rooms. From the room it was a short walk down past the outdoor breakfast area, the gear storage and rental area and down to the boats. The room ran us $520 for the week.

Dive Boats: Now these baby’s were nice, two 42 foot Newtons. Plenty of room to move around in, two fresh water showers, rinse tank for masks, rinse tank for cameras, nice wide dive platform and an easy ladder to enter from the water. With all the room lucky us, there were never more than 10 divers on the boat and usually less! I guess people shy away in October because of the weather problems that can crop up. Noah and Don were the DM’s both quite competent at their skill and fun folks!

AOW Certification: Not too long after we checked in there was a knock on the door. I opened it and there was a chap standing there with an Australian bush hat, a VCR, a couple of tapes and two AOW books, etc. Brian turned out to he the head instructor at Kellys and a real nice guy. Jeez he helped Louise out quite a bit on one dive right at the beginning taking 4lbs out of her integrated weight belt and putting her into ankle weights. She said it made a real difference in her diving! You just never know these little tidbits until someone points them out to you and they can make such a big difference. The 5 dives went real well and included the night dive on the Benwood. I’d recommend doing this to everyone but don’t for a minute think you’re an advanced diver once you get the card. You will pick up some tidbits that can help quite a bit. Thanks Brian!!

The Diving: We managed to get in 11 dives in six possible days of diving. One day was bad weather wise and the boat never made it out so that left us with 5 possible days of diving. The weather really made things kinda messy a couple of days. Seas ranged from 2 to 5 feet with a 6 thrown in from time to time. Monday 10/4 we probably should have skipped because this was the roughest day out there. This is the day the swells occasionally hit 6ft and the visibility at Elbow Reef on that days dive was UNDER 10 feet because of the strong surge, that was the pits! The second dive that day at Molasses was much better. Generally I’d say the vis was in the 40-50ft range and the water temperature held fairly steady at 83 degrees. We mostly dove Elbow Reef, North Dry Docks and Molasses Reef. We did two wrecks the Benwood and the Tanawanda(sp?). The wrecks were more like pieces of steel and some larger pieces that actually look like they came from a ship. These two wrecks are really bombed to pieces, literally! The fish life was abundant and our favorites included some nice large green Moray’s, quite a few nurse sharks, trumpet fish, squirrelfish, some really large porcupine fish (my personal favorite), rays, a large Loggerhead turtle and on and on. Again these were just some favorites, sea life is both varied and abundant. Molasses Reef was our favorite in terms of visibility and diving pleasure. The water at Molasses had far better visibility even on bad days than did the other spots. Our diving ranged from 25ft to 87ft in depth but mostly are in the mid 30foot range. This made for long bottom times of 50min or so except for the couple of dives where the surge and current burned up our air quicker. Frankly I should say “MY” air because Louise always had air to spare in fact coming up from one of our deep dives I used her Octo during the stop, hell share and share alike! :-)

One quick story on our Navigation dive. We had to navigate a square formation of 100ft in each direction of the square. One of us would stay put while the other went with the instructor Brian. Louise (I call her Weezy) did hers while I waited and I just stood there looking around at the fish who were probably wondering why I was just standing there! When my turn came I went out with Brian while Weezy stayed behind. When we got back she just looked at me and shook her head and gave me the shark sign. Seems that as soon as we left a 5ft Moray came out of it’s spot right behind her. This Moray is use to being fed, or so we were told and bumped Weezy from behind. She looked to see and Eel at least as big as her (5”3”) and it was snuggling up to her body like a cat! Needless to say she was a bit nervous but kept her fingers tucked in so as not to be mistaken for a snack. A short time later a Nurse shark happened to be in the area and also decided to drop in for a visit with Weezy and her Moray! Now it became apparent to her quickly that Nurse sharks and Morays are not the best of friends and the Moray actually went towards the shark and hunched it’s back looking like it was ready to fight. Weezy was cursing us both at this point! The shark and Moray must have spooked each other because they both finally backed off but this all happened just a few feet in front of her and was a sight she will not quickly forget! There were some other close encounters we had that we’re kinda fun but I’ll stick them on my website when it’s all in place. It’s too bad about the storm or things would have been much better but the dives were good enough for us to really enjoy them.

For those interested Aquanuts dove the Dwane the day we left (Thursday) and I believe they dive it each Thursday.

The Eats: It’s hard to beat Hobos! Right next door to Kellys is Hobos. Great burgers and steaks for the meat folks (like me) and great fish for the seafood folks like Weezy. She loved the Fish sandwich (thanks Beverly). For Mexican food we tried South of the Border and Senior Frijoles (sp?) both were good but maybe a slight edge to Senor Frijoles because they had better margueritas! Anthony’s down at MM99 or so was OK but use to better here in NY however not bad and the fried mozzarella was excellent! Then there was Num Thai Restaurant MM103 in a strip shopping center. Real nice inside, just re-done. They have Sushi as well if you like. We had some spicy beef and chicken dishes, asked for medium spicy, yikes! I can imagine the real spicy! The best thing was the “fried ice cream” for dessert, this was to die for! We really didn’t have a meal we were disappointed in. There was a continental breakfast daily at Kellys with bagels, English muffins, fruit, microwave type pancakes, coffee, juice etc.

So what’s the real deal with Kelly’s and Amy Slate? Simple, not too long ago a building between the two resorts came up for sale. The building contained 8 rooms. As I hear it they both decided to jointly buy the place and split the rooms rather than have someone else possibly get involved or have it become run down. This joint ownership may not last forever! Also it seems Amy’s sends people over from time to time to dive on Kelly’s boats. That’s it as far as I was told! Also I heard Amy’s isn't doing that great but who knows, I can plainly see that Kellys is doing fairly well!

Thanks to Kellys on the Bay and the staff for a great time, we’ll be back next year!

PS. Delta Airlines has still not called concerning our luggage which was “lost” on the way home. We checked in 2 pieces of luggage on the return one containing our clothes and the lost one containing 2 BC’s, 2 sets of fins, 3 wetsuits (one just bought in Key Largo the other 2 days before we left), 2 pair of booties and 2 Shockwave lights! I finally get the scubapro .5mm suit and they loose it on me! Louise bought me a new O’Neill 3/2 for my birthday. Damn, Damn! It was a non-stop flight folks, I hope it shows up! Good thing the regs and computer, masks and camera came with us as carry on luggage.

George(DiverX) and Weezy

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