New toy and parachutes at night.

Micky and I have been talking for a while about alternatives to hauling scuba tanks into areas where refills are inconvenient, if not impossible.  Diving is integral to our lives.  We have had such wonderful experiences and adventures, that sitting thirty feet above beautiful and rarely dived coral is just not an option.  Once you leave the local area, going ashore for refills involves at least a half day of logistical nightmares not counting the actual transit time to get to a dock near a dive shop.
The choices are to carry eight to ten tanks lashed to the deck, buy and store a high-pressure scuba compressor (with all the maintenance and space problems that entails) or go surface-supplied.
Our answer is the Brownie's Third Lung gasoline-powered floating low-pressure compressor.  The unit is extremely well-made and has been used for decades. Setup is a little more extensive than we're used to and the system isn't good for depths greater than around sixty feet despite the actual ninety foot rating.  We think the ability to stay at  thirty to forty feet for up to 3 hours more than makes up for the minor drawbacks.
One major consideration is the lack of a buoyancy compensator.  I really miss my pushbuttons to adjust neutral buoyancy and to rest at the surface.  We're working on that.
The float with the compressor is really not a problem at all.  After just a few minutes you forget the float is there.
Today was the last day of the lobster season and we had high hopes to catch a limit today, but our other new toy was temperamental.  The new Yamaha 20 was reluctant to crank and when I finally got it going after a good hour of fiddling and furious pulling, the engine wouldn't run smoothly at idle and actually did some backfiring through the carburetor when going from idle to mid-range.  Ran like a scalded cat at speed, though.  Tomorrow it goes to the dealer for what I hope are just spark advance adjustments.
Key West is infinitely interesting.  Everyday we see something new and interesting.  Today it was Army Special Forces training off Sigsbee.  Three times during the day a C-130 Hercules flew over delivering SF teams by parachute into the water along with their rubber boats.
Tonight the training continued.  The Hercules came right overhead after the drops.  They train like they fight.  No lights and only one safety boat whose primary job was apparently marking the drop zone and keeping the lookie-loos away.  If they had not lit up the C-130 in deference to their proximity to the Key West airport you could not see the teams chuting in.