Smokeys Divers Den - Dive Reports

Last weekend my wife and daughter were camping with the girl scouts, and son Jack was at the grandparents, so I took advantage of the day and headed up to Willow Springs to join in with John Gross and Darryl Kirsch's wreck diving class on "The Quest." I also knew that Mike Grogan and Jeff Raykos planned to do a tour of the quarry. This being me - I of course showed up a bit late, and the guys were already in for their first dive. I quickly suited up and followed them out past the fire engine, over the pick up truck, and back into the caboose. Visibility was around 15-18 ft with 56 degree temps.

As we did our surface interval, it began to drizzle a bit, but we headed back in for dive two anyway. Mike caught his drysuit wrist seal on the picnic table tearing it, and despite our best attempts to get him to allow me to patch it with grey tape, he decided to sit out the second dive. Jeff and I headed back towards "The Quest" intending to do the rope circuit counter clockwise - but believe it or not, I took a wrong turn at "bubba" and ended up at a dead end boat. We struck a north /north-west course and picked up the rope heading towards the bus. A quick run through the bus and past the Minnow, VW and back to the fire engine.

This week Mark "Sparky" Seymour's brand spanking new drysuit arrived at the shop, and he wanted to get out and get it wet in the worst way. I also needed to put in a token Thursday night appearance so the guys don't revoke my pin - so the two of us headed up to Willow Springs on Thursday night. Mark and I were joined by James Zimmerman and his shiny new rebreather and James and I swam on either side of Mark so he's have his way lighted up by two "lights of God." I lead as we headed out for one lap around The Quest, and then out to try and find the "mystery boat" which despite my efforts over several dives still remains a mystery to me. I still can't find the (#$Y^ thing. Mark was impressed that I was able to navigate my way back to the lobster dock - and I'm just going to let him think it was all deliberate.

After the dive, some of the TNI's headed to the Ice Shack restaurant to pick up their last pork sandwich of the season, the rest of us headed to Palo's in Myerstown for Italian food. As my brother would say - "And a good time was had by all..."

Oh, there’s nothing like getting up at 2:30 in the morning to drive to New Jersey to go do some wreck diving! That’s exactly what Chris Mayo and I did. It was dark and we went through several periods of rain but there wasn’t much traffic and that was a plus. I had booked 11 divers to hopefully take over the Ol’ Salty II out of Belmar, but once there I found out that we weren’t even half the divers aboard. The final tally was 33! No, you don’t have double vision, that’s 33 divers with 4 mates and a captain. The stern of the Salty looked like we were hunting for bear in that there were so many tanks that you would think that we were going to stay for a week. I was a bit surprised that the stern wasn’t underwater.

The Smokey’s gang did make a large impression with the crowd as we had Jim Brown, Jeremy Gibbs, Vern the quiet one Heagy, Greg "Mr. TNI" Kulp, Joe Dormer, Mark “Barf” Seymour, James Zimmerman, John Katerenchuk, John, "I’ll spear anything" Thibodoux, Chris Mayo and the old guy diver of the trip….Moi! There were lots of divers with Mark Hennessey and Alex Meller, both instructors out of Duda’s Diving Duds in West Chester. There were even some divers from Spain and at least a half dozen women. I’m always glad to see our lady divers enjoying the wrecks.

John K and JZ brought their rebreathers for their first dip in Jersey waters. Most of the technical divers brought their doubles and slings. The skies were a bit cloudy and as we headed out of the Manasquan Inlet the rain slowly increased as did the seas. It was a two hour trip to the Stolt Dagali and with the conditions worsening there were more than a few hanging at the rail. What made matters even worse was the fact that it took over 2 hours to tie in. During this time a squall came through causing what was supposed to be 2’to 4’ seas to be more like 4’ to 6’ with even larger rollers. The whole time we were rockin’ and rollin’. It was interesting to watch how skin can change from flesh tone to the color of the quarry. Our own Mr. Seymour, who’s always looking for a new nickname, took the Verde Award for best color, of course it was hard to see it when it’s hidden under layers of covers.

After we finally got tied in I kept looking at the conditions and wondering if I really wanted to venture into the waves. It’s not so much about getting off of the boat as it is getting back on. A lot of us were thinking the same thing. I was surprised that we didn’t just pull the anchor and get out of Dodge! Maybe Captain Nick knew something that we didn’t. As it turned out the skies began to clear and the seas laid down. It was now doable! Seymour finally emerged from his hiding place and decided to go for it! Mark, Joe and I geared up at the same time as the rest of the crowd. The pool was open and we wanted in. We let some of the less experienced splash before us and then geared up, but by the time we were ready to get our tanks on the first group were coming aboard so there was a backlog. This was the undoing of Sparky/Spunky/Barf! Once again the seas had overtaken him.

I felt badly but the Stolt was calling and the mates said that the vis was outstanding. Joe and I finally got in and headed down the anchor line that was almost horizontal. There was a bit of current, but not that bad, more of a surge that a current. As I descended to 35’ I could see the top of the wreck at 75’! I was amazed. Joe and I headed for the sand at 130’ and moved toward the very back of the stern. Looking toward the surface across the decks of the Stolt, which sat intact on the sand on the starboard side, was just incredible. I dove this wreck last summer for the first time in many years and enjoyed it thoroughly. I was happy to be back on her again. Joe and I weaved our way in and around as we headed to the cut. The Stolt was sliced in two by a cruise ship back in ’64 in very foggy conditions. The stern sank immediately taking a number of lives with it. The bow stayed afloat and was eventually refitted with a new stern. It plied the seas until recent times. I was in search of floor tiles since the last time I pulled off a number of black and white tiles probably from the galley. I couldn’t find the same spot but Joe spotted white flooring just inside the wreck . We headed in and tried to pry some off without success. Luckily I found one, a single tile lying on the bulkhead which I readily stuffed into my goodie bag. I remember from the last time that the black and white tiles were just down from this flooring. I still couldn’t find them so we headed to the cut. The vis remained excellent although a few inside spots closer to the sand were a bit more turbid. As we were closing in on 40 minutes Joe and I ascended toward the top of the wreck. He gave me the signal to head up and we did. As we did our hangs we were surrounded by the usual jellies and to my surprise bioluminescent creatures. I didn’t expect that but they were enjoyable to watch. We ended up with about 20 minutes of deco obligations before getting to the surface. We decided to do only this dive as we wouldn’t have enough surface interval before they wanted to pull the hook. One dive with great vis and one little tile was good enough for me. It was good to be out on the ocean with such a esteemed crowd and such an excellent dive. For our dive mates that didn’t make it in, don’t worry, the wreck isn’t going any place!

Doug and I celebrated our 25th anniversary this past July with a dive trip to Hawaii. We really weren't sure what to expect, as we couldn't find anyone who had been there to dive. Well, it far exceeded our expectations. Our main goal was to see stuff we don't see in the Caribbean; no problem there! I can hardly think of one critter that looked exactly like what we see in Cayman. The varieties of beautiful butterfly fish seemed almost endless, and there were numerous species, like the lionfish, that are unique to Hawaii. We saw quite a few white tip reef sharks, grey reef sharks, lots of turtles, several octopi, lots of moorish idols, lots of eels (not big ones like the green morays, but quite a variety), frog fish, scorpion fish, and a great variety of mollusks and nudibranchs, and of course the famous state fish, the humuhumunukunukuapua'a! Visibility was typically awesome; inside Molokai crater on Maui it was limitless. Temps were 79-81F.

We can highly recommend the dive operations we used on both Maui and Hawaii. One thing we enjoyed was that both offered "advanced" 3-tank days. On Maui this meant slightly more challenging dives (depth, current, "live boat" drift diving). On Hawaii, it largely meant longer outings to more remote sites (one day we left at 8am and got back at 7pm!). On both it meant fewer divers, but both had reasonable diver limits to begin with. We found diving slightly more expensive than in Cayman (at least compared to who we usually go with), but the dives were long and the surface intervals never hurried, the crew were full service and the 3-tank days always incl. fresh fruit, breakfast pastries, lunch and plenty of beverages. There is also lots of good shore diving on both islands.

The highlight dive though was the manta ray night dive in Kuna, Hawaii. It is worth the trip for this dive. First we did a twilight dive to get familiar with the site. (we got lucky; the mantas were already entertaining us on that dive) Then after dark they take you to a sandy flat, divers form a large circle and in the middle they place a bin with 4 high-powered lights pointing straight up. The light immediately attracts clouds of plankton, and in no time we had 3 and then 6 large mantas gracefully swooping all around to feed on the plankton. We all held lights also, so they would come and glide right at you and over your head. One was 14 feet across and it was slightly unnerving at first when that thing would come straight at you with its huge maw wide open. It was awesome. We sat there mesmerized for 40 min. before moving on to catch a glimpse of some other night critters before our air ran out. And that's just the diving! Anyone considering Hawaii for the first time, give us a call; we have lots more to recommend!