From Mark Myers . . .
Well, there are some advantages of being the store owner – and one is that my reports get to go first. We – being myself, Cindy, Chris Mayo, Nate Brommer, Brian Palmer, Ralph Spayd, Vern Heagy and Jim Zimmerman - were scheduled to dive an unknown “snag” off the Surface Interval on Saturday. As we left the hotel at 6am however, the sky looked like Kansas in a thunderstorm. Fears were confirmed at the dock when Clay and Darrell met us to tell us that the forecasted 1-3 ft waves were now pounding the beach at 6 to 9 ft. After briefly meeting at the dock, and showing Ralph Spayd around the boat, we decided to do the only intelligent thing – hit Cracker Barrel for breakfast, then drive to Bainbridge and dive!

Based on some recent advice about improving visibility, ((as well as a warning about midshipmen and a very large group from Pittsburgh – which you can read about in John Gross’ report)) we jumped off the dock at “B” and headed to the barn. While the swim isn’t quite as long from “B” as it is from “A” – it’s long enough. The shallows between “A” and “B” are loaded with small fish, and some nifty navigating by yours truly and Darth Vern put us right on the east end of the barn. All in all, the dive ended up being over an hour long with a max depth of 101 ft. Don’t try working that one out without a multi-level Wheel, or a computer. Most everyone returned to the dock on fumes – except for doubles divers Vern and Jim Zimmerman who were pretending to be “Exxon of the deep” with more gas than the Valdez. Vernon was taking some stills and I have some video, which we hope to get posted Tuesday night, but it may be Wednesday until I get time to crunch the video for the web.

On Sunday I played hooky from the open water class I had promised to dive with and ditched those duties on Cindy. I went to Wabank to dive with Nick Caloyianis and Clarita Berger. We had the Amish Caribbean almost to ourselves except for Smokey, Frank and hosts Jim and Helen Brubaker. Our fist dive was planned over to the fish pens, then down across the lines to the deep boat and back to the dock. It was aborted after 30 minutes at about 60 ft when Clarita’s drysuit began to leak. By the time we got back to the dock, she was full up to her thighs. They were trying out some new Mares equipment for a planned photography job in Maine, but it was her old Andy’s drysuit that failed. 400 some dives, though, isn’t a bad track record on a drysuit. Nick and I did a video run clockwise around the quarry for the second dive – checking out all the small fry and oversized gold fish around the south wall. Frank says he may be releasing the rock fish sometime this week – so keep an eye out for them.

I understand that Vernon and Scot “The Rock” assisted in the recovery of the driver of the car that went off road into the Chiquies Creek. Not my idea of a fun dive, but it’s an honorable public service.

Kathy Stevens had the first part of her Elizabethtown College class at the quarry on Sunday. That’s the class that Ralph Spayd and Cindy were helping with. 8 more new divers, and Mark Muenzen was back in the water for the day.


From John Gross . . .
Sat found Allison Kimball, Ron Lobb, Pete Bohling, and myself arriving at Bainbridge around 1:30 PM to finish Allison's Advanced Open Water class and to finish Ron Lobb's Dry suit Class. Both did a great job and finished with high marks. Then Ron, Pete and myself hung around for the Haunted Quarry dive. This dive is a fund raiser for Ovarian Cancer and is hosted by a Pittsburgh dive shop called Splash. Boy did they do a good job. They have agreed to email soon with the dates for next years Haunted Quarry dive. Maybe Mark can get some TV coverage for this event. Hopefully more Smokey's divers will be on hand next year. The 3 of us were the only Smokey's divers there. What a difference one week makes. Last Sat Allison and I were the only two divers at Bainbridge for the night dive. This Sat there were around 30 divers there for the Haunted Quarry. The Splash group started setting up on Friday and they really had a nice dive planned for us. Ropes were our trail blazers. The rope started at the beach area at access A. We proceeded from the beach to the boat over the road through the haunted forest down to the boats at 45 feet up to the platforms back over the road through the pipe and a wall of bubbles back to the beach area and through the cemetery with several tombstones. All along the ropes were ghosts, body parts like severed hands and legs, spider webs with spider, huge rats, and scary faces. Some of the ghosts glowed and all long the ropes were glow sticks to show the way. The wall of bubbles was made from plastic pipe in a V shape with holes drilled into the plastic pipe. The one end was caped and the other end was connected to an air compressor. After completing the rope tour we decided to do a little more diving so we headed back over the road and down to the cement mixer. We found a mounted head at the rear of the cement mixer and a very scary scarecrow in the drivers seat of the cement mixer. Our dive lasted 1 hour, not bad for a night dive. This scarecrow was made and planted by Smokey's very own Cindy and her son Josh and new diver Patrick (a youth recently certified by Bill Siwiec). I suggest you plan on attended this event next year. A contribution of $10.00 was requested and all the money goes to ovarian cancer research. Hot dogs, bakes beans and hot chocolate were waiting for everyone completing this dive.

On Sunday this same group was having an underwater pumpkin carving contest and they had dive gear to give away as prizes. I couldn't make the Sunday dive as I had the pleasure of finishing the classroom and pool sessions for my current class at the Ephrata Rec Center. I had great help from Pete, Nate, and Bryan. Nate and Bryan are divemasters in training and have done a fantastic job last Sunday and this Sunday. They will make excellent divemaster and they are fun to dive with. Nate, Bryan, Pete and myself will be at Bainbridge on Sat 10/25 and Sunday 10/26 from 9 AM-3 PM to do the training dives for this class. If you get a chance stop by and say hello and meet the new divers, Diana, Vivian, Brian, Bill, and Mark.

Remember now is the best time to dive for the following reasons:
1) Freshwater jellyfish are out.
2) No crowds
3) Good Viz
4) Don't have to worry about overheating waiting for your buddy to get ready
I hope to see you Sat and/or Sunday.


From Jess Zellers . . .
Thursday- Ah, the best thing about tanks that have just been hydro'ed. You know they can handle being a little over pressurized. Thursday Kulp and me went on a fairly long dive to relieve the tanks of their great burden. Leaving the lobster dock we leisurely made our way out to the tanker via the Quest and tracks under the platforms by the concrete dock. Hit the habitat, dozer and mixer on the way back. And ran into the new boat!! Well kinda a new boat. John did plan on putting it in the quarry, just not on the bottom! For the time being, it's on the other side of the Quest on top of the line to the mid-ship tracks. Shellfish are pretty rare in Myerstown, and seeing two 2-3inch crayfish is even more so. We had a pretty rare dive.

Saturday- As promised in last week's dive report, tales from far off and exciting lands. As you read on and realize that I've described West Virginia as exciting and in a positive light you'd think I've been breathing off Kulp's argon bottle at depth. But no those are in fact the words I chose to describe Mt Storm in WV. And with 66F at 90ft, it's a beuatiful thing! Tons of divers from all over MD, VA, OH, WV (of course!), and the entire state of PA represented by Greg Kulp and myself .... we're sorry. But at least with our drysuits and plates we really stuck out of the crowd! Mt Storm's a man made lake that cools off the power plant, so it's really warm. It also has some pretty strange species of wildlife. (and no it's not a nuclear plant!) One are these weird looking catfish, part fish part shark. Kinda strange the big ones don't go below 40ft, and the little ones don't go above 70ft.  The other resembles something I've seen at Bainbridge, but the neoprene-clad creatures of Mt Storm doesn't have neoprene covering their head or hands and when they leave the water they don't do the 'warm up' dance.

Mt. Storm's a public access lake also open to boats, so a surface float is an exceptionally good idea. Talking with a few of the other divers there the deep point is about 100ft. On our first dive we nearly hit 120ft! Kulp's a good navigator, he found the real deep spot. The silt is exceptionally fine, so between 20-40ft you're in this diffuse field of yellow-brown light that you can't see anything in, but it's not dark! Below 50ft it's a moonless night dive. Below 70ft, it's pretty clear, but pitch black dark. A good light is must. In between dives consulting computers for second dive profiles, painful illustration as to how you really get spanked for repetitive dives at altitude. Second dive we swapped nav/float. And we headed out on a 'that a way' heading for a bit then went parallel to the shore along the cliff. Other than topography there isn't much in the way of directional aids, no mixers tracks or dozer in this place! So we found a pipe at 80ft, spend awhile seeing if it was attached to anything - it wasn't.


From Bob Hannah
October 18--At Willow Spring - It was a nice October Day--no blowouts, water temperature between 55-60.  Dave Gaiski and Christopher Rosing went Diving.  This was Chris first Willow Spring Dive.  Dave had done two dives there earlier but they were all the dives he had done since completing Open Water. With a little luck we will see Dave shopping at Smokeys for some steel 120s and a DIN adaptor, or perhaps a Mares Ice Regulator with DIN adaptor.

We entered at the lobster dock, to the air plane, 105 degrees off the dock to the unmarked cabin cruser, to the quest, fire truck, school bus and dock.  After hamburgers we swam to the Steam shovel--yes that was a real outhouse--and back Two 50 minute dives, nice day. Life was good.

Sunday at Bainbridge
I think young Patrick Beck is a good diver already and will be a very good diver over time.  He has more enthusiasm than any two divers I know, and he reads his guages. We dove to the cement mixer. He found it!  We then dove along the sunken road.  He said it was the best dive he has had so far--based mostly on the number of sunken we visited.  With complements like that, he has been invited to dive Dutch Springs next Saturday.

He taught me a lot about Pumpkin Carving--underwater.  I had no idea that you could use a Pumpkin for a flotation cushion!  After we finally sunk it, Patrick attacked the Pumpkin with the skill of a surgeon.  Hopefully he won a prize.



Get Out and Dive and LIVE THE ADVENTURE!!!