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From Uptown Jim Brown . . .
Darth Vern and I made our first snow dive of the year at Bainbridge on Sunday. About 10 inches of snow laid on top of all the tables and gear platforms creating a wintry scuba landscape. We had the building at Access A to ourselves and after a small but highly proficient hinge repair, we closed the door to hold in the heat from our portable propane bonfire. Ray Becker showed up a bit later with Smokey's heater and we were very toasty. Ray also delivered the news that Huck decided to strafe oncoming cars with his scuba van rather than strafe us in the water with his scooter. Apparently an oncoming car on 441 lost control and whacked Rick's front end real bad! Instead of gently gliding through the deep blue behind his scooter, Rick got a free ambulance ride to General. He is ok and promises to be on site for the UW tree decorating day this Saturday.
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Ray headed back to the BSC shop to await the arrival of his OW student Jake while Darth and I geared up. We entered the lagoon carrying our cameras and spent the first fifteen minutes just cruising at 12' taking pics. The lagoon is remarkably clear and is pretty interesting when you can actually see everything. Much to our surprise, the grasslands sported a bunch of little hatchlings. We crossed over the road to the south and did a north wall freefall into the hole. Vis and light to 70' was awesome and even at 90' where we leveled off the water clarity is excellent. It was a bit dark though and limited our sight distance toward the south ridge of the hole, our destination. Darth caught sight of the line to the step van and tanker and with just a few kicks we were right there. The whole van is in view and the silhouette of the tanker can be seen some 25' to the east. Since Huck trashed his van but salvaged his D.A.N. license plate from the front end, Darth and I felt obligated to document this first-time crash and burn. Note the pictures of Huck's wrinkled plate at 95' within the wreckage of the step van. We couldn't help ourselves.
Darth's 5mm wet gloves don't provide quite enough exposure protection for his delicate little paws so we turned the dive to the deep boat. The whole boat is in view as is the 60' platform above. Off to the north we peeked at the stairs at the top of the hole but it was dark as night there. Our ascent up the slope to the road brought us to a safety hang with no deco (imagine that) by the ring tree. Slithering over the sunny beds back into the lagoon we headed west to the exit point. Ray and Jake must have passed us to the north as there was a cloud big as a house obscuring our view. Upon reaching the exit I found a pretty blue snorkel nestled among the pebbles on the bottom. Jake lost contact with his snorkel upon entering the water for OW cert dive #1, the tour. Hey, no snorkel, isn't that breach of standards?
We were impressed with Ray's cold-water diving prowess and pre-dive preparations. You can see from the pics that Ray has his own technique for psyching himself, and his students, up for the dive, especially when he's diving dry and they are diving wet. More bottom time, a nice peaceful dive to 97' for 61 minutes on 32% EANx. Darth rulez! See everyone this Saturday at 9am for the 2nd Annual UW Christmas Tree Decorating.
Get Out and Dive and Live The Adventure!!!
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