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From Dennie Leese . . .
After having a group of 7 divers certified for Ice Diving just 3 weekends ago, we had another group of 6 repeat it this past weekend. It felt MUCH warmer when I was diving Florida last week in 74 degree water. Congratulations to Kelly Stewart, Nate Brommer, Chris Mayo, Steve Laughman, Steve Eppley and Bill Eubanks on completing this chilly course this past Sunday at Bainbridge. Steve Laughman and Steve Eppley are a Divemaster and an Instructor repectively from York Divers. Ice diving MUST be fun for them to come to us to get trained to do this! Bill Eubanks is a commercial hardhat diver that wanted to check out a new envionment. Kelly, Nate and Chris are shop regulars who must just be NUTS to want to jump into that cold stuff. The hardest part of the course this weekend was trudging through over a foot of snow to get our dive gear set up on the tables and clear a path to the water. We had to shovel out the shack at Access A just to open the front door. The plows hadn't made it all the way down to the parking lot yet so a bunch of us with 4 wheel drives (that's right...I'm supporting terrorism by driving my SUV, and I'm PROUD of it...so PISS OFF Detroit Project) made a path down through the lot so we could set up the equipment in the shack.
The day was overcast and breezy but that didn't stop these diehards from completing their assigned mission. At first we thought it would be easy to clear a hole to enter along shore because it seemed to be all slushy and not solid. Well after clearing off a foot of slush water we hit another layer of 5 solid inches of ice below it, which was extra fun because it was BELOW the water line. Just 3 weekends ago, it took us about an hour to clear a hole large enough to enter through. It didn't turn out to be much different this week, taking us nearly an hour to get the hole open again. Beautiful Bud was on hand to do official DM duties and Diver Dan (who was unofficially working for UGI that day) showed up to lend a hand clearing the hole and tending lines. Recent grad Bryan Palmer showed up to dive for the fun of it and to get us some great pictures, at right. That's dedication. Darth Vern showed up to watch us for a bit. I have to wonder about a guy that shows up in sneakers to walk through 14 inches of snow and 5 inches of slush underneath it and then complains that his sneakers are WET! Dude, where's my BRAIN??
The class this weekend was treated to much better viz under the ice then the last class. Water temp was a balmy 38 and air temp 34 with a nice breeze blowing to keep us from working up a sweat. Nobody did anything majorly stupid this weekend that's worth writing about. Bummer! We did have a few surface freeflows, which were quickly fixed. Seems to me everybody had a good time again. This makes 13 ice students we've put through in the last 3 weeks. The forecast doesn't appear as though it's going to melt the ice off anytime soon. If you've been on the fence about getting ice certified, now's the time to let me know while we still have time and ice to do another class.
Upcoming Events:
We have a drysuit class coming up next Saturday and I've got an Open Water crew starting up on March 9th. Stay tuned for the gory details. Don't forget Prescott, Canada over Labor Day weekend, $235/Diver plus the trip to Isla Mujeres in August, 2004, roughly $1350/diver. We already have about 10 to 12 spots booked for this Caribbean trip and the maximum I can take is 18. Prescott has about 8 on so far with a maximum of 20. Pick up info and reservation sheets soon in the shop. With this many ice divers now certified, look for a possible trip to Prescott during the winter of 2003-2004 to do some serious ice diving in the St. Lawrence Seaway on wrecks as shore dives. Don't forget the open pool "Obstacle Course" night at Golden Meadows on March 9th. If nothing else, come see me harass the new class starting that night and try your skill at swimming the underwater obstacle course. Hope to see you at some of these events,
Signed:
Nanooky of the North
Congratulations to Instructor Kent Hirsch who finally found a way to make sure his divemaster can't sue him -- He married her!!
Yes, that's right, it's now Kent and Wendy Hirsch...or Mr. and Mrs. Deco if you will.
From Dr Deco . . .
Well, I really wanted to dive Bainbridge or Wabank last Sunday, but would you believe neither facility was open during the blizzard? Thank goodness Mike (Siltboy) Nast and yours truly, Dr. Deco, had an excursion planned to cave country. Hey, Denny, when are you going to do some real Florida diving? The cave Gremlins struck hard this weekend, trying to ruin our dive plan. We met up with our cave guide and good friend, Wayne (tankboy) Kinnard bright and early Saturday morning. The objective was to be the first group into Morgan- a vertical fissure which drops to 180 before beginning its subterranean meanderings. Problems arose from the start. The river was up, which allowed tannic river water to infiltrate the cave. This intrusion causes the viz to drop to zero and the water temps to drop into the 50's. Wayne went into the water to evaluate the situation and couldn't even read his gauges in front of his face. hit his head twice an a submerged log and called the dive. At the same time, Mike's long hose popped off the first stage in a free flow. The good news was that the hose failure happened on land and not at 180 ft. Never saw a failure like that before.
Since we were gassed up with trimix, we headed back to Peacock III and did Henley's castle, a large room at 180 in Peacock Springs State Park. We used 21/30 trimix to keep away the narcosis with 50% Nitrox as a staged deco mix. Dive profile was 181 feet for 110 minutes run time. During the dive my new VR3 helium computer crapped out. My trusty Vytek backup, from Suunto,kept me out of trouble. Its a three gas computer with a proven deco algorithm. Smokey's carries a full line of Suunto's and I recommend the Vytek. For our surface interval, we headed to the Mayo diner for an "all you can eat" lunch. While there, I opened up my computer's battery compartment to find it had flooded. Cave Gremlins strike again. Wayne headed for work, so Mike and I planned a shallow dive in another part of Peacock. Wrong! When Mike went to fire up his HID light, there was a fizz and pop, but no light. I dove the cavern zone solo, while Mike watched from the surface. $100.00 and a new bulb later, we were ready to try Cow Springs. While preparing for the dive, Mike was relieving himself in the underbrush. He looked down and saw that he had "hosed off" a dive watch buried in the sand! maybe our luck would change. Mike offered me the watch, but I declined. He left it lying on a picnic table free for the taking.(It was gone when we exited the cave) Cow was flowing heavy and we only made a 1300 foot penetration. The line has been marked at 100 ft increments recently, so we can assess our progress. Next time we'll pass that mark. Even with that short of a penetration, we still accumulated 48 minutes of deco. Switching to 100% oxygen, cut that time in half. While doing our obligation, we watched a side mount diver probe some restricted side tunnels. Maybe next trip we'll rig ourselves in sidemount and gain access to the smaller tunnel we now have to skip with back mounted gas.
Sunday morning Wayne wanted to take us to the water source of Peacock Springs. This required an aluminum 80 stage bottle and our usual double 95 back gas of 34%. As we are suiting up, Mike's drysuit zipper jumps a tooth midway and won't go up or down. After 30 minutes, we conclude that the only way out of the suit is to pop the zipper and call the dive (for Mike, that is). The cave gemlins strike again. The Water source was extremely silty. When we got to the terminal end of the dive, the water was "quarry-like" with 10 ft viz. Must be all the recent rain percolating into the system. Usually the water gets more clear the further in you go. Add to that silt clouds due to the low passageways and the only way to progress was by running the line between your fingers as you inch along in a 3 ft high tunnel in total silt-out. For obvious reasons it was time to head back to the surface. Still, it was a neat dive. We saw pockets of puffy fungus-like material in several areas in the tunnel. Wayne had only seen this stuff once before. We were also in pristine tunnels without the usual damage seen from heavy diver traffic. My HID light was plagued with the gremlins on this run. For no reason my light would quit. I then turned it off and back on, only to have it quit again a minute later. Luckily this only happened a few times, and we had 5 other lights between us, so it wasn't a dive-ender. I encourage anyone with an interest in cavern or cave diving to head to Florida. The air temps are in the 60-70's now, there's no snow, and water temps a contstant 70 degrees and the water is super clear. I guarantee that your bouyancy and trim and safety will improve. And you won't find nicer folks to dive with than cavers.
From Darth Vern . . .
The U/W Obstacle Refresher Course has been postponed until March 9th as most of you know. That gives us a little more time to plan AND to make better deals in the shop. If you are on our snail-mail list - keep an eye out for the cool postcard I designed to give you all the specifics. This will be the last snail-mail delivery we are making. We will strictly be a email list from then on. So sign up for our email list here!
The Krazy Klub will be out in full force this Thursday at Wabank!!! Rumor has it I have talked some of the divers from the other side of the river to join us! Call the shop for details.
There is a new book out about the Seeker and the Andrea Doria. It is by a reporter from Newsweek Magazine named Joe Haberstroh. I am 1/2 way through the book and it is fantastic. A worthy read on par with "The Last Dive."
Keep on diving and LIVE THE ADVENTURE!!!
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