March 5
I met up with Chris Mayo and Cindy Lu at the Bainbridge shop.  After having some good fun and laughs, of course mostly at Cindy's expense ( is there any other way?) and talking with Steve about the pet rocks that he sells we headed to the hill at access "A".  Mr. Kulp was already there setting up his gear.  The four of us had the hill to ourselves.  That's one of the advantages of winter diving.  Space!  The air temps were pretty mild for the beginning of March but there was a slight breeze.  We geared up and planned on a shorter dive in order to cut down on our deco times.  So, we headed out to the deep boat with me reluctantly leading.  Well, having not paid that much attention to my compass and going by feel I turned around at one point and realized that I was alone!  I knew that I was on a wall but didn't realize how shallow I was.  It must be the south wall and not close to the hole at all!!  Since I was shallow I decided to surface and search for their bubbles.  I was a bit misdirected.  I found their bubbles and surface swam over to them and dropped down.  I ended up in the hole huffing and puffing!!  It's nice to know that heavy breathing didn't make my reg free-flow.  You gotta love the high performance regs!

  I never did find Cindy and Chris.  Greg and I were going to spend some time down in the hole anyway so I ascended to the 90' level and found my self close to the step van.  After the manditory wiping off of Dan's memorial plaque I dropped over the side and back down into the hole again.  I thought that I might find Greg.  I didn't, but did find the tracks that lead to the boiler.  For some reason these tracks can be allusive so I seized the opportunity to go find the boiler.  After looking it over I decided to head back in just incase they were searching for me.  Once I got to the 30' level I shot my bag and did my 7 minute deco stop.  This was nice compared to some of the deco stops that Chris and I or JamesZ and I have done of late ( 30-40 minutes).  I didn't freeze on this one.  Once I got out Cindy had a birthday cake for me that she would have had on New Year's Day if we had seen each other.  You can always count on good ol' Cindy to be thoughtful.  The four of us started on each corner and ate our way in.  It was good day and a good dive.

Thursday Night Irregulars   March 9
Spring is definitely in the air as it was on this mild Thursday evening.  Lots of the Irregulars were there.  Even though I am part of this group of misfits I am more of an irregular Irregular.  I can only make it up to Willow Springs every couple of weeks, but it's always good to see the gang and I always feel welcome although I do take a bit of kidding.  That's why I go there....to put myself in place.  

The usual were there including Darth Vern and Mr. Siwiec, who apparently has been a more regular Irregular.  I haven't seen him in quite a while.  He and I buddied up along with Dr. Tom.  We planned on checking out the number of zebra mussels that were around.  I knew that there were a few in there but didn't know to what extent.  We headed over to the plane where we found several clusters.  After here the three of us made it to the Quest under Bill's excellent navigational leadership.  I was diving a single tank for the first time in many months.  Actually, I think that the last time was this past summer doing some photo shoots on the road in Bainbridge.  After a little time I felt comfortable and could find all the necessary gear attachments on my Dacor Rig.   After the successful swim to the Quest we then headed over to the pickup truck.  This was where we lost Tom.  The vis was only between 3' to 6' depending on whose path you crossed along the way.  It was tough to keep your sights on each other.  I think that it was the fact that the three of us swam around the pickup in different directions and that I was just lucky to find Bill.  I knew that Tom had a strong knowledge of the quarry and that he could navigate his way back.  Bill and I continued on and eventually went to the firetruck and headed back in.  I did finally lose Bill during our safety stop.  If you looked away for just a bit it was enough to lose each other.  There were quite a few perch of varying sizes along the way and some very slow moving crawfish, some fairly good sized.  It was a good dive.  Most of the Irregulars split shortly after their dives and there were just 7 of us to dig into the lasagna.  It's always a fun night even if the vis isn't that great.  You just gotta love those guys!  

From Jess Zellers in the Southern Command...

Bring on Billy Joel !! Cause.... I'm movin out. After sacrificing a lot of bottom time over the past two years, my term in Jacksonville will expire next month at the end of my last semester of classes. Which means I finally get to move out into cave country. I'm spending the next week looking for a place. But, what makes this Dive Report worthy is what I did last night. After way too long there finally exists a museum of cave diving history, it's in High Springs. There's still some work to be done before it's open for regular business hours, but last night was the first ever movie night... to be continued once a month.

Since it was the first movie night, Cindy Butler (a driving force in getting it opened) thought we should start at the beginning at Wookey hole. It's a cave in England and the site of the first ever cave dive. The program for the evening was a documentary made last year, Wookey Exposed. Wookey is pronounced like the Star Wars character, and despite numerous jokes on the subject "Wookey Exposed" is NOT the porno version George Lucas' work. The footage ranges from 'ok' historical reenactments of the early dives (1930's/1940's!!) to amazing and first ever footage of the nether-reaches of the system. The DVD also has Rob Parker's footage from his 1985 exploration push, which is just phenomenal considering the technical obstacles of the day.

This was also the first night you could get inside and look at the artifacts without Cindy putting you to work. It's a modest beginning, but there is already some amazing stuff under that roof. Original line from Cathedral/Falmouth system, scooters used in the exploration of Wakulla, a model of the first digital computer to do decompression, ... did I mention ORIGINAL line from Cathedral!!

Who said that northern divers in dry suits, steel tanks, and no coral can't be calendar worthy? As I looking at the books and T-shirts for sale the calendars caught my eye. For two reasons, first I know Mr. May and second there was no label from an organization anywhere on it. I asked Cindy who made em, my answer came from the person standing beside me. He made em, and the calendar features diver's customized license plates: CAVER, REC2TEK, ect... Apparently I caught his interest when I said I knew Mr. May, Mr May is a Pennsylvanian plate "DR DECO". In addition to making calendars, his house also serviced as hotel when Kent and Mike came down. It didn't take much time for curiosity to get the better of him, "How do you know him?" Oh, it's a small world, especially in cave country.

From Mark ...

Attached are a couple of pictures from the Discover Scuba I ran last week.  You also need to check out dive reports and pictures from two groups of our "explorers" on the "Photo Album" pages.  

Bill Hockley, Ralph Spayd, and Bob Hannah just returned from Truk (Chuk) Lagoon in the south Pacific, and their pictures and reports are posted.

Chris Sanders and Dave Barnhart visited the Galapagos Islands earlier this year, and I've finally gotten around to posting their photo album and report as well.

http://www.smokeysdiversden.com/photo_albums/photos.html

Since I know that Cindy doesn't like to write about herself, I'm going to write a quick bit on the "Sponge Divers of Willow Springs."  If you guys want the TRUE story told, you'll have to submit a dive report!!

Anyway, I stopped by Willow Springs today on the way home from church to visit the Sponge Divers. It seems that as part of her biology curriculum at Millersville University Cindy Willman-Kinsey is studying freshwater sponges.  Who knew you could find interesting and rare wildlife at Willow?  When we showed up, part of teh group was warming themselves by the world's biggest wood stove after a successful collecting samples from off the platforms, the airplane and the Quest.  About the time the heat of the stove drove us back outside, Cindy and Pete Bohling showed up after spending part of their dive recovering the samples they accidentally lost control of.  I learned several interesting things about the sponges - including the fact that they are multigenerational - and previously scientists thought only one generation could survive at a time - and that a special "sponge" fly lives and germinates in freshwater sponges to surface when the water warms up.

John Gross, Bill Hockley, Ralph Spayd, Pete Bohling and new student Jill Wise in attendee. Also there was Bob Hannah - so does that mean we can now call him "Sponge Bob" instead of "Scuba Bob??""

Keep on diving and LIVE THE ADVENTURE!!!