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Click To Enlarge
From Tom Pritchard . . .
I'm assuming that if you don't how to get somewhere, then you can't be charged with getting lost. Gerhard Maree and I decided to make a trip to the caboose last night. The trick to finding the caboose is finding the stone arch entry along the south wall of the quarry. We started well by compassing from the lobster shack to the Quest, a significant feat for a pair of directionally challenged divers. We roped it to the fire truck and then swam off its stern and tracked the wall at a depth of 40 ft. After kicking up a lot of silt, we turned it and came back at 30 ft., still looking for the arch. At one point I thought we wandered though the arch and found the caboose, but this caboose had tires and looked a lot like a certain fire truck. On the way back via the Quest we took a side trip on the "new" rope that heads south from Bubba across the bowl. After crossing the boat that turned up last year in the center of the bowl, the rope ends at the uprighted boat between the VWs and the Minnow. This wasn't good news for me. Unlike Gerhard, who is sporting double hp 120s these days, I had a single hp 100, with a Smokey's fill no less. We backtracked to Bubba, froze at the safety stop, and slipped our way up the steps at 62 minutes. Viz was up to 10 ft. last night, at least in front of us. Even with the water temp up to 43, I was glad I left my boyz in the lobster shack snuggling next to the world's largest wood burning stove. And a good time was had by all!
From John Gross . . .
Dive Report for Advanced Open Water Class & Enriched Air Nitrox Class at Dutch Springs This weekend went really well despite some problems. Mike & Terry Grogan, Natasha, and Dwight Brenner were doing AOW and Natasha & Layne Wonica were doing Enriched Air Nitrox. Natasha couldn't stay for the night dive or come back on Sunday due to other obligations. Both the Grogans and Dwight finished their AOW and Layne and Natasha finished their EAN. On Saturday for AOW we did Navigation, Peak Performance Buoyancy, and Night dive. Sunday we did Deep to the crane and we were going to do Search & Recovery but the students wanted to see the helicopter. Since I had brought my SeaDoo Scooter we did Dive Propulsion Vehicle (DPV) instead of Search & Recovery. They loved scootering around the copter. We did have our share of problems. Kristi had a dry glove pop off and flood her suit. Mike forgot to put the cloth gloves on before getting into the dry suit so he put the gloves overtop and a tab on both gloves got caught in the o-rings resulting in flooding in both arms.
Jeff & Kristi Raykos brought their camping trailer and offered me a bed (and it wasn't on the floor). I took them up on the offer and that meant one less thing (tent) for me to bring in my car.
A funny thing happened. When I showed my instructor pass at the front gate they said it was expired in their computer even though my card had their renewal sticker on it from this years opening day. The man at the gate kept my card and said I should go in and he would fix it and bring it to me. Around 1 PM he came over and gave me my card and said by the way Nick Jenny says hi! I asked how Nick knew I was there and the man said Nick's card didn't work either. When he took Nick's card to him Nick noticed my card was in his hand and he told him to tell me hi. Nick Jenny is a PADI Course Director and he teaches Divemasters and Assistant Instructors to be Open Water Scuba Instructors. In fact, he has been my course director for my OWSI (Open Water Scuba Instructor), MSDT (Master Scuba Diver Trainer), and IDC Staff Instructor training. The reason Nick was at Dutch is he was doing an MSDT for several new instructors including Jim Brown. Jim stopped over at our campsite and said hello.
The viz at Dutch proved to be 50-70 feet on Sunday. We were easily able to see the helicopter from the surface. Big trout were easy to find. They were under the entrance platform and in the cabin cruiser that we saw on the night dive. This weekend, May 14 & 15, I will be teaching PADI’s new Rescue program at Bainbridge. If you get a chance stop by and say hello. You can take time to watch and see what is new in the Rescue program. I will be running another Rescue class on September 17th & 18th.
From Dan Fisher . . .
Dan Fisher just completed his OW certification with me at the end of April. A week later he was on his way to Hawaii. He just emailed a small report along with the included photos. - John Gross
I wanted to let you know that Kelley and I made it home safely from Hawaii… it was amazing! My daughter, Martha, took a resort-course at our hotel, and we all did a shore-dive where we saw 3-4 sea turtles, plus lots of cool fish & coral. Then Kelley and I did a 2-tank morning dive on my birthday (May 7)… a really great small boat (I think 11 divers + 2 leaders + the driver) to the coast of Lanai (right next to Maui).
Great visibility (100+ feet), incredible coral, lots of fish… and on our second dive we went into an underground cavern (not a cave – just a 1-room thing), with holes in the roof which let just enough light in to give it a stained-glass type effect (they call it the Cathedral). And, as we were taking our 3-minute safety stop before surfacing, a school of about 70 dolphins swam very close-by.
We were fortunate enough to have the two leaders (I’m not sure if they were instructors, or dive-masters), both having cameras—so I’ll attach a couple of photos below. And, I felt VERY comfortable at all times – I wanted to thank you again for all the excellent training! There is a very good chance that my dad, and my daughter will be taking the classes toward certification over the summer!
From Darth Vern . . .
Well we are off this coming weekend to do a little Shark and Wreck Diving in North Carolina, so I don't have much this week. But I have been reading on the dive newsgroups about a boat capsizing off the coast of CA with divers still on the boat. Well one of the divers [the Captains son] wrote the story to "clear things up" and I thought it was a great story and wanted to share it here:
Dive community,
I know every one has heard part of the story so just to clear up what has realy happened here is the story. friday night me and my dad geared up to meet some friends for a tech dive on our new boat. we headed for a quick night dive for the yukon we left before dark but by the time we got geared up and headed out of the bay the sun had gone down. we had planned on finding the yukon by visual navigation as we have done a thousand times before so we had left the gps at home. it took us about an hour to find the yukon in the dark. conditions were ok 2-3 ft swells at decent intervals. so we geared up and did about a 70 min dive on the yukon 6 people had scooters and toured the outside while we looked through the interior a bit. once back to the line we noticed the swell had picked up considerably. since we were the last ones in the water we were the last ones on the boat. once aboard we started tying everything down and noticed the bilge pumps were not working even though the switch was on. boat was taking on water from the cross swells fast. we had everyone move to the front of the boat to offset the wieght of the water as the boat turned east a wave came in the swim step and we were instantly waist deep and the motors were completly submerged i isued a may day call immediatly. and less than 2 minutes later the boat flipped throwing us and all the gear in the water. this whole story is rather miraculous because of the chain of events to follow.... one diver (my dad) was in the cuddy and swam out immediatly luckily. the rest of us were pitched clear of the falling boat we waited in the water a good 30 45 minutes before the lifegaurd arrive. everyone was still wearing there drysuits and that made the stay in the water comfortable we were so in shock of what just happened we did not even attempt to salvage gear. when we boarded the boat one of the divers did grab some of the scooters floating near by and one of the double rigs.the next morning we walked mission beach recovering belongings while the salvage co turned our boat over in the surf and dragged it back out to our trailer at south shores. on sat we were very lucky we recovered another doubles rig completly intact and numerous belongings. sat evening i went back out to the yukon on danny howards "yellow boat" to search for gear but came up empty handed faith also searched on sun and recovered two more rigs. keep in mind each one of these rigs are worth about 7 grand each. now for the real miracle mon morning i coomedeared capt bill from the hydro diver to take us back out to the site where faith had found the other two rigs this time i was armed with scooters and three other friends we covered a lot of ground with the scooters and racked up a lot of bt.on the first dive i found several misc fins and one of the scooters that gave me hope but after searching pretty much all day we found nothing else after diving i decided to change the battery in one of the scooters and give it one more look around that is when i hit the mother load! i had passed a tiolet paper roll from the boat three times that day so this time i decided to do expanding circles from that point thinking that was part of the debree field well i was right on my first pass i found everything else we were missing except one scooter i found the last three rigs about 15 fins lights reels cell phones shoes belts and other things the other scooter is probaly close by and we will look for it again soon we just did not have any more bottom time left at all. considering the magnatude of the incident we suffered very little loss. i am very glad everyone came out without even a scrape that was my first priority and now that we have recovered some of the monetairy items it eases the sting a little. this happened very quickly and could have been a lot worse some one could have been hurt or killed. mother nature showing us how fast she can change her temper thanks to every one who offered there help and showed support this was a tough weekend to get through. - Joshua Woods
Keep on diving and LIVE THE ADVENTURE!!!
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