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From Becky Tallman . . .
We got to dive on thurdsay June five! (is that enough of a rhyme for you Nate?!)
Thursday night at wabank was a great time! 9 of us (8 from Smokey's and me from York divers!) joined forces to explore the underwater world at the aquaculture!
Cindy buddied us all up and I found myself diving with Steve Halliwell (proud father of a 4 mo daughter!) who was willing to stay fairly shallow as he got used to his new equipment!
We looked at the map and formulated a dive plan. We were aiming for the first swim thru and the tug and the other boat at 60. Then we'd tour around the lake counter clockwise taking in the sights as we went. Off the dock in a giant stride (or a face first fall in my case!) and after I gulped in most of my tank adjusting to the cold water, the ok signal took us down. Over the top of the sub and right over the swim thru! I thought it was just something mired in the mud. I figured it out when we got to the platform! Oh well, next time! Following the ropes we got to see the port a potty, the tug, 4 other divers (no they weren't exactly along the rope!) and the boat under the fish nets. We looked up at the bottom of those. The vis was great except where we crossed paths with the other divers! And so began our circumnavigation. We followed the rope through complete and total nothingness. I was prety happy to have that yellow string to look at. Steve did a good job of staying in position behind my left shoulder so it was pretty easy to check on him. Plus I could see his light swinging around. We went over top of another boat (sorry, I don't remember all the names!) and up into the grassy fields by the telephone pole. We went through the big swim through which has a diamond shape entrance and exit. It's also a square depending on which way you orient yourself! Steve thoughtfully shined his light ahead of both of us but the ambient light was pretty good. And made out way around the edge. We missed the habitat but got to see FISH!! Lots of the little guys and a couple of medium size ones hanging in the grass. That was fun! Past the bouyancy system suspended at 18 feet or so and back to the platform to regroup before sending Steve up and out of the water while he still had air in his tank! I hung and played with hovering delighting in the fact that there is a big difference in comfort level between 38 degrees from last week to 43 degress on thursday! Another 45 minutes logged and it was out to catch up with the other divers. No official food this time but there were dive cookies and blueberries to be had!
It was a great dive and I encourage you to be out there and taking advantage of the opportunities around us. People sometimes seem to think that diving in the quarry is beneath them and they say they'll wait til they can get someplace warm and clear where they can see something. But I maintain that diving in the quarry makes diving someplace warm and clear even that much more extraordinary! And it keeps your skills up to date so you can concentrate on what you're looking at because the mechanics of diving and bouyancy are second nature!
A group photo above water ensured this groups place in the dive album and it was off to home! Thanks Smokey's!
From Tom Pritchard . . .
Willow Springs, Thursday - With wreck diving season in full swing, the ranks are down at Willow. After eating pasta for two straight weeks in Italy, my dry suit fit like Spandex but it was still nice to be back in the water. The viz in the Grand Canal in Venice was a sparkling 6 inches, which probably made it tough for that poor sucker who dropped his camera in the soup while taking a picture of me and mine doing the gondola thing. Jess Zellers and rookie Paul Bernhardt splashed around the RR tracks for a while until they decided to surface at the Quest and surface swim back. Getting lost w/o a compass is easy. Jess, I'll lend you my compass next week so that you can advance to the next level of navigational incompetency, getting lost WITH a compass. I think PADI offers a course in that. Gerhard Maree, Wild Bill Siwiec, and I went over to see Dave Bally's truck over on the east end of the quarry. Even with the 5-15 ft viz we had, you don't need a compass to find that Duke's of Hazard orange monstrosity. Nice mag wheels though! The truck will look better when it silts over and loses that radioactive glow. With my reg free flowing from three (that's 3) different places, we weren't down too long. Perhaps I'm narced a bit, but it seems like my reg was serviced just the other day. Let the grass grow a little higher next Thursday - join the Irregulars at the cement dock between 5 and 6 PM. This is your chance to hang out with the people your mother always told you to stay away from.
From Cindy . . .
There were hoards of Smokey’s divers out on Thursday. We had another 8-10 divers at Walbank as well on Thursday night. Visibility at Walbank is still pretty good depending on where you are at – probably better than any other quarry we general frequent. We’re going to try and make a weekly thing of this as well – so you can hit Willow Springs for “Dutchman” night, or hit “Walbank” for “I’m too lazy to drive to Willow” night.
From Scott The "Rock" Steinbaecher . . .
This was my first experience with East Coast wreck Diving on board the Seeker, out of NJ. The original plan was to visit the wreck Algol, but due to the bad weather expected the Captain decided that we would have a better chance going to the Mohawk, a shorter distance, than the Algol. I didn't care I just wanted to get in the ocean. I was accompanied by first, my dive buddy, Bryan "bug catcher" Palmer, Vern "Look at my new camera housing" Heagy, Jim "bug catching isn't my thing" Brown, Cindy " I don't serve anyone at home, I'm not doing it here" Kinsey, Mark " gay purple sweatshirt" Myers, Chris "Rainman" Mayo, Nate " the patch" Brommer, Rick "the artful one" Hauck, and Liz " I lost my virginity to the ocean" Zyla. Bryan and I were the first non crew to enter the water. I was a little nervous, and that side roll entry, I must've missed that one in the Padi course! The viz was about 15' on the bottom at 80'. Lots of fish, a few "bugs", and one big shit pile on the bottom, they call "Mohawk". All in all, it was a great dive and I learned a lot, including, I know now why they call it a "wreck reel" , cause I wrecked the hell out of mine!
From Mark . . .
We’ll, “Rock’s” report is a pretty concise report on the dive. Our divers – with the exception of Vern of course – were pretty well behaved. It was nice to see Linda and Terry actually acting professional and serious instead of like the Thursday night goofs. We arrived Friday night and bunked in on the boat. Vernon had asked Capt. Crowell if he could bring “beverages” onto the boat – and was told OK, so long as they were in cans and not glass. Of course they were in glass and “Fingers” proceeded to immediately drop one right to the deck. Capt. Crowell responded with the classic “Mr. And Mrs. Dumbass must be very proud of you.” It took them all of :30 seconds to get Vern’s number, and he was roundly abused the rest of the trip. When the crew got the weather report, and saw the number of Alum 80’s that came on with the shop that owned the other half of the boat for the day, they decided to hit the “Mohawk” instead of the “Algol.” The “Mohawk” or “Scrap heap of the seas” as we found it, is about 7 miles off the inlet, and is dived on 80 ft tables giving us a nice long bottom time. Smokey told us later we should have been looking for a large steam locomotive, but none of us found it. Everyone got in and out of the water with no major problems. Vis on the surface could be charitably described as “sucked” but it opened up to about 20 ft or so on the bottom. Most of us did a total run time of between 45 and 50 minutes in the 48-50 degree water. We returned to the dock in pouring down rain – and the only smart guy was the one from the “Spring Tide” – the next boat over – who kept his drysuit on until he had his car packed up. Most of us looked like drowned rats. This was the Seeker’s first ocean trip since the passing of Smokey’s store “character”, and Seeker crewmember “Diver Dan” Myers, and there were a few poignant moments which were quickly diffused by a “Dan like” classic comment such as “Gee Terry – those shorts rock, if you weren’t a guy, I’d do you…” Thanks to Jenn for great food, Dan Crowell the Capt, Linda and Terry, Renee’ and Mark for a great job as crew. Smokey’s next ocean dive is on the Surface Interval on June 29 – and I believe there is a single spot open. We don’t have anything planned for July or August – but we’re always open to last minute trips. In September, we have two trips planned – one on the SI and one on the Seeker.
We understand Ray Becker was out on Sunday with the latest crew from the Millersville University Sub Team. They all passed – and are looking forward to the race the end of this month. They have re-designed the sub this year to make it a single operator sub – unlike the pilot/peddler approach of recent years. We’ll let you know how they make out at the end of the month.
From Darth Vern . . .
Thursday Nite was great, some new weekly divers and the same ole regulars. Great to see Becky "Dive Cookies" Tallman from York and our newest castmate Steve Halliwell, in all his new cold water gear! [see pics] Friday Night sleep over on the Seeker for Saturdays dive was an event as expected. No one was safe from "all the dissing going on"! Saturdays dive was pretty uneventful but a good first ocean dive for a few divers and a good refresher for the rest of us. We will be out this Thrusday Night and locally all weekend. Drop the shop a note and get involved!!!
From Dr Deco . . .
Points off for turning my assignment in late. Me and Mike (Tony) Nast decided to see how it felt to spend the weekend in warm Florida rain instead of cold Pennsylvania rain, so we boarded US AIR from Philly to Jacksonville, rented our usual Ranger pickup truck and headed out to cave country last Friday. We took a 1:30 flight to allow for a tuneup dive Friday night.
With the usual diver efficiency, we finally hit the water at 7:40PM. After several months of flooding, the water level is almost back to normal, still about 5 ft above normal. The outflow from Telford was really kicking. We had to claw our way in for the first several hundred feet past Terapin Sink. After that, the flow was still ripping, but we made progress through pulling and kicking. Any silting we caused was quickly dispersed by the current. It was good to be back underground. This system changes character every few hundred feet from low bedding planes to vertical fissures to rocky tunnel to deep silt. Fun dive to start the weekend and work out the kinks- 70 ft for 91 minutes. Temp was 70 degrees, viz was 20-30.
Saturday morning we headed down to Ginnie Springs in a steady rain. Our friend, Wayne Kinnard, is now in charge of Cave Excursions East, a mile from Ginnie. After a quick tour of his shop and a fill of 34%, we grabbed our doubles, some 80 cubic ft stage bottles and a bottle of 90% deco gas. We planned on using the stage bottles to extend our range in Ginnie Springs beyond our previous turn points. The flow coming out of the spring is amazing- you enter the cave head first down a fissure about 2 ft wide and 6 ft tall at 30 foot depth. About 24 millions gallons of water shoots out of that opening daily and you have to fight your way in. The water is ripping at your mask, you're wedging your knees into the wall to keep from being blown out and you're hoping that your reg doesn't start free flowing, while equalizing with one hand and clawing at the rock with the other. Once around the first corner, things calm down a bit. The trick in Ginnie is to stay near the ceiling and tuck into the wall to stay out of the flow. We quickly sucked down our stage bottles and dropped them at the 600 ft mark. We continued up Hill 400 until we got to the bats at 1500 ft penetration. I had read about the bats and this was our first time this far in. Someone had strung 4 rubber bats from the main line, very cute. A short time later we hit thirds and turned the dive. 7 minute deco at 15 ft and we were out of the water and heading back to Wayne's for more gas. 92 ft for 99 minutes, 73 degrees and awsome viz of 100+ ft. Beautiful cave system with huge tunnels, big enough to drive a train through in places.
Our next dive was a repeat in Ginnie with a few jumps into side tunnels until the line ended or the tunnel narrowed too much to pass. Most of Ginnie is negotiated by pulling along the walls. Its a very clean cave without silt in the main tunnels. The walls and ceiling are all dinged up from the thousands of rookies cavers who have passed through before us. The great thing about high flow is exiting- you only kick for steering, the current carries you out at a leisurely pace. 101 ft for 113 minutes. Temp and viz still great. On the surface we broke down our gear while the locals continued their weekend ritual of tubing the river, drinking beer and blaring rock and roll. Quite a scene. Makes for an interesting surface interval.
It was back to Telford for a staged night dive next. Its an hour plus drive between dive sites and we stopped for a bite and 20 minutes in the dryer for the drysuit underwear. We didn't hit the water until 9:30PM and exited at 11:30. Spotted a loose rock on the floor of the cave containing a fossilized mastadon tooth. Pretty cool. The stage extended our bottom time to 118 minutes at 70 ft.
Sunday morning we were told that Tiger Woods was supposed to show for a dive, but we never saw him. For our last dive of the trip, we hit Peacock Springs State Park and Orange Grove Sink. The mosquitoes were thick and so was the rain, but in a drysuit neither coulc bother us. The surface viz in the basin was worse than bad. Luckily another team was in the cave before us, so we could follow their line into the tunnel. We meandered along and made two jumps into new side tunnels. Its nice to get off the mainline where the cave is abused and into less travelled tunnels. We've dove (dived?) Peacock at least a dozen times, and we are still able to find new tunnels to explore. There are still many more places to check out the next time we visit. 74 ft for 102 minutes. Temp was 71 degrees and viz was about 40-60 once we got below the muck in the basin.
Out of the water by 11:15AM, on the plane to Philly by 4:30. New record for a weekend- 523 minutes of bottom time on five dives. We're already planning our next trip back in August. Til then, see you at the quarry!
Get Out and Dive and Live The Adventure!!!
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