From Tom Pritchard

7/6 - It was quiet at Willow last night with the only TNIs in attendance being just Kulp, T-Bone, and me. I'm still intrigued by the east end of the quarry, which I can find my way into and out of, but haven't yet gotten a good feel for yet.  As I figured out a few weeks ago, the part just east of the jetty is tear-dropped, but not as wide as I thought.  With the viz close to 10 ft at times, I could almost see the jetty and the east wall simultaneously long before reaching the pinch. The teardrop is west of the blue boat, the snowmobile, and the platform; the snowmobile is on the western edge.  The east end is a little deeper than the rest of the quarry, except the east-west trench which breaks 50 ffw.  That said, Kulp found a place where the depth was 50+ ffw, but nothing showed up last night deeper than 48 ffw, so more searching is in order.  The viz is usually better at the east end, but it's always a lot darker.  After swimming through the narrow end of the teardrop, you come to a pipe bridge that T-Bone installed a few years ago. If you swim due west from the bridge, you graze the north side of the outhouse - which confuses the hell out of me.  I assumed due west would hit the steam shovel.  Methinks the narrow part doubles back a bit - clearly more work to do.  Now that the rain has stopped, the viz is improving again. Last night the limiting factor on the viz was suspended silt instead of the green goo, which isn't due until August.

7/9 - On Sunday the Venture III got a glimpse of real Pennsyltucky divers. It was the usual suspects - plus a few. Gerhard, Perry Tarsons, the Irrepressible Dave Hoshauer, Huckster, Cindy-Pie, Rock, Thibs, plus an assortment of ScubaVenture divers like Big Ed, My Name's Not Mark, Zbhsihjkshbncgehyeyshtdgski. It was a little tight on the rear deck as we clambered over each other, one oversized quarry bin, some discarded dive gear, and wet suit divers, but Paul and Ruth got us all in the water and out with little muss or fuss. The Algol is a 460 ft Victory ship sunk in 1991 as part of the artificial reef program. One dive 1 Huck and I left the wheelhouse and meandered around the hull and deck.  My mask, which is still angry at being adjusted for NC hoodless diving, was flooding almost nonstop, so I was content to putz around the deck instead of heading for the lobster condos at the bottom.  Besides, Huck wanted to take photos of the deck, another busted plan since his camera flooded after the first pic. On dive 2 I gave my mask some TLC at the deck before we swam through several rooms and across several levels until finally penetrating the hold and dropping to the bottom at 134 fsw. It was, not surprisingly, dark and silty in there so we were very careful not to silt the place out.  Viz was 15-25 ft with decent light at the deck. The current wasn't noticeable most of the time, but a few times I was either sucked into a room or coughed out by the little current there was. Dave Ho made the catch of the day by bagging a 4 lb bug. Scott the Rock speared a couple of nice tog. The 2-3 ft seas in the morning gradually increased to 3-5 as we steamed back to Belmar.  The Algol is a wreck within the skill level of any good diver with nothing more than AOW certification.  Some of the large wrecks like the Algol, have something for divers of every skill level.  Call the shop if you're interested in diving a few wrecks.  And a good day was had by all.

From Jess Zellers 

WARNING!!! This dive report has two EXTREMELY SHOCKING statements to make, those person(s) with a heart condition, intolerance to the unexpected, the elderly, or those who are or may be pregnant SHOULD NOT READ THIS DIVE REPORT !!!!

#1 -- I need to preface this dive report with a profoundly disturbing, overly shocking, and totally unthinkable statement.... In this world there exits a second Vern Heagy. Hanging out at the Outpost after our dives today, I heard from around the corner... VERN!! Since I'm in Florida this was very shocking. He lives in Cleveland Ohio and visits Cave Country several times a year. The voice and speaking patterns are exactly the same. Physically similar. And most importantly they're both goof balls. ... what a messed up universe we live in. 

#2 -- The other reason for the disclaimer, and even more shocking, is that after how long of me announcing plans to "finally get my cave class done" ....... it finally IS. Today I finished my Basic Cave class. There's still Full Cave to do, but I can go out and actually dive now. Just like cavern, this class was with Mike O'Leary. Only this time there were other victims... eeha students in the water with me. Returning to a place that's quickly becoming my new Bainbridge, the first two dives were at Peacock State Park. Peacock's a great site for classes because there's three passages leading off from the cavern, all of them radically different from each other.

Our first dive was in a very spacious cave. The second dive was in a passage where you pull and guide most of the way in because the ceiling is so low. It is here were we did one of the out of air and lights out drill at the same time. In this one I was the OOA in the back leading out. Once you properly assign tasks to all four appendages, life becomes easier. Took a minute to figure out how to hold my primary light, secondary light, the hose for my donated regulator, and the line at the same time I needed to have hands (or at least one hand) free for pull and guide so we could exit. Once you get that down, it's a fairly painless process of repeating the same steps. The last two dives of the day were at Cow Springs. Cow is really excellent, and I'll likely be joining the CDS shortly to continue my access to it. The Cave Diving Section of the NSS owns the land. This time around for the out of air and lights out, I had the easy position -- guy in rear. My job, have a hand on the line, have a hand on a knee and swim. After a second dive of more drills, I got to see the infamous upstream Cow restriction. This was my first time at Cow, but I've heard more than a few stories about this restriction. So I asked about it earlier in the day. Mike said after the last dive to remind him if he forgets and he'd show me. Doesn't look as bad as everyone says it is, but I still think I'll get a few more cave dives under my belt before I go dragging my belt through the silt to get through there.

- Jess  ((I have seen the springs, and the springs they are good!!))

From John Katerenchuk

The water at Bainbridge was particularly inviting on Saturday and Sunday with air temperatures in the 90's. Several divers took advantage of the conditions to take a cooling dip or two and earn a PADI Specialty Certification towards obtaining the Master Scuba Diver Rating. Congratulation to Jose Imhoff, Chris Leiphart, Angel Wang and Scott Chaney who successfully completed an Enriched Air Specialty and Angel Wang, Scott Chaney, Holly Nordahl and Brian Cinkutis who completed their Peak Performance Buoyancy Specialty.

From John Gross

This weekend I was at Bainbridge with Lynne Cover and Mark Seymour to do the Deep Diver Specialty.  On Saturday we did only one dive with a few skills.  It started out hot as Mark and I were in drysuits and Lynne was in a wetsuit.  We surface swam out to the marker at the deep platform and descended to the platform.  I had three pressure sensitive devices to observe.  The first was an empty capped water bottle, the second was an empty inverted open water bottle, and the third was a Tasteycake Coffee Cake sealed in a zip lock baggy.  On the 60 foot platform we examined all three objects.  The sealed bottle was completely crushed, the inverted bottle was now 2/3 full of water, and the Tasteycake went from an 1 ¼ inch high to about ¼ to ½ inch high (about as flat as a pancake).  It looks like Tasteycake Coffee Cakes are mostly air!  >From the platform we descended to the deep boat and swam over to the edge of the hole and had a look around.  The temp was around 42 degrees and the viz was about 15 feet.  We then ascended on the line and and came up into a rain storm.  That was it for Saturday.

On Sunday we did two dives the first one was down to the 60 foot platform were we checked out the color on some small toy plastic tools.  There was a red shovel, a blue rake, a green and a yellow tool.  All the colors looked good except the red shovel it looked brown.  From the platform we descended onto the deep boat then over to the stairs, down the stairs to the deep-deep boat.  From their we missed the deep boat so we ascended along the north wall and did an 8 minute stop to simulate missing our NDL by no more then 5 minutes.  We did the 8 minute stop while swimming back along the wall to our exit at a depth of 15 feet.  Each student had to breath from the pony bottle for at least 1 minute.

For our second dive on Sunday we descended directly onto the deep boat and from there we went to the hole and headed south to the upside down van and tanker.  From there we headed to the south wall and slowly ascended to 15 feet and followed the wall back to our exit.  Along the south wall we went under s floating platform and there must have been around 100-200 fish.  Coming back along the west wall while going around the trees we saw a lot more fish.

After waiting for Jim Brown’s class to exit the water and return their tanks we headed to Marco’s for dinner.  So they next time you see Mark Seymour and Lynne Cover congratulate them on become certified Deep Divers.  Lynne is working on getting her Master Scuba Diver Cert and plans on doing her Divemaster training next year.  Mark is an Assistant Instructor and I believe he is also working on his Master Scuba Diver Cert.

From Mark - 

Smokey's Instructor John Gross made the Sunday paper this week with a great profile by Marty Crisp in the "In the Spotlight" section.  If you want to see this profile - here's a PDF version.  The photo says "Courtesy of John Gross" but I happen to know it's by our own Terry Grogan!!

Mark Seymour, Ralph Spayd, Savannah and I headed out last Wednesday to do our "Good Deed" for the summer.  We did a Discover Scuba for 24 kids attending "Camp Swatara's" Wild and Wacky Water Week.  Although the evening ran quite long, and we were packing up in the rain, the kids had a blast, and it was fun to see how enthusiastic they were.  

 
Keep on diving and LIVE THE ADVENTURE!!!