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From Tom Pritchard . . .
Gerhard Maree and I just spent 4 glorious days on the John Jack diving wrecks off Hatteras. Wreck 1: Manuela, a freighter sunk in June, 1942 by U-boat 404. The Manuela lies in three huge pieces at 160 fsw. We tied in at about 130 ft and then headed to the bottom where a 12-15 ft sand tiger was resting underneath the hull. The first day the seas were 6-10 INCHES. With 80+ feet of viz, it was a spectacular dive. While schools of amberjack and bait fish zipped around, GM and I watched a sea turtle scrape his shell on a piece of broken hull plate. Later GM speared a 2 foot amberjack, which earned us the attention of several sand tigers who watched from about 10 ft while we headed up the anchor line with the jack dangling 10 feet away in the goody bag. Wreck 2 was the British Splendor, a tanker lying turtled in 110 fsw. Sand tigers cruised and snoozed as we poked around the intact but badly broken wreck. By Day 4 GM, Joe Edelman, and I were the only three customers on the boat. Crewman Ron Forry and George had been replaced by Terry Martzall and Roger Heins; Zero was still holding court. Wreck 3 was the Proteus, a passenger/freighter that sank in 1918 following a collision with another ship. Terry tied in at one of the three boilers near the stern. A great wreck lying in 130 fsw. Highlights of the trip included a manta ray that circled and swooped around us as we travelled across the granny line and the school of barracuda that hung with us while did our deco. Over the 4 days we dove, the seas picked up a bit each day and the viz dropped as low as 40-50 ft. Awesome trip! Fish and artifacts were brought up. Zero might take the John Jack down to NC next year. If he does, we should get our act together and plan a trip.
Shoulder pains that appear after a dive and especially after a series of deco dives shouldn't be blown off. Last week I made seven deco dives over a period of four days. I didn't screw up, but sometimes you don't have to. There were other good reasons for my having shoulder pain, like being slapped around on the anchor/deco line, lugging heavy tanks to the car/shop/boat, and sleeping on a lumpy cot. I kept telling myself that all of my dive profiles were rectangular, I didn't miss any stops, I drank water, I slept pretty well, and ascended slowly - I shouldn't have a DCS problem. None of those reasons were as persuasive as my sore shoulder. I called DAN; they weren't sure. Getting sound medical advice on DCS in central PA is about as difficult as you might expect, but I got lucky, so I thought it was worth writing this "dive report" to pass along this info in case you get a "sore shoulder." I went to the ER at the Hershey Medical Center and explained to their Walmart welcome nurse, the triage nurse, a third nurse and finally a resident who was completing day 3 of his residency that I had a sore shoulder that might be due to DCS. The resident listened carefully, admitted that he didn't know much about DCS, and said he'd get the attending physician. The attending physician was Chris Deflitch, who I taught neuroanatomy to more than a decade ago. During Dr. DeFlitch's 2 year residency in Hawaii he spent part of the time as the on-call physician for the recompression chamber there - so he knew a lot about DCS. In fact, he had taken many chamber rides with DCS victims. He told me that when the resident said there might be a case of DCS in Room 16, he said, "Oh boy!" We agreed that I should suck on 100% O2 for an hour and see if there was any improvement. If the shoulder pain improved, I would need recompression. An hour later my shoulder still hurt like hell, so they gave me a Motrin and sent me home. I don't know how much DCS expertise there is at other local hospitals, but I can tell you that until Dr. Deflitch popped his head into my room, I was the resident expert in the ER on DCS - and that's not good. So if you have symptoms that might be DCS related, consider going to the ER at Hershey - and hope that Dr. DeFlitch is on duty. Or call ahead to see if he's on duty.
From The Huckmeister . . .
The Thursday Irregulars continue their dives no matter what the conditions! Thursday night was not an exception. There was only one time that I remember that we didn't dive......it was during a major thunderstorm with a monsoon thrown in for fun!
The water looked a bit green this week....no, the water was green! That was because of the hard rains from the night before. Since most everyone that is an irregular wasn't around with the exception of myself, George Heck, Jay Bell and Eric Henry with a guest appearance by the beautiful Capt. Terry Martzall ( he's headed for NC to help bring back the John Jack from it's week downthere), we kicked the idea of not diving, but we had our gear, air and there was water close at hand. We decided to go for it.
We were diving from our summer quarters on the other side of the swimming area off the cement dock. This puts us closer to the East end. Well, we dropped down to the rope that led to the platform. Vis was what we expected and worse. I could barely see Jay's green fins in front of me! Once we got to the platform we had to go by feel. My light didn't even shed any, errrr light on the situation. We truly did go by feel. I grabbed a leg in front of me to signal to drop to the bottom. I figured it had to be better down there. It was, but not by much. I could at least see the bottom. The vis improved to a good 3'to 4'. I lost everyone! I surfaced to find their bubbles. I swam over to them and dropped down. How could I miss if I'm coming right down on them. Wrong! I lost their bubbles and them. I made a few passes around the steam shovel and still no one. Oh well, I continued on to the North side but vis was only improving to about 5'. I navigated myself back to the dock to find Henry hanging on the surface. He wasn't too thrilled with the low vis either. It had to be the worst that I have seen it at Willow. Eric and I hung out in the water and talked for about a half an hour before we got out. It was just so comfortable relaxing in the water. Surface temps were in the upper 60's with bottom temps in the upper 50's. Good wetsuit conditions. Jay and George proceeded to the East end where the vis opened up to about 15'. I guess Eric and I were in the wrong spot! But we were in the water and that is all that counts!!! Next week will be better, can't get any worse! Hope that everyone had safe dives over the 4th.
From Bob Hanna . . .
I would hope that others who were there will write about the good time they had. My good time was made special by a phone call I received from Patrick Beck. He wanted to go diving.
On the Smokey's members list he is described as 12 and goes by the handle "Weezer". I met Patrick in the fall of 03 because Cindy said he needed a Dive Master to be with him at the Pumpkin Carving contest at Bainbridge. This then 62 y.o. diver and Patrick set out to go for the gold. We won nothing but kept diving into November. Then I didn't hear from Patrick until Saturday afternoon. What a pleasant surprise.
So 14 y.o. Patrick and 64 y.o. Scubabob (we are still seperated by 50 years) went diving at Diana's party. Patrick very quickly accepted my offer to let him use my Scooter. We may have to change his handle to Scooter Boy. We did a 34 minute 56 foot dive traveling to the helicopter and back. It was an easy dive 65 degrees off the Island from the newly sunken airplane which replaced the old airplane to the helicopter.
After eating Diana's sumptuous feast, Patrick, Chris Rosing, and I traveled to the West End of the Quarry and back doing a 51 minute dive with a Max of 34 feet. After which Patrick returned the Scooter probably because he had pretty near killed the battery. Thanks Diana for a really good time.
From Darth Vern . . .
Since our East Coast Trip on the Surface Interval was blown out AGAIN I had the priviledge or the punishment [depends on who you ask] of diving with Cindy, Mayo and JameZ at BSC Sunday morning. It was a great day to dive, not to hot, but the water was alot colder than I remember!! Our plan was to recon the hole for this "mystery boiler" that is supposedly down there. Since we were all in doubles, Mayo in his new steel 100s and cindy in her "baby bottle" 45 cf doubles, we headed off to the hole. We dropped down the west wall into the hole, it is very murky down to 50ffw, nice and clear from 50 to about 100ffw and then there is a thick white cloud to the bottom, that is virtually fog. You could not see the bottm thru the cloud, even when you werte touching it, I was checking my gauge to make sure we were actually on the bottom, it was very surreal. Well we aborted the recon and decided to check out the step-van and tanker. Both looked exactly as they have before. We headed back to the deep boat and ascended for our deco obligation. A nice, leisurley,stress-free 70 min dive with good friends and Cindy too [just kidding]!!!!
Keep on diving and LIVE THE ADVENTURE!!!
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