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From Diver Dan - Last Week
Tues night/ Wed. Capt.. Dan Crowell's Seeker pulled out Tuesday night at 11:00pm for an 8 hour ride 100 miles off shore. The "New Wreck" was loaded with some of the worlds best wreck divers. Christina Young, Mark Nix who have a bunch of Doria dives and some 380 ft dives off Virginia, Ritchie Kohler of U-869 fame, some guys from New England, and wreck diver extradinoire John Chatterton of U869, Lusitania, Britannic, Andrea Doria, Carolina and many other wreck dives. Also on board was an author who is writing a book on U869. He was getting a feel for how an overnight deep off shore trip is run on the Seeker. The poor guy spent the entire trip seasick.
I gave the rebreather a break and went back to double 100's with a tri-mix of 16/40-- 16 % oxygen and 40 % helium ( which were a little light for gas supply) Apex Flat Head, and the Mares Abyss. For stage cyls I had a 40cf tank with 32% nitrox and a 72cf tank filled with 70% nitrox. I rolled in the water at 9:30am. Mark Nix was right behind me. The top of the wreck was at 220ft. We did most of the dive at 240 to 255 ft. We had 40 to 50 ft of viz and lower 50's for bottom temps. The wreck is covered with netting. Navigation and penetration skills are a must for this wreck. The piece we dove was about 150 to 175 ft long. It is WW2 vintage. The US military denies its presence. I have some photo's taken topside. I'll get them downloaded sometime.
I used V- planner deco software which is based on deeper stops. 25 minutes on the bottom; a total run time of 95 minutes. My 1st deco stop was at 200 ft. I'll be using this software this weekend for some more dives. And at 258 ft inside a passage way covered with netting; the Mares Abyss and Apex Flat Head performed like champs. You've got to love these regs.
The Seeker is back on this wreck Sept 18th. Who knows? Maybe the wreck will give up its identity.
From 15 ft local dives to offshore stuff. Smokey's Divers Den people are diving.
Live the Adventure
From Diver Dan - This Week
After the planning and diving of the 260 ft "New Wreck" it was nice to get back to the 90ft Gulftrade on Sat. The Seeker took a bunch of new divers to this site. Seeker captain Marc Weiss recovered a nice porthole. CApt. Dan Crowell and I ripped thru the debris field with our rebreathers. Viz was 30 to 40 ft . Bottom temps were upper 50's
Sun on the Seeker - The Resor is 33 miles off shore. The wreck never lets you down. 40 to 50 ft viz and upper 50's bottom temps. Surface temps were in the upper 70's. Many divers brought back lobsters. Again the Azimuth rebreather performed flawlessly.
After leaving the Seeker I headed down the NJ Parkway to the Cape May / Lewes Ferry for the next days dive in Ocean City Md.
Mon on the OC Diver in Ocean City Md. . Capt Ted Green took a few of wreck divings most charming divers to the India Arrow. This is a tanker which was torpedoed in WW2. From the surface to 40 ft down we had blue Gulfstream water. At 190 ft on the bottom Viz was 60 to 70 ft with a bottom temp of upper 40's. This is an awesome wreck to see. The Hull has about 40 ft of relief. The superstructure debris field is loaded with artifacts. Getting to them will be tricky. I saw the biggest cod I ever saw. A bunch of them were at least 4 ft long. I went back to tanks for this one. And at 196 ft in the debris field washout the Mares Abyss performed as well as it always does.
A few spots left for the November 2nd oyster dive. Contact Me for details.
From Dr. Deco
Mike Nast and your dive reporter, Dr Deco, headed out of Little Egg Harbor Sunday morning aboard the Spring Tide to check out some numbers. Captain Bill has a logbook of GPS destinations which may or may not be ship wrecks.
Our first destination was a wreck known as the Wellington, a wooden ship of the early 20th century. We found something on sonar, marked the spot and set the hook. We found the gunnels in the sand running parallel at about 60 feet. Plenty of eels living in between the spars. We spotted a few bugs, but they were out of reach. Good viz of about 30' and bottom temps about 55.
A few miles away, we found the second wreck, a clamboat sunk in 60 ft of water. Sonar showed alot of relief and sure enough, we found an intact boat about 75 ft sitting upright on the bottom. It had been stripped of anything of value,as if it was purposely sunk to become an artificial reef. Penetration points were plentiful and this would make a good wreck for beginners due to its depth, size and intact structure.
The third desination was the Whopper, another wooden wreck. This location presented as scattered areas of wooden plates and we snagged into a beautiful, massive anchor. Captain Bill is thinking of returning in the fall to salvage the anchor. Lobster huntger Nast grabbed two lobsters, one of which lived to fight another day because she had clusters of eggs.
All in all the five divers brought home a lobster, two sea bass, two flounder, a bag of mussels and good memories of a pleasant day with friends under clear skies and 1-2 ft waves
From Kevin Weeks
I'll try to make a long story short, after recently returning from a week of diving in the Bahamas. I joined one of the 65' sailing sloops of Blackbeards Cruises. "The MorningStar", after arriving in Miami. Here I met 21 other divers, along with the 6 member crew, and was assigned a bunk, and stowed my gear. Right away I realized that it would be a cramped situation, which it reminded me of my days on a ship in the Navy. This would be a 7 day liveaboard, to the Bimini's, to Dive, Dive and Dive some more!!!
I won't go into detail for every dive, as we dove 3 to 5 times a day for 6 days, but I will tell you that we did everything from 15' shallow, snorkel/dive's, to wall's that went into the abyss, (I bottomed at 120' on a drift). Several reef dives, with coral heads reaching 30', 15'under, with awesome cuts and swim thru's too many to count. The diversity of life was overwhelming! Millions of Tropicals, Reef Sharks, Nurse Sharks, Bulls, etc., some very friendly! ranging from 3' to 25.' Lots of huge Grouper's, Eels, (one in particular, A Huge Spotted, that I could not lure from his hole, but almost) Turtle's. Octopus, Super cool Ray's, One of which, on a wreck night dive, I had one flutter me from, just under me, as I could feel him, and then just stop and posed, as I photographed him. Then He proceeded to play with me until I had to ascend :-(
The wreck and night dives were truly great, with a vast diversity of live on all the sites. One of the night dives was on "Bull Run," where we had previously did our Shark feeding dive that day. "The Shark Feeding" dive is truly an event! For those of you whom have done it, then you know. For those of you that haven't, Give it a try. The night dive there was really neat, as you know of, and see the sharks, (or do you)! In my case though, on this dive, my dive buddy had problems with vertigo, and I had to stop a rapid ascent as he started to do so after a few disconcerting moments in the dark. But after a slow down after 30'(yikes!) He settled down and we got things under control, and made it back to the boat.
To shorten a long story, The diving was very diverse, from shallow to deep, glass seas to slightly choppy(3'to6'), O current to 2.5 knots, Reef to Wrecks, to Walls to Drifts, to Swim thru's, etc...... They provided it all. Novice to seasoned. Although straight air is all that is available. You stay with the same tank, the entire trip.
Viz ranged from 25' to 80'. Averaged 50+. Very healthy, near virgin diving, as most of what we did was off, of deserted islands. Very accommodating and professional crew, Excellent food, and plenty of it! Camaraderie was the best!!!
For those of you that don't mind "The Camping at Sea" accommodations and just want to dive, for the money, you can't beat this experience. Take Care! and Keep The Bubble's Flowing!!!
From Scott Weeks
The annual fish/ski/dive trip was great this year. We stayed in a cabin on Lake Nippissing near the town of Sturgeon Falls, Ontario. When you get to the thousand island bridge you have another 310 miles to drive. On Friday Adam, Kevin and I visited a dive shop on Trout Lake, just north of North Bay. Kris decided to get pregnant and skip diving (Dan, I know you warned her, but for whatever reason she just didn't listen to you). The first thing out of the shop owner's mouth was that this was a NAUI shop and that they don't honor PADI certs. After a few silent moments and some deer-in-the-headlights blinking from the three of us, he started laughing and told us that he was actually a PADI instructor himself. Ha, ha! He had a pretty good sense of humor and that was just the first dose.
He said he had 40 tanks and that they were all rented. After he found out that we would use them and bring them right back, all of the sudden the shop staff personal tanks appeared from the back room... magic, just like Smokey's! Anyway.. on to diving. The shop owner directed us to a perfect site about 1/4 mile down the shoreline from the shop. The signs said Military Property, No Trespassing. He said that was a bunch of crap and that if anyone gave us any trouble to go see Major Brown... pretty cool! The site had some docks that were out of the water for us to spread out all our "junk". It's amazing how much stuff three cold-water divers "need". We felt like a bunch of pack mules! Adam and I had dry suits, but since Kevin lives in Puerto Rico and hasn't invested in a dry suit, he was in a 7mm wet suit. That was fine until we went through the second thermo cline where the water was a balmy 43 degrees and his thin blood started to solidify.
The viz was about 10 feet at 98 ft and when we turn out the lights (generously supplied by Dr. Deco) we were bathing in blackness. Except for a couple of telephone poles, an intact Pepsi can (that burst upon repressurization) and a small lake trout, the dive was fairly miserable.
For the second dive, we decided to swim under a nearby marina. This was freshwater diving at its best! Nowhere in the Caribbean have we seen schools of fish like this. Literally, thousands of perch ranging from 1 to 3 inches long. On the outskirts of these massive schools were a couple dozen or so bass grazing on the feast. Outside of the bass were the muskies. Adam counted something like 14! The fish were beautiful when I hit them with the HID. I bumped into a muskrat that was hiding under one of the docks. We found an old lantern, a hammer and various fishing gear. The dive lasted nearly 70 minutes. If you ever dive in unfamiliar waters, dive the marina!
From Liz Zyla
Just thought I would share with you my most recent dive trip. Chris Cramer and I went up to Brockville, Ontario to dive the St. Lawrence River. We arrived Friday night and I took him directly to go for a shore dive on the Rothsay- It was great! Viz was about 30 feet (as it was for all the wrecks) except for this one point where these two carp were feeding and stirring up all sorts of sediment. I couldn't't believe all the fish that were there. Last year when I went up with the Smokey's crew there were very few on this wreck but this year I saw tons of walleye, bass, perch, one huge koi, a pike and a sheep head. This was also Chris's first out of quarry dive so he was very excited. Saturday we dove the Muskellunge and the Robert Gaskin again I couldn't't believe the proliferation of fish on these dives. Chris had the MX 5 we rented from the store and he was so excited about his diving that he forgot to take any pictures. Sunday we dove the Daryaw and the Lilli Parsons- these were my two favorites. Both had very strong current getting down the line luckily it wasn't quite so strong down on the wreck. One cool thing about the Lilli- we did what the Canadians call a "live dive"- that's where instead of the boat tying off to a mooring buoy, you jump off the boat into the river and swim to the anchor line. Oh! -Chris almost missed the anchor line was kicking hard and loosing the battle with the currentake it- he kicked hard enough to make to where we could pull him to the . The Lilli is also cool (and you have to be careful) because she is sliding down slope about a foot per year- when she eventually takes the plunge she'll be in 200+ feet of water. Another reason to be careful around the Lilli is that there are a lot of down wells; the captain of the boat said to stay above the mast (60 feet) and don't go farther away from the boat then 15 feet or we could get caught in one. Sunday we dove one other dive, a shore dive, and I am proud to say it was dive # 50 for me! --the Conestoga. So, to recount- current, current, and fish, fish, fish!
From Jess Zellers - The "Official Thursday Night" report...
This week I showed up to the quarry completely ready for a dive, stopped by the shop to pick up tanks and left with a dive partner riding shot-gun! Full service dive shop, life is good!! Chris Huber has been diving for awhile, recently moved into the area, and ready for the new experience of northeast diving.
There was thunder in the background, and Wild Bill who hadn't been to Thursdays since that week we got blown out was insistent that everyone get in the water before we got blown out again. That was kinda funny because I think he was the last one in the water, I'm guessing because Chris and I were in first and gone. We did the grand tour came in along the west wall, vis was great! Awesome dive. Wanting to give him a full taste of Thursday nights, I did manage to literally dig up something for dinner. I found the head of dead fish, an apple, spoon, and a wrapper of an Oreos. The fish was very entertaining, I had my mask completely flooded I was laughing so hard. We both enjoyed the dive, but I think he was less than impressed with the dinner menu. Chris come back over winter the food's better, I promise!!
Referendum: Came up with this idea. We'll start two weeks before the New Years Dive and auction off Wild Bill's emergency whistle (read: party horn), the highest bidder can inflict whatever unspeakable acts of damage they wish.... proceeds going to DAN or the charity. AND..... if the highest bid is over a certain figure he CAN'T get another one!! And for letting us do this, we'll get him a manually blown SeaStorm whistle.
From Bob Hannah
Chris and Betty Ward are scheduled to dive the Gulftrade with Diver Dan. So we went to Dutch Springs on Saturday to practice some deep dives--Diver Dan would have been proud of us. Chris dove with my steel 120s, Betty dove with my steel 100s. I suspect that next year they will be in the market for their own steel tanks. However Saturday was a very hot day. We did our dive plan which called for a trip to the Copter, compass course to the Tanker, and ropes back to the dock.
I did not get my Drysuit on in time and myself into the water before the heat got to me. They went and dove the first half of the plan: Copter, compass to the Tanker. They made it about 1/2 way with the compass, finished on the surface, dove the Tanker and came back. Not bad.
Practicing in the quarry makes for much better experiences in the ocean.
From Rick Huck
Since the weather has been so hot lately getting into dive gear just hasn't sounded like the smartest idea unless you are out on the open seas. But the call to dive is much stronger than the heat. Distance came into play here as well. Willow....too far for the vis......Bainbridge......ya got that hill thing ... and the vis. Wait........ Wabank!!
That was it! It takes me minutes to get there and the vis has been so gooooooood. Perfect idea. And since the vis is so good I brought the camera for some underwater shots. When I got there at noon, to make the best of the ambient light, there was a group of 20 divers from a shop down in Maryland. It was nice to hear the foreign accents! After talking to some of the regulars there I geared up and dove in. Vis was good in certain spots that they weren't diving in and deeper. It really opened up at 70' to give you a good 30' of vis. Where's Bill's scooter? And at the far end of the lake above the thermacline it was the same. I shot a roll of 36 very easily. Now to wait for the pictures to come back. I know that I have said this before but I will say it again....Wabank is a great place to dive especially considering that it is in our very own backyard.
Note from Vern
The pictures attached are from John Gross' Sunday class at the Ephrata Rec Center. John was playing with his new housing for his digital camera.
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