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From Uptown Jim Brown . . .
Donna and I planned the Dutch trip for over a week and received an RSVP from Dennie Middleton anxious to get in the water. It was nice to hear of Dave & Jill Brandon's interest to join us despite their journey to NC that kept them on the surface. After a two hour drive from York we passed through the gate at Dutch and joined up with Dennie for an air fill and pleasant setup in the shade on the Peninsula. The crowds were light today but included Ralph Spade and Bob Hanna down by the water's edge near the Aqua Park. I exchanged a hello with Ralph as I parked the truck.
Two dives were planned with the first being a "get comfy" dive. We entered to the south from the Peninsula, did a controlled descent on a marker buoy, and got situated on the training platform. You can see Donna's fin pivot form as she gets her buoyancy adjusted. The end of the platform came and went as the compass read SSE to the Island and Cessna. We dropped to 58' and the temp dropped with us. My Scubapro SmartCOM registered 64F at 58ffw, 35 minutes. The Cessna was very clear and a large coy was feeding under the port wing. He allowed one pic before circling us and moving on. After an air check we turned the dive NW, stayed at 40', crossed the marker line from the platform to the Silver Comet, then ascended along the slant line from the platform to the exit. Dennie got an air fill and we grabbed some grub at the chuck wagon during the SI. We met two guys from Philly, Mark & Pat, one originally from Penn Yan in New York State, the northern-most point on Keuka Lake. Since my family vacationed at Keuka for over 30 years, we had a lot to talk about. Needless to say, it was a long but enjoyable surface interval.
Dive #2 took Dennie and me to the Sikorsky for our descent. We made the tail rotor at 25' then dropped to 45' for a look around the entire bird. It was pretty busy there and stirred up just a bit. Back at the rear door, starboard side, we turned NE to arrive at the wooden cruiser. It's covered with zebras and interesting to poke around. Dennie took to the wreck exploration right away, as captured by my Sony P10 and Sea & Sea 16mm wide angle lens. We adjusted to the north and made up with the marker line at 40' which led us to the bus. Two-way traffic inside held Dennie up just a bit but he came through with flying, uh, fingers; that's a double OK picture from a happy diver. We spied a large laker and a rainbow trout at the bus. They were very camera shy! A Palomino led us away from the back end of the bus toward the training platform, a planned stop in our dive plan. Dennie communicated very well UW and gave me an update on his gas level. We huddled side-by-side for our safety swim at 20' to the east exit of the Peninsula. The bass and the hatchlings were crazy in this water just beyond the exit point at about 15-20'. A nice finish to the diving day to 58ffw for 30 minutes.
The day was beautiful, the vis very good at about 40'-50' depending, and exceptional dive company above and below the water. Dutch is always worth the drive, and good diving friends make it even better! It was a pleasure to meet Dennie and share some nitrogen loading with him. Donna enjoyed her return to the training waters too, even after a most pleasant warm-water experience in Saba in early August (Smokey's Web Photo Album forthcoming).
I'll be at BSC this Wednesday, barring any nasty weather. I'm also planning two deep dives at BSC on Saturday, one to the Barn and another to the far east wall cutout at BSC. I already have 32% gas mixed and ready to go.
From Tom Pritchard . . .
RULE 4: Don't Be Dumb as the POTUS
Greg Kulp, James Zimmerman, and I had Willow all to ourselves this week. The plan was to do a 2 hr dive around the perimeter of the quarry, but with Kulp diving wet, it didn't seem likely he'd make it. We headed past the cave, the Pinto, and out past the tanker to the habitat. James signaled "bad ears" and surfaced there so Kulp and I plowed on. Kulp reached his thermal limit before the first hour passed so we headed from the Point toward the south wall. When we hit the wall, I figured we were between the caboose and the cement dock; we turned left planning to hit the metal stairs by staying shallow. Sure enough the metal stairs showed up on cue. Just as I finished removing my fins at the bottom of the stairs, the ground gave way and I began to slide down the embankment. Without fins, I cautiously inflated my drysuit to stop my descent and then slowly ascended to the stairs. I climbed the stairs, fins in hand, until I reached the landing. Big problem. There is no landing on the metal stairs to the cement dock. I stood there for a full two minutes, fins in hand, contemplating my plight. I'm standing on a flight of stairs that go up and then just end, I have only a vague idea where I am in the quarry, it's night, I just silted the place out, and I'm not wearing fins - and I'm alone. Kulp must have figured that since I was taking off my fins, it was time to get out - so he took off and got out. I stood there trying to figure out how this dummy was going to put his fins back on. Diver Dan always said you didn't need to be a brain surgeon to be a diver. I wasn't feeling like either a brain surgeon or a diver at that particular moment. RULE 1: Don't take your fins off until you're done using them. Since the stairs had no railing and the bottom was just loose rubble, neither seemed like the right place. But the landing would be great! I would just sit and hang my feet over the edge - it would be easy! Now, if you don't follow Rule 1, then you have to use RULE 2: Don't drop your fins. I reconnected my fin straps, slid them up my arm, dumped all of the air from my BC and dry suit, and crawled to the edge of the landing. As soon as I sat down, my doubles pulled me onto my back, my feet popped up, and the last bit of air in my suit went to my feet. More silt, no light, and nothing but the flat landing to hang onto; things weren't going well. I rolled onto my right side, vented again, used bad language, got my feet down and finally paused for some much needed self-recrimination. My fin problem disappeared when both fins came off my arm during my acrobatics on the landing. I groped around and found one; the other had thrown itself into the abyss. Despite all of the preceding sturm and drang, things weren't completely out of control. True, I was dumb, but I wasn't rattled, I had tons of air, and I wasn't chewing it up much either. An open water ascent, even from 25 ft, would be tough without fins though. I'd have to do a controlled ascent by alternately filling and burping my drysuit - ugh. (Sure wish I had my lift bag and reel) I'd been down for well over an hour by then, so a safety stop at 15 ft would be a good idea too. If you don't follow Rule 2, then use RULE 3: Find the lost fins. I dropped off the landing and with hands and feet clawing every bit of rock, dirt, and silt off the wall, headed for the bottom. As I played my light below my avalanche, the fin appeared. I grabbed it on my way by, stopped my descent at 36 ft with my suit, and cautiously inflated/vented my way up through the world's greatest silt out until I grabbed something that felt like stairs. Zero viz and complete blackness, but this was, without a doubt, the best place to put my fins on. I left without cleaning up my mess, found a line, and headed home: That's when Rule 4 hit me.
From Bob Hanna . . .
Smokey Divers were out in force. Jim Brown and Dennie Middletown were at Dutch Springs. Kent "Dr Deco" Hirsch was taking a technical diving course as was Christopher Rosing.
Meanwhile Divemaster/AI's Hanna and Spaydjr were busy doing what we call mentoring. Marilyn and Lauren Dowling had not been in the water for a while. It helps to have an experienced dive partner. Natasha Harmuth was trying out some of her newly purchased from Smokeys dive gear. Vernon "Darth" Heagy had encouraged Natash to buy one of the 600 series regulators. She loves it.
With a few suggestions and some work using the Western Most underwater platforms, Natasha got her bouyancy problems straightened out. She became a horizontal diver, and a believer in her new SCUBAPRO dive gear. As a group we went East on the platforms, followed but did not dive down to the big cruiser, and over to the Island. We spent our time between 15 and 40 feet, nice and warm, came back the way we went except we crossed over the Cabin Crusier, and headed west along the wall. We did an hour dive.
For our second dive we set a compass course to the helicopter, and missed wide left. After surfacing without any problems we swam a short distance over to the float and descended to the helicopter. (Since this was her first dive on the helicopter, Natasha is now the proud owner of an "I Flew a Sikorsky H-37at Dutch Springs" T shirt) It seemed almost anticlimatic to swim back to the wall via the Island, and Cruiser to use up the rest of our air on an hour long dive. It was amazing that a now quite confident Natasha followed me down to the roof of the cruiser as we were diving 3 mil suits.
From Bryan Palmer . . .
After a month’s Hiatus of not writing I am going to give a Brief account of what has been going on. Well the Last report I sent was on a weekend Trip to NC in Aug 6, 7, 8. Since then there was a Dive Trip to Isla Mujeres, Mexico that Dennie Leese had organized. Aug 14-21. It was a Nice Trip with a lot of People from the Labor day Prescott Regulars signed up for the Trip. Lots to see, Christmas tree worms, variety of eels, lobsters galore, southern rays, puffers, were a few to name as the list goes on. Dave Moyer even saw an eagle ray but due to lack of “proper” communication he was the only one to see it, so I really do think it was a “ghost ray”. We were even able to spend a day snorkeling with whale sharks. For most I would say that was the highlight of the trip. I ended up with 13 dives all together for this trip and a half dozen snorkel excursions.
I came back and worked my other Diving Job on the 29 which is crewing for the Gypsy Blood in Barnegat Light, NJ. The Trip was to the Gulftrade which sits at 90’. It was a Great day of diving and lovely weather. We left at 7 am and did 2 dives on the wreck with 2 hour surface intervals mostly and were back to the dock by 12:30.
Sept 2nd arrived and it was off to Nanaimo, Vancouver Island, Canada. This would be a quick trip only 5 days in length. I joined Sharon Slieker-Jones and the Group from York Divers. Beautiful weather really made this trip. No rain what so ever, and the temperature varied between 50-80 degrees. Sharon, Ron Krout and I were able to get in 8 dives out there 2 of which included the Saskatchewan and artificial reef which was sunk 7 years ago. We saw several seal and lots of nudibranchi, along with kelp crabs, a few wolf eels and several other fish I haven’t had a chance to ID yet. The west coast really has a nice atmosphere in which to live, even though it is in the north still runs on “Island Time” the same as the Caribbean. Water was in the low 50’s for the most part and viz was only about 15-25 ft at this time of year, the best time to go is in the winter as their climate doesn’t vary to much and they rarely get snow.
I believe this brings everyone up to speed, to this past weekend. I headed down to Barnegat to work on the Gypsyblood on Saturday. This time it was a private charter to the Resor. I was able to do 2 dives but as I was the last one in I came up empty handed no lobsters for me the ones I was able to find were to small or out of reach. I would say about 8-10 lobsters were brought up all together and not a scallop in sight. Water was 53 at 90’ and 72 at 50’ with visibility at 50’ down to nearly 60’ in depth and once below that visibility was about 25-30 ft. both dives I did were on the same 95 cu ft tank and still came up with almost 500 #’s but I Did have my pony bottle for back up. Anytime someone is looking at diving on the east coast and wants to get out or try the GypsyBlood let me know and I am sure we can get you on.
I will be helping out with Cathy Stevens Open water class at Elizabethtown College. Classes are on Tuesday nights and run for the next 2 months about. So Ill try and get some picture over the next few weeks. There are plenty of opportunities to dive over the next few weeks, I hear the jelly fish are out at BSC , the Thursday night Irregulars at Willow Springs, East Coast diving has been going strong this year, and this weekend at Dutch Springs is Dive Rite Demo weekend - Pete Nawrocky From Dive Rite will have all the Gear from Dive Rite on hand for you to take in and test dive BEFORE buying. Last year Ron Lobb and I went up and both tried Drysuit’s, I had Cindy ordering one for me Monday first thing when I Got back. Get out and Dive, live the Adventure.
From John Gross . . .
Since no one signed up for my Navigation Specialty Pete and I decided to do two fun dives on Sat at Bainbridge Access "A". Our first dive was to a maximum depth of 70 feet and lasted 82 minutes. Pete wanted to see if he could find the cement mixer, dozer, and the boats, and the tunnel on the south wall. We started down the dolphin tower and went to the cement mixer, from there we dropped over the ledge to 60 feet and proceeded to the dozer. From there it was back to the cement mixed and over to the tunnel to check out all the fish. There are a lot of fish in the tunnel. We then went to the two boats behind the cement mixer and went over the road for a once around the beach area and back over the road to exit at the steep hill.
After our surface interval we decided to go once around access "A." This dive lasted 90 minutes with a maximum depth of 30 feet. There are some really big bass at the junction of access "A" and access "B." Also the jellyfish are really plentiful this year there were times we actually were swimming through a large group of jellies.
This time of year is the best time to dive Bainbridge. The water is still warm the fish are all around and surface and air temps are really comfortable.
The Haunted Quarry dive at Bainbridge is October 2! This dive is a shallow dive and is a lot fun. Last year they had ghosts, severed hands, walls of bubbles, large rodents and a cemetery with tombstones. After the haunted night dive there will be hot dogs and hot cider. Sunday they have an underwater Pumpkin Carving Contest. Both days are fund raisers for the National Ovarian Cancer Alliance. Admission is $25.00/day or $40.00 if you pre-register for both events. These fees are in addition to the admission fees for Bainbridge. Attached is a pdf file explaining the details of the Haunted Quarry Dive. Pete and I will be their and look forward to see everyone at the Haunted Quarry Dive. I have a Divemaster class starting that day in Smokey's classroom and I will arrive around 5-6 PM at Bainbridge with the divemaster candidates. Sunday I am teaching an Open Water Class at the Ephrata Rec and I will be unable to attend the Pumpkin Carving but have fun!
Keep on diving and LIVE THE ADVENTURE!!!
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