We checked out the "To Dive For" which seems like a nice boat.  It's about a 36 ft Trojan cruiser, which means its a little old, and the deck is a little small, but it's limited to 6 persons so my guess is that's not an issue.  The crew is great, friendly and eager to help.  For  some of the other "old timers" we also went searching for the "Fiesta" which before being sold was one of our favorite boats.  It's now docked by the drawbridge in Lewis Delaware.  The new owners have done a great deal of work to her, painting and cleaning, and removed the wood enclosed flying bridge and restored it to a canvas enclosure.  The old girl seems to have a new lease on life.  During part of the storms, we toured the old gun batteries up on Cape Henlopen - and the reason that's of interest to divers is because the state plans to restore them and open them to the public.  Part of the display will be listings of ship wrecks off the cost of Delaware and New Jersey - but one of the really cool things is that they plan to re-open the Navy listening post that used to be there.  Apparently the Navy ran microphones into the water from the old gun battery and used them to listen for Soviet submarines.  They still work, and the plan is to use them to listen to all types of aquatic life off the coast.

The Wednesday night dives are still going strong, but you only have another two Wednesdays to take advantage of them.  BSC plans to stop Wednesday night diving after September.  Although I've hassled a bunch of the regulars (hint hint, nudge nudge) I can't seem to get a weekly report.  Unfortunately once school starts, my "kid requirements" keep me out of the water on Wednesdays.  In "interviewing" the guys this week, I understand that the surface temp has started to drop and is now in the high 60's.  Much like earlier in the year, visibility drops dramatically between the first and second thermocline.

What I HAVE been doing is helping with some open water and refresher classes again - something that I haven't done for some time.   It is a ball to see new divers take to the water, and help more experienced divers rediscover the sport after a layoff.

From Tom Pritchard . . .
"Dive to Write" or "Write to Dive"
If I don't write, I can't dive, although that seldom stops me from diving. And it's tough to write dive reports without diving - although I've managed to do that on more than one occasion. So, what the hell, I'll take a break from writing to dive - and then I'll write this dive report. 

It was a cozy group of TNIs at Willow last night: Gerhard, T-Bone, Dave Ho, Kulpie, and yours truly. Some missing TNIs are nursing injuries or working; two cancelled after expressing a morbid fear of water dropping from the sky. George is building a garage, which is a first-class waste of time. I have a garage, but I find it much more convenient to park on the lawn between the washer/dryer and the expired refrigerator, if my wife doesn't have clothes drying on the line. With the rain gone, we geared up in beautiful fall weather and then we spotted a problem. There was an old back hoe working on the far bank behind the pump house. (My New Urban Dictionary changed "old back hoe" to "old black ho," so I turned off my spell checker, but not before my Miss Manners PC Correct Dictionary was able to jump in with the phrase "African American prostitute" for what looked like a piece of farm machinery). When African American farm machinery and quarry viz tangle, visibility loses. Add that to the heavy rain early in the day and you have a recipe for a Braille dive.  Viz at the platforms was 8-10 ft, but as GM and I headed to the east end, it dropped to 5 ft. It was no better away from the wall and along the rock jetty.  Kulpie and Dave Hoe (damn spell checker) reported viz was 2 ft at the Blue Boat corner of the east end. With viz in the 3-5 ft. range, GM compassed from Terry's bridge to the steam shovel. We cut back and worked our way to the swim-thru pipe and finally to the Quest, where the viz was a solid 15-20 ft!?  After swimming thru the pipe a second time, the viz was still better inside the pipe than outside. I'd like to blame the 2 ft viz on other divers, but I'm afraid it was just a yucky night.  Even with the yuck, it was great dive. You can't beat Fall diving. It the best weather all year and water temps are still near 60. Come to Willow next week to see the old back hoe and dive with the crusty TNIs.

From Gerhard Maree ...

The wreck of the Andrea Doria has captivated divers on the east coast for years. And with books written about diving the Doria most technical divers around the world know about the wreck and the many stories about the deaths and triumphs surrounding the wreck. Considered by many as the mount Everest of diving ,it's not only the depth but also add lack of sleep ,bumpy 12 hour boat ride and unpredictable currants to the chain of circumstances. This all after a 6 hour drive to Montauk and load / unload all your tanks. 

This year was the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the Doria. Many divers and dive boats had their hopes to be on the wreck for the anniversary and also most charters had a extra fee just because it's a special event. 

Expedition Diving.

Because the Doria is not just a 10 min boat ride from the dock you have to try and be out there for a few days. The closes land is Nantucket Island, but expensive get to and stay, so most boats use Montauk as base camp. This is a 6 hour drive from PA so just getting there is quite a trek. You also have to take enough stages and doubles for at least 3 days of diving, this means 3x sets of doubles and 6 stages. Loading it all in the car makes rebreather diving all the more attractive because you will not have to move that many tanks. It also helps to dive off a nice boat, to be rubbing elbows with a bunch of divers for 5 days makes a difference if you have a nice bunk and room to move about the piles of tanks and stages on the deck. Having a nice galley also insures that we satisfy our other passion besides diving, eating.

This year being my first Doria trip , I planned on doing 3 dives, one a day. I also started out with a mission. Terry (Martzel) was on the trip just before me and found a big window, He tried sending it up with a 250 lbs lift bag but that only stood it upright not enough lift to bring it up. And with not much time down there he had to leave it and Capt Zero's lift bag down there.

On my first dive I took an extra 250lbs lift bag and a aluminum 80 down with me to shoot the window up, 80cf does not get you far at 240 feet , but it is allot if it does not come out of your breathing supply. Luckily for me we also had no current and the viz was almost 60ft on the wreck. Terry drew me a picture and explained where the window was, and I found it exactly as planned. I tied the window to the wreck with secil and filled the second bag, it didn't budge. Now the correct thing to do would be to add another lift bag, because if you have a over full bag that will still expand big time on the way up, you have a pretty good chance that it will lose air on the surface , and then not have enough lift to hold and down comes you piece of wreckage.

Well I didn't have time to figure that out , I just inflated both bags to the max, tied my wreck reel to the window and cut the secil line. The window took off and I ducked under the wreck, in case it comes back down at me. Once the reel stopped I tied it off and made my way back. A nice deco later I swam under the boat to see the window hanging at the stern, the coolest thing was that the viz was 80 ft at the surface and small schools of fish were swimming thru the window hanging in the back. That would have made a good picture.

My second dive I swam around looking for more windows, found a set of 3 just like the one Terry got and also a lose one just next to the place I send Terry's off. I figured one big artifact is enough for this trip and also didn't want to deal with the shit I would get bringing more windows. I also didn't want to get to adventurous , time ticks down deep and no time to play around. I banged on a few windows to check if they are lose and just had a great time.  You can dive that wreck for years and always see new things and find cool stuff.

For my Third Dive I went in with Rick to pull the mooring. He wanted to look for a window he herd about, so I sent him off while I untied the mooring. I banged on some tiles, but didn't get any lose. Swam around picking up things laying around and finally went back. We had 15 min to do the job, we took 20 just because we had such a good time down there. On the line up we had nice calm seas, schools of fish around and if you saw a picture you would have said it was in the DR. We did our deco , I was done 25 min before him with my VR3 but hung around for another 10 , just because I had such a good time and it was the last dive , wanted to off gas as much as passable.

For the charter we brought up 2 windows, 1 sink with faucets, a few slabs of tiles and some peaces of deck wood. Everyone had a great time, good diving ,food and company. As for me I never got into the whole Doria thing , and didn't know why people got so nuts about the wreck, until I dove it, now I can say that it's my favorite wreck, WELL worth the trip !!

Keep on diving and LIVE THE ADVENTURE!!!