Dutch Springs
Posted by mjpete on Sep 21, 2008
Last Sunday I got to Dutch Springs for a day of diving. Both Mark and Rich dove with me. This was my first time to Dutch Springs and we got 3 dives in for the day. Needless to say it was an awesome day. The first dive was out to the underwater platform to practice our skills. Then we went to the school bus for a nice swim through. All of the underwater objects have been made completely safe for divers. There are ropes leading to most of the objects, making navigation a no brainer.
The second dive was out to the Cessna and then to the Sikorsky helicopter. From the Cessna to the helicopter we used our compass to navigate. On the first pass, we missed the helicopter. Rich and I had to surface to get our bearings. The helicopter is suspended by large floats about 20′ off the bottom. You can easily swim through the structure. On this dive I had my 135 cubic inch tank with me. It s a high pressure tank, 5250psi. I’m calling that bottle my never ending tank. I bought it specifically for the deeper dives. I got tired of having short dives with the 80’s cubic inch tanks. Well it did just nice. At the end of a 45 minute dive to depths of 50-60′, I still had 1900psi in the tank.
The third dive Mark & I tried to navigate to Hellcat plane by compass. We did find the Hellcat. Although in true fashion, Mark & I had several laughs underwater. Especially when I flip-flopped the compass heading and took us straight into an underwater cliff.
St. Lawrence Seaway Dive Trip
Posted by mjpete on Aug 27, 2007
Instead of creating a series of blog entries to try to capture my recent trip to the St. Lawrence Seaway, I created a series of pages. So much happened within the span of a week, that it was easier to link to everyone’s websites or blog’s. The diving was superb. The people on the trip were fabulous. I’m looking forward to next year’s trip!!
Get Ready, Get Set for St Lawrence
Posted by mjpete on Aug 9, 2007
We had the group meeting for the dive trip to the St. Lawrence River this past Monday night. Before then I wasn’t really getting excited about the trip. It was still a week away and I still had a lot to do at work. Well, once we walked through some of the dives and what to expect for conditions, it was hard not to be excited.
We’ll be diving some steel hulled shipwrecks as well as 200 year old wooden wrecks. Because of the cold fresh water, the wooden ship wrecks are still largely intact! Some of the wrecks are in the shipping channel, which poses thier own special requirements. We’re actually staying in Brockville Ontario. Most of the dives are in Canadian water, however a few are in US waters.
We’ve been told to expect water temps in the 70-73 degree range. That’s way to warm for the dry suit, so I’ll be diving wet. The visibility is usually in the 20 to 40 foot range. No where near Carribean visibility, but it is much better than what I’ve gotten accustomed to off the coast of NJ.
There will be10 of use traveling up to Brockville this Sunday. Hopefully a few of my fellow divers will have underwater cameras. I want to take a laptop and camera with me. I’m hoping that there will be a wifi access point so I can blog each night about the dives and have some photos to share.
Manasquan Wreck Dive
Posted by mjpete on Jul 29, 2007
We tried to dive the Manasquan wreck today. It is an unidentified wooden shipwreck that became grounded and the surf broke it up. The wreck is about 1000 feet off the coast in front of Pompano Ave in Manasquan, NJ. It’s reported to be in about 30 feet of water.
When we arrived this morning, the fog was so heavy we couldn’t see the landmarks to navigate to the wreck. So instead of wasting a tank of air when we knew there was no hope of finding, we went to our alternate dive site – the Pt. Pleasant RR Bridge.
Upon arriving at the RR bridge, there was a class of students prepping to enter the water for one of thier open water dives. In talking to one of the instructors, we discussed our approach to the dive so we would stay away from the class. It was a good dive, although both of us were disappointed that we couldn’t get off shore today.
If the weather cooperates, we’re going to try the Manasquan wreck next Saturday.
Diving with your Blackberry
Posted by mjpete on Jul 22, 2007
I picked up my Dry Suit with all the new seals. Of course, I couldn’t wait for the next dive. So I spent an hour getting the seals cut to fit me perfectly and eagerly put the Dry Suit on. I had Cathy zip it up, purged the air out and threw on my weight belt. Without hesitation, I jumped into the pool in the backyard and went snorkling around for 45 minutes.
As I was getting out I felt a familar vibration on my hip. Instictively I reached down to pull out the Blackberry. It was at that moment I realized I had left the Blackberry on my hip when I put the Dry Suit on.
Thankfully the Dry Suit seals worked. Both myself and the blackberry stayed dry!
Another L Street Beach Dive!
Posted by mjpete on Jun 24, 2007
I have to say, I am getting my bouyancy down to near perfect with the dry suit and no thermals! I dropped a set of 2 lb ankle weights to keep my fins from dragging into the bottom. I now using 31 lbs on my weight harness and only one set of 2 lb ankle weights for a total of 35 lbs of lead.
We saw a Skate on this dive! The body was about a foot long and the tail another foot. We also saw a couple of fluke. None of the fluke would have been keepers, they are way to small.
The only bummer on this dive was that I lost my dive light. I had it on a lanard around my wrist. Somewhere during the swim out to deeper water it must have slipped off my wrist. I tried to look for it, but the bottom has to much seaweed to find anything that has been dropped.
Night Dive at L Street
Posted by mjpete on Jun 15, 2007
High tide was at 8:30pm this evening. Because we were diving L Street Beach, we were able to get into the back bay area about 45 minutes earlier. Typically with shore diving we have to carefully plan the dive times so we enter the water during the slack tide. This minimizes the current and gives us the best possible visibility in the water. Because the back bay off L Street is protected, we get away with entering the water on either the early or late side of the tide. The bad news is that there is really not that much in the way of sealife at L Street.
By entering the water around 7:45, we were able to get suited up in the daylight. When we came out of the water an hour later is was dark. We saw some fluke and alot of crabs. There were blue claw crabs, spider crabs and hermit crabs. After awhile the crabs get annoying as they spread out thier claws in defense to us. Read the rest of this entry »
