Scuba Obsessed – Episode 1 is edited and up

Episode 01 – The big introduction – Beta January

It seemed like we have been working on this forever. I am pleased how it came out. I know we can improve, but I have to say I am happy with the results.

Check it out here.

http://www.scubaobsessed.com/archives/620

New Netcast / Podcast and website and forums and….

It has been a busy month but the date is finally here. Jim and I our launching our new Netcast tomorrow at 9:00pm. We are looking forward to it. January will be our beta month so we will learn a lot about this as we go.

The website is setup at http://scubaobsessed.com – We will post links to the netcast – podcast after it is completed and edited. You can also listen and participate in the netcast by heading over to the show page at http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/73759

I will write more after I have caught up on some sleep.

Missing Divers!

Missing Divers

Even though I have only been a scuba diver for three years I have been a lover of the underwater world my whole life. I had always wanted to learn to dive, but with living a busy life it never seemed to fit in. There were other priorities that seemed to justifiably get in the way.  It was a tropical vacation to Mexico that rekindled the desire to learn to dive.  A gift of scuba lessons after returning is what finally got me my C-card.

Then like many scuba noobies I got my certification and promptly didn’t dive again for over another year.  Why? Why no diving? Honestly my dive buddy and I didn’t know where to dive.

We had a great open water dive in a stone quarry in Ohio. This location is just far enough away that it takes up most of a weekend to visit. Not someplace we could dive on a whim.  Other options were tropical vacations. They are awesome when you can scrape up the money to take them but they are not something that was going to happen very often either.  The last option (at least as I thought) was a weekly dive the local dive shop had. The problem with that was the weekly dives were done in the late afternoon the same day every week. The times were in conflict to those of us gainfully employed.

So over 16 months of no diving for me. No gear purchases, gear rentals or air refills. No stories I could share with the yet to be initiated about the undersea world. No planning for my next dive…

Take two happened earlier this year. My dive buddy and I decided that if we didn’t find a way to get in the water locally we wouldn’t get back into diving. To brush up our skills we signed up for an advanced open water certification. It was a good way to renew our skills and hopefully find a way to dive more than once every two years. We trekked back to the Midwest quarry and finished our series of dives to get our updated certification.

Lake Clean Up

What next? We hunted for dives. There was a local eco dive a week later on a Saturday. It was something we could fit in. It was a beach dive at a youth camp. It was great! We did two tanks worth of diving and still had the rest of the day to spend with our families. Now this was the way it should be.

Still there was a problem.  No other dives… The local dive shop wasn’t doing regular local dives this year. Sure we could charter something a state or so away.  That put us back to taking up most of a weekend to go diving. There had to be a better way…. and there was. Dive local with a dive club!

Finding the local dive club was a challenge. Searching for dive clubs on the internet brought up 3 year old web sites with no updates. It makes you wonder if the club is active. Other clubs only had old posts on a message board with little information other than a contact email address. We finally found one that was meeting very close by. So close that their meetings were only 5 minutes from each of our homes. After an email we arrange to go to the next club meeting. This was the best thing we have done for our diving.

MUD Club Patch

The club became an incredible resource. There are at least a dozen members that have been actively diving over 30 years each. Many of these club members dive at least 3 days a week.  Even when the weather turns rough it is rare for a week to go by without a club member doing a dive. They are eager to share their knowledge and fresh members just gave them a good excuse to dive all the old spots as if they were new again.   This was great! Since joining the club there hasn’t been a month that we haven’t dove.  All it takes is an open block of 4 hours and a phone call and we have a club dive going. The club also plans different events and at least once a month there is an official organized club dive. The best thing the club did for us is open our eyes to all the local diving possibilities. Every body of water in the area is now open to us thanks to the sage advice of our experienced club members.

So here is my next question. Why don’t local dive shops actively promote these ambassadors to diving? Are they afraid that I won’t buy their dive vacations if I dive local? Do they think these experts are going to bad mouth their business? Or is it that they believe with an independent source of diving knowledge we will buy all our gear online?  To me these are ring as conspiracy theories. I am willing to naively believe that they just don’t see the point in promoting the dive clubs.

I am convinced there is a vast underutilized pool of certified divers in the area that could be providing revenue to local dive shops and bring more divers into the sport. What percentage of divers here received their certification or worse yet just their book work here and only dive once every four years on a tropical vacation? I believe there has to be 9 missing divers for every 1 active local diver. I would love to see some real numbers.

As I help the dive club to promote I will be searching for these missing divers and trying to bring new participants into diving local.

MUD Club Website – http://mudclub.wordpress.com/ 

MUD Club Facebook Page – http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=160373818789&ref=share

Don’t Pee on Your Sister!

Exhibit A – The barn

There are many things we say as a parent that we never expect to say. You can’t plan for them nor do you really want to say them, but nerveless they happen.  These words I uttered this last Wednesday were among them. “Don’t pee on your sister!”

It started Wednesday evening.  When I got off of work I met Missy at a local store so she could take advantage of a pre-Christmas ladies’ night sale. The kids went with me and she got to shop. She deserved the alone time. After a quick swing through McDonald’s (a suitable Dad meal) we headed for home so the kids could do chores. They had bunnies and horses that needed fed. 

When we arrived at home I hauled the 25lbs bag of bunny food to the barn for them. AJ started to get it out of the car, but it was just a little too much for him. Feeding animals for the kids is more about playing then getting the chores done. Yes they whine about it, but for wanting to get it over with they find creative ways of dragging it out. I have showed them how to get chores done in a few minutes, but they choose to do things the long way.  Their preferred method of speeding up chores is to get me to do their chores for them. I explained that they were the ones that wanted the bunnies so they needed to take care of them. I headed back to the car to gather some items I needed to bring to the house.

As I was standing by the open passenger side door I heard a blood curdling scream.  Sometimes it is hard to tell who was screaming, but this time I knew it was definitely Lilly. She doesn’t have any worse scream than this one. I had heard it before. This is the scream of “something is dead” or “someone is hurt”. Never good to hear! This time she is repeating it over and over and over as she runs from the barn to the house.

I run over to where she is half expecting to see blood spiriting from an open artery or a dead bunny in her hands. I am shouting “Lilly” trying to get her attention.  She ignores my attempts to gain her attention and finally stops when I cross her path. “What’s wrong” I ask her.

She responds through hysterical tears “AJ peed on me!!!!”.  I feel slightly guilty to admit that I was relieved. Of all the bad things going through my mind a little urine didn’t seem that bad. You have to understand my kids are farm kids. I would put them against anyone else’s kids for toughness. They have nerves of steal compared to me at their age. They have no problem walking 100’ from the house to the barn in pitch black of the dead of night with the coyotes howling. It just doesn’t bother them. I at their ages didn’t like to go into the basement at night with all the lights on.

Exhibit B - The location of the victim

“Is that it? The bunny’s pee on your all the time and that doesn’t bother you,” I comment.

“Dad!!! AJ peed on me!”

I spent the next couple of minutes trying to calm her down. I tried to explain that it wasn’t anything to get that worked up over. I also told her that she needs to keep things in perspective. I know this is a deep conversation for a pre-teen girl, but this is a matter of safety. If you scream like this for everything no one will respond when you really need it. I can remember “The boy who cried wolf” story that my grandmother taught me. This was as good of a time as any to get a good life lesson for both of them.

Still something didn’t seem right. AJ is a sweet boy. As far as brothes and sisters go they get along very well. Not like me and my sister. We would fight like cats and dogs. My kids just bicker like an old married couple not the normal sibling squabbling that I think is normal.  AJ is not the type of brother to pee on his sister. AJ had said he was sorry so I didn’t doubt that he did indeed pee on her, but there had to be more to it.

Lilly and I headed back to the barn so she could finish her chores. Pee or no pee there are still chores that needed to be done. At this point I was asking AJ what had happen. He was sheepishly explaining that it was an accident. That was what I was assuming, but still how did he pee on her? One of the great things about being male on a farm is every stall is your bathroom and when away from the visibility of the road or neighbors everywhere on the property is fare game. With this knowledge I knew he had to be using one of the horse stalls.

“How do you pee on your sister from a horse stall? Did you not aim right?” I ask him. He may be in need of some skills training. You can’t let things like this pass. He could be in a situation later in life where this could be important. Like writing you name in the snow for example.

“Kind of….” he replies.

Now I know something is up. There is more to this story. That fatherly BS instinct has kicked in.

Exhibit C - The scene of the crime

I walked over to the stall that he must have used.  I could see the forensic evidence written on the stall wall.  As you would expect for an 8 year old boy of his height you can see where he started down fairly low. Hmmmmm If it was an accident it wouldn’t have started low.

This is where I must explain to women about male urination. I am sure if you are with a significant male other you have noticed the occasional splatter, splashing or complete missing of said bathroom object by a male. While an occasional alcohol induced night can contribute to the likelihood of miss aiming, there are times when things don’t go as planned. It seems that when factoring in pressure and an anatomy that may have sealed up there is room for surprise directional error. However as a lifelong male the writing on the stall was not of an accident.  There was clearly a starting point low on the wall at 18” and a steady splash track that went over the stall wall at over both their heights at nearly 5’. This was no accident. The jig was up.

“This wasn’t an accident… was it?”

“I didn’t think I would hit her was his reply” Okay we are getting closer to the real story I thought. Still something was still missing.

“So you were aiming her direction then,” I state.

“She said I couldn’t hit her”. Bingo!! Now we are getting somewhere. It was the dare. I knew he wouldn’t have even tried if he thought he could do it, but with a dare he would have tried. I now have a clear picture of what went on.

After I left the barn and walked to the car AJ told his sister that he was going to take a leak and then take care of his bunnies. I can visualize it now Lilly and AJ giggling as AJ is going with Lilly on the other side chiding him that he can’t hit her. Neither of them was thinking it could happen yet AJ gave it an attempt anyway.  I can imagine the surprise on AJ’s face when the stream makes the 3” gap between the top stall board and the hay loft. I can also imagine the surprise on Lilly’s face when the sprinkles first hit her.  This is the point when she started her screaming dash from the barn.

Next I utter the words “Don’t pee on your sister! I shouldn’t have to tell you that! Even if you didn’t think you could hit her.” I was having a hard time keeping a straight face still relieved no one was physically hurt.

 I then say the even more ridiculous phase “And don’t ask your brother to pee on you!” I really have no idea what crazy collection of Dad words I will have to say next.

Tweaking My DIY Dive Flag

Added Lead Weight

I have another dive coming up tomorrow so I wanted to tweet my DYI dive flag rig. My original setup needed extra ballast on the bottom to keep the flag pointed skyward. I had use an old steel hook for its weight and as I though the darn thing on a beach entry or exit would snag on something. I dug up a 2lbs lead belt weight and with a pipe clamp attached it to the bottom of the fiber glass pole. I still like the idea of a safety snap on the rope incase I want to hang something from the flag so for now I have snapped it above the weight on the shaft.

Tomorrow air temperature will be in the mid 20’s. Some of the ponds in the area skimmed over with ice today.  I will let you know how it goes.

- – Here is the post on making the dive flag –  http://darrinjillson.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/diy-dive-flag-and-float/

DIY Dive Flag and Float

DIY Dive Flag Rig

After my river dive of a few weeks ago I realized I really needed to have my own dive flag. Sure I dove with my buddy Jim and he had a dive flag, but what made me want to get one was how great it was for reconnecting if we got separated. A quick pop to the surface and I knew exactly where he was. Yes, I am sure it is much better to not get separated, but with strong current and less than 6’ of visibility it is going to happen.

After looking at the commercial rigs other divers had I thought I could make one just as well myself. I like building and creating things. I get a great understanding of how they work and I can modify them to meet my specific needs. I expect before I am done I will have made several dive flag rigs. I wanted a small rig for river dives. It will mostly be use for marking my location and I want it to be a light tow. Now along with liking to have something that fits my specific needs I also like to be cheap. Any money I save just means I have more to buy air fills. 

I searched around to see what parts I had. I had a fiber glass electric fence post, some 1” blue Styrofoam insulation panels, bicycle inner tubes, hose clamps, a Christmas tree light storage reel and a variety of connecting hardware. I also had some white fabric for the flag.

Dive Flag

The post looked a little short but was still taller than some of the other dive flags I have seen, so I was sure I could make that work. I didn’t have any suitable cord or rope so I would need to buy that. After a discussion with my wife we decided that the cost of red fabric would probably cost more than a flag from the dive store. This gave me the perfect excuse to make a run down there.

The dive shop had a variety of dive flags and rigs. I briefly considered just buying a complete setup from them, but by the time I added everything up it would be about $60. I knew I could do better. They had a nice dive flag with a wire reinformcement for under $10. They also had a spool and a reel for about $13. Since I already had a reel I decided I could get rope cheaper at another store.

OK I breafly tought about going to Wal-Mart and getting the rope, but this day was “Black Friday” and a 90 minute wait in checkout lines to save $2 on rope wasn’t that appealing to me. Yes I am cheap, but not a masochist. I decided the farm store between the dive shop and the big box retailer was my best bet for a quick visit.

5 1/2' fiberglass rod

I found 100’ of rope for about $8. As I walked the isles I found a 6’ orange fiberglass rod used to marking the ends of driveways. I liked this much better than the electric fence post I had so that was another $6 onto the project. I looked around for something heavy to use as a weight for the rig, but my cheapness got the better of me and I left with my two goodies. I headed for home to assemble my parts before my dives the next day.

Empty Pastic Spool with Foam

The flag and the rod went together very easily. It was as if they were designed for each other. I put the reflect end down since if I slid it into the flag it would be hidden anyway. Next was the floatation part. I had originally thought I could use foam pool noodles, but I couldn’t find any. I think the dogs and decided they made good chew toys or maybe it was the cats for scratching post, but either way there wasn’t any to be found. The blue Styrofoam sheet would float but they needed to be stacked or combined. I had thought about just gluing them together and strapping that to the pole, but it just seemed sloppy. I would also be relying on glue to hold everything together or a mess of strapping. I had an empty plastic wire spool. It was just a little wider than 3 sheets of foam. I figured I could use that as a protective form. My only concerns were holding it together and would it have enough buoyancy with the plastic spool attached.

Rope

I traced the outline of the spool onto the foam panels. I measured the center point and drove a nail trough it to my bench to use as a pivot point. I had a rotary cutting tool I held in place and spun the foam on the nail. In no time I had three good circles. I then cut out the centers so they would fit around the center of the spools. I then cut the foam “donuts” in half. I used some tile adhesive I had laying around and glue the foam around the spool and to each other. Then I read the instructions on the adhesive bottle “allow drying 48 hours before getting wet”. Well that wasn’t going to work for tomorrows dive. To keep everything together I used existing holds on each side of the spools to zip tie the foam in place. I drilled a hold off center on the newly foamed spool to run the rod through. The existing hold in the center of the spool was too large to easily run and secure the rod to. I pipe clam on each side of the spool on the rod would be perfect for attaching it. I held off on securing it until I finished by plan with the rope.

Completed Pre-test Setup

I had 100’ of rope. I think that is really more than I needed but it is easy enough to shorten it later on. I cut a short 4’ section of rope to attach to a quick release snap on one end and tied off the other to the spool. The rest I wrapped on the spool with about 8’ to run through the float. I fed the ends through the pipe clamps around the rod and back through the pipe clamp. I had an extra pipe clam at the bottom of the rod I ran the end of the rope through. I then put a double snap on this end of the rope to attach a weight too. I had a variety of heavy objects that I would add until I had the right mix.

First hot tub test

Second hot tub test

Next it was time for a test. The hot tub seemed the perfect location to test it out. As I expected without any weight it just flopped over. Even with a couple of extra snaps attached it still wasn’t heavy enough to stand upright. I had to add a steal hook with 4 links of heavy chain to get it upright. The good news was foam was enough to float the rig. The bad news is I didn’t really like how far the hook was hanging down. This would be ok for a lake dive but for a dive starting from shore or in shallow parts of a river I was having my doubts. I didn’t like the idea that the hook would be dangling and dragging, but I figure a real life test was the only way to know for sure.

12 hours later the flag got its first test. We dove in a fast move river. I never got deeper than 10’ and most of the dive was around 5’. The flag looked fine, but was close to 45 degrees most of the dive. The hook as I expected did get caught on anything it could snag along the bottom. The second dive of the day was must deeper and the current was slower. I unfortunately for most of the dive didn’t have enough line out and wondered why it was such a drag to pull behind me. With less than 5’ of vis I didn’t realize I needed to let out a little more line. An extra 5’ did the trick. Like before coming in and out of the water the hook would snag.

Completed Dive Flag

So what was my verdict? I think it was a success. I am going to replace the oversize steel hook with some sort of lead weight attached to the end of the flag. I will still keep a double end snap handing below. I like the idea I can attach something to it if I need to. I plan to get a truck inner tube with a basket in the middle that I could attach the flag to when I do ecology dives. That will give me a spot to store some finds. Overall I think this was $20 well spent.

Darrin’s Scuba Diving List – Tweeters (Twitter Lists) – December 2009

Twitter Lists

Happy Holiday season everyone! Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah and Happy Kwanzaa! I hope these days bring you some awesome and safe dives. It is time for my updated twitter lists. I am working refining them a bit. I wanted the list to be more meaningful so I am creating more lists. You can be on more than one list.

In addition to my normal twitter lists….

Scuba Divers (47) – http://twitter.com/darrinjillson/scubadivers – You must be a person (i.e. not a bot and you speak in first person) and you must actually scuba dive.

Scuba Businesses (78) – http://twitter.com/darrinjillson/scubabusinesses – If you make money or a living from something scuba related this is this list you could be on.

Scuba Organizations (26) – http://twitter.com/darrinjillson/scubaorgs – This is a list of groups, organizations and people whose intent is to make diving better through conservation, education or research. Profit is not their first motive… at least I hope not.

I have added two new twitter lists….

Scuba Favorites (0)- http://twitter.com/darrinjillson/scubafavorites – NEW LIST- This is a list of my favorite scuba tweeters. No one is on this list yet, but there will be some soon! You never know who is going to make this list but know one thing. They will be fun tweeters about scuba.

Scuba Instructors (1)- http://twitter.com/darrinjillson/scubainstructors – NEW LIST- As you can guess this is a list of Scuba Instructors or business that offer scuba diving instruction. I don’t verify they are instructors. If they talk about their experience with training others in scuba they can make this list. Make sure you know your instructors are qualified by a respectable agency before choosing.

Starting in 2010 I will features some tweeters from my Scuba Favorites list. Merry tweeting!!

Underwater GPS

Navimate™ - © 2009 Shb Instruments, Inc.

With the visibility of the water we frequently dive in it would be nice to have GPS underwater like most smart phones are capable of on dry land. If Shb Instrument’s Navimate™ sees the light of day underwater GPS could be a reality.

Navimate consists of a wrist mounted device that communicates to a surface based GPS gateway.  It lets you know what your longitude and latitude are and places it on a map that is displayed on the device. It will also display the locations of your dive buddies provide they are wearing one of the units and are within 100 yards of your location.

I am exciting about the possibilities. I see many useful scenarios for this device as well as making diving just a bit safer. I am hopeful that this device or others offering similar functionality will be available soon.  Shb is saying initial units will be available in the May/June 2010 timeframe.

Wrist units will retail for US$700 and the GPS gateway for US$300. I am guess as part of their initial marketing effort GPS gateways will be free to shops, clubs or other organizations that purchase a minimum number of the wrist units and will also be placing the gateways on selected dive boats at no cost. Instructor discounts for Navimate™ will also be available.

I have to credit Shb Instruments with publishing the price of the device. As with many items technology based I will hear about the product, get a fuzzy late quarter X release date with pricing TBD.  I am holding out hope that this is more than vaporware.

Shb Instrument’s Navimate™ – Website – http://navimate.shbinstruments.com/

Navimate™ Press Release – October 15, 2009 – http://www.shbinstruments.com/Navimate/press.html

Navimate™ FAQ – http://www.shbinstruments.com/Navimate/FAQ.html

My First River Dive

St. Joseph River - Grant Street Bridge - Niles, MI

After a couple of trips scouting out the location dive day came. The current from the surface looked pretty swift. Jim and I had decided that if Don M. didn’t go with us we would find another location to dive. All our diving to this point had been lake and quarry diving so we wanted to have an experienced river diver with us. As we were loading up the truck Don called and the river dive was on.
I updated my preparation from our last cold water dive. I had gone to two water jugs instead of the water bottles. In the orange jug was warm tap water and the red jug was hot water about 190 degrees. I put both jugs in a rolling cooler for easier handling. Everything else was like last dive. I had long johns I was going to wear under my 7mm wet suit. My hood and gloves were both 3mm

Orange jug for warm water and red jug is hot water

Niles was a short 20 minute drive for us. We parked in a parking lot on the east side of the river next to the Grant Street Bridge. This is on the opposite side of the river as the hospital. The only down side to this staging area is the walk down to the water.
We setup our gear and brought it down to our entry spot just upstream from the bridge. The gear was just a bit out of sight from our staging area. We didn’t feel any better about that as one of the local observers asked if that gear was expensive. There was a lot of foot traffic along the river and we got many of the normal dive questions from “what are you looking for” to “are you searching for a body?”

Staging gear on the river bank

After two trips down to the water it was time to don the wet suits. There was a slight breeze and it was a little overcast with an air temperature of 50 degrees. I was thankful that the wet suits were dry. I am not a fan of getting into a damp cold wetsuit. We primed out wetsuit with warm water. I filled my boots and gloves with 2/3 hot and 1/3 warm water while I started to put on my wetsuit. I frequently primed the wetsuit with warm water as I put it on. I finished it off by having Jim pour water down my sleeves. Mmmm toasty!
The riverbank was a steep incline of at least 45 degrees. There was just enough room for the three of us to gear up. Don pointed out that he had learned to tuck his regulator is his BC pockets after a particularly nasty incident of red ants invading his mouth piece. This seems like a very prudent practice as I am blowing dirt and grass clipping off my reg. Don has an over the head BC donning technique I need to learn. I nearly fell into the water as I balanced on the incline and swung my BC behind my back.

Jim is pouring warm water down my wetsuit sleeve

I was rewarded for my priming efforts when I didn’t get the cold water leaking in my wetsuit like the week before. The current was pretty swift at this location and you had to brace against it. Jim and Don both had dive flags they were carrying. I was budding up with Jim. We started in a shallow and quick moving current about 5 feet deep. The visibility was a good 4-5 feet. I had a little trouble dumping air from my BC. For me it is hard to get air out in shallow water, but with a little effort I was able to stream line into the current.
At first it is a little disconcerting with all the water flowing over you. There is a definite force that the river is exerting on you. After getting my bearings under water I decided to do a little navigating. There was a lot of large rocks and concrete slabs. Moving along the bottom of the river was a little like climbing down a mounting. You have to find your next handhold before you release your existing one. Some of the smaller boulders were not heavy enough and they would start to slide down the river with me riding on them. Moving onto a larger rock seemed to take care of it. It is surprising how large of a rock it took to be a good anchor. A piece 3’ wide by 2’ high and 8” deep was about as small as I could go in this current. Don and Jim were moving their rocks with them while they explored. I was enjoying the underwater mountain climber routine. The water was really moving as you got closer to the first pier of the bridge. Water depth was about 19 feet. As we started to pass under the bridge there was a surprising amount of aquatic life we could see. Various species of fish and a very surprised crawfish about 4 inches in length. He couldn’t find wait to escape us and find new protect cover. There was a lot of rubble under the Grant Street Bridge. Lots of stone, bricks and broken concrete with rebar. This bridge was originally built in 1901 and had its share of remodels. We found broken and discarded scaffolding pieces. As we exited the other side of the bridge we moved into more trash. There were several very large and heavy mufflers. We also saw ends of empty wire spools along with unspiraled coils of wire.

Don's river spike - I need one of these!

I found that a sideways movement was the best way to go down the river. I could see far enough ahead that I could avoid any river hazards and I could also keep an eye on my buddy. If the current started to get too strong I learned I could tuck along the bottom where the current was slower. Also the current was slower along the bank here. As we mucked for things in the bottom it cleared up pretty quickly. A nice bonus with river diving is any silt you stir up gets carried downstream. We had a following of fish that were also taking advantage of this. You can tell when you got the slower moving parts of the river bed as there was a slime coating that would build up making it hard to see what was natural and what was manmade.
30 minutes into the dive I was still comfortable, but was aware that I was in a quick flowing current of 47 degree water. I was really getting into this river diving stuff. I was able to read the changes of the current. I could move upstream and downstream as I needed. This is more diving that I love. I was having a blast sorting through the treasures spread along the riverbed. Anything of interest went into the bag. I like to pick up trash on every dive to leave the underwater world in better condition than I found it, but there is a point where I realize that I can’t clean up everything. How many years had this river been a dumping ground? We found a steal ring about 3 feet in diameter. I thought it could have been an old rim from a wooden wagon wheel. Nearby I find a round flat disc with rings. I had a rock in my hand and I tapped on it. The clunk wasn’t metallic as I was expecting so I lift the disc off the bottom. It is a stone wear plate. Of course too big to fit into my bag so I had to bring it to the shore.
I like the dive flags that Jim and Don have. It made it real easy to regroup when we got separated. There is a risk of getting tangled up with each other but it is simple enough to fix. Jim did have one trouble in the current that Don had to brace for as Jim flew at him. Vis was enough where Don could prepare for the collision. Everyone was OK and the dive continued.

River treasures

About an hour into the dive we called it. We each had over 1000lbs of air, but we were starting to feel the cold. There is no sense fighting through being cold. It made diving miserable and you need to have some extra left over in case things don’t go as planned. You don’t want to discover that your hands are so numb that you can’t pull yourself out of the water.

Up the hill

The shock of gravity was much worse that the cool breeze. I hauled all my gear up in one trip. I wasn’t going to trek up and down the hill any more than I had to. Jim and Don quickly changed into warm clothes. I opted into taking care of my gear before getting out of my wetsuit. I was feeling warm after the hike up the hill and took advantage of that to get everything organized. As I finally pealed myself out of my wetsuit the air bit at my skin. The euphoria of a great river dive was more than enough for me to suffer through changing in the cold to do this again. I am hooked on river diving!

http://www.spike.com/video/drift-scuba-dive-in/2845965 – Vis and conditions were very similar to this video. In spots our current was stonger than what they had shown in this video. They did a good job with a flip camera.

Our First Cold Water Wetsuit Dive of Fall 2009

Anyone who has watched me enter the water swimming would never believe I cold water scuba dive.  I am fine entering the water until my mid-section touches the water line and that is where it gets tough.  The chill jumps up my spine and tells my brain there is no way you want to get into that water. It must be a medical condition with a fancy name because I am too much of a manly man to be a cold water wimp.  Still I cold water dive either that or I would only dive in the hottest months.

Elinee Bay - Paw Paw Lake - Coloma, MI

Last Saturday I did my first cold weather dive of the fall 2009 season.  My quick verdict is that it wasn’t too bad. We couldn’t have asked for a better fall day. It was a sunny 51 degrees. The water temp was a balmy 49 degrees.  My diving buddies were Jim, Mac and Josh.

As promised I tried out most of the cold water tips and tricks.

• I had prepared a warm thermos of coffee
• I filled a cooler with sports water bottles containing hot water
•  I had eaten a breakfast
• I had my dry, warm wet suit and a box of rubber gloves
• I had my 100% polyester long johns and socks on

The Pro

I was ready. I made it to Jim’s house about 9:15 and we did the gear transfer to his truck and hit the road. We arrived at our destination about 30 minutes later. We were back to Paw Paw Lake in Coloma, Michigan at a spot off a fire lane called Elinee Bay.  Mac a.k.a. Donald M. had his gear nicely organized on a yellow tarp. You can tell he has done this a few times before. Jim, Josh and I start prepping our gear. Before too long we are ready to suit up for the dive.

Mac has gone the water jug route for “priming” his wetsuit. In the jug he has warmish (just above room temperature water) and he uses a cup to pour the water into his suit.  He says if his water is too warm he just cuts it back with lake water.  As I start to prep I can see my first rookie mistake of the day. My water is way too hot. I would say it was about 190 when I put it in the cooler. I honestly thought it would have cooled down more. It definitely can be too warm.   I filled my boots and gloves up completely with the warm water in hope that when I dump it out it wouldn’t be too hot. I left my socks on for this dive and was wearing black thermal long johns. I pulled my wetsuit up to my waste and primed about 10oz of hot water. Ouch!  Hot, hot!! And hot places you don’t want that hot.  I poured some of the hot water into my 3mm hood and then dumped the extra out. The water is still a little too warm but bearable.  I put on my boots and poured the water from my gloves down my wet suit sleeves.  I put another 6 oz down each sleeve and called it good. We finished gearing up and head into the water.

Normally I am so hot in a wet suit I can’t wait to cool down in the water. This time I am bracing myself for the expected cold. I could feel the first bit of the water seeping between my boots and the bottom of the legs of my wetsuit.  My feet were fine, but I could feel the chill on my calves where the primed warm water didn’t make it. I gave myself a few seconds and it started to warm up. Next stop the bottom of the zipper on my back. Oh yeah!!! Not enough priming!! I could feel the cold water seep in through the zipper. I didn’t try the rubber gloves trick on my hands this time but I can tell that it would have helped. Every time you touch something wet and then expose yourself to the air you hands really feel the cold. It would not take too much wind and a few degrees colder temperature and your hands would start to lose feeling.  We are ready to go below.

Jim, Josh and I have our dive planned out.  We start out decent. Every bit of exposed skin around your mask screams as it is submerged. Amazingly after the initial shock it is not that bad. Overall I don’t feel cold. The areas that were unprimed have warmed up and the primed areas I didn’t even notice the water. I am feeling comfortable. November is still fine for diving and makes for another month available on my dive calendar.  Visibility is about 3 feet before we start stirring up the silt. I quickly lose sight of Jim and Josh and decide to surface for a quick check. Josh has decided he is too cold. He has gotten a headache and decided to call off his dive. That is a great decision on his part. There are too many things to worry about when you dive and when you start off cold that can lead to worse things happening quickly. Jim and I float on the surface until we see Josh exit the water. We continue on with our dive plan.

We head to the bottom which is at about 25’ and work our way towards the shore line. Vis is less than 36 inches.  We start off in the sea weed and on our path head out of it. The bottom here is covered in about 8” of muck and silt. At one time this was a public dock so we are expecting to find some “junk” out here. As we did with our last ecology dive we are mucking on the bottom.  We set a steady pace that keeps us just ahead of the zero visibility we are kicking up.  A compass is invaluable in these conditions. Without it we would be doing circles. Even with it we do cross one of our own tracks. It looks like a giant mud colored worm as we pass through it. Visibility doesn’t extend past the inside of your dive mask. This is when it is important to not lose your dive buddy. Jim is on my left and we bump just to make sure we are close. He is ahead of me just a bit and I take a couple of extra kicks to line back up with him.  Somehow at this point I take a heal of a fin to my face and my regulator pops out of my mouth. Damn!

This is another instance where the dive training in open water really comes into play. Remain calm… breath out… sweep my arm out for my reg… grab it…. clear it and breath in wonderful air. Ahhhh! Just as it is supposed to be.  Jim and I regroup on the surface. As a diver you need to be prepared for this. You never know when it is going to happen and in the conditions we dive in it seems to happen more often than you think. I blame it a lot on the low vis we dive. Other factors such as having gear flopping around can also contribute to it too.

So far I had found nothing. Jim has found a beer can. If it is new and with a deposit we will have found $.10. Back down we go. We head along the shore heading out of the bay. By this point I was hoping to find just about anything. Last time I was here along the other shore we found tons of trash in a small area. My hand had touched buried sticks and other natural refuge but nothing man made. Ah a can! That got slipped into the bag. Jim and I tried clumsily trading hand signals. I saw he want to change course. He wanted me to lead, but I missed that part of the message. I slowed down to pace him and he slowed down some more since I slowed down.  Vis was getting really bad here. I found something with my right hand.  It was metal and has lots of edges to it. At first I thought it could be an i-beam or part of a dock. It moved fairly easily, but was still stuck in the muck. I tried to signal Jim and he was signaling me. I tried to move his hand so he touches the object and can give me a hand. At this point he is concerned I was in trouble or snagged. He started pulling on my arm for us to surface. This is just as the object started to pull free from the lake bed. Damn it was heavy. Jim’s pulling on me knocks out my reg again. Damn! lol That was twice in a dive. My right hand was occupied with the object so I can’t do my normal reg sweep. I grabbed my backup reg attached to my chest…. Clear it and breathed in wonderful air again.  I added some more air to my BC to compensate for my extra ballast.  On the surface we regroupped and investigated our find.

Anchor

We had found a small boat anchor. I had grabbed it at the bottom where it hinges. We still both had half a tank of air left. We didn’t have any lift bags and the anchor was much too heavy for our dive flag float to support.  We decided a short surface swim was required to get this back to shore. We would continue to dive from there. This was my second rookie mistake of the day. In cold water a surface swim is not the most comfortable thing to do. The extra motion cools you down and what little breeze there is just makes it worse. Every time I did a long stroke it drew more water into my wet suit and the water my body has dutifully warmed up was diluted. Brrrr. As we made it to shore we decided to call the dive for the day. We weren’t cold yet but we would be soon.

Lessons learned from the dive.

• Your priming water can be too warm.
• Prime, prime, prime
• Don’t swim on the surface
• Be ready for anything and always proactively practice what you have learned. You can’t be too prepared.
• The warm coffee felt good after the dive

Here is what I am going to do for next cold water dive. Like my more experienced colleague Mac I am going to use a jug to contain some warm but not hot water. I will put that jug in a cooler with some water bottles containing hot water. The jug will be for first dive priming. If I need more water I can cut the hot water with lake water. Also for a second dive the hot water could be used to warm up the chilly bits.  I will also make sure I have a cup. I am going to prime until I am completely primed. No dry spots. Those are where the cold water found a way to get to.  The long johns and socks worked well. It effectively made my 7mm wetsuit warmer.  My gloves were OK. I think next time I will try the latex gloves under my dive gloves. I am surprised my head wasn’t colder. My hood is only 3mm. I am thinking about picking up a 7mm hood that I could put over my 3mm. I also wonder if a shower cap would be good under the dive hood. Hmmmm.  We are going to fit an inner tube with a basket for our dive flag to be able to lift and store our trash.  We will suspend more lines from it and have a few lift bags ready.  This dive we could go to the surface easily, but on deeper dives that doesn’t always work.

Over all I think this cold water diving was a success. We have been in colder water in July, still it is only going to get colder until we get to the time of hard water. We are going to have a few more dives to try out this cold water stuff. This weekend we have scouted out a location for a river dive. On Thanksgiving weekend we will do the dive clubs “turkey dive” and on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day we will do the ice dive…. Yes! All in wet suits! It should be fun.