Anyone familiar with Lake Cumberland, KY?

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It was disappointing to not get in more dives, but the boat is almost always available to us, so we will be doing more dives down there.

The air temp was about 92F all week. The surface water temp was around 82-83F, at 35 ft the temp was 75F and there was at least another 10 degree drop at the thermocline. We were diving without wetsuits so going before the thermocline was chilly. Since we are newly certified OW (our first dive post certification), we didn't plan on going below 40 feet anyways.

The visibility in the cove we were in was about 10-15 feet, partly because we kicked up a bit of the silt on the bottom.

Diver's Den told us they usually take their OW class out to Marathon Island, at the mouth of Beaver Creek and Otter Creek because it has a fairly easy entry point and the shale is shelved there making for convenient platforms for skills demonstration. Marathon Island is out towards the main lake and the course of the original Cumberland River. Where we were diving used to be farmland, so the bottom tends to be muddier and siltier.

We plan to continue our training, there is supposed to be a few submerged buildings near the cove we were tied up in that we would like to swim around (not go in....YET).

It was a great opportunity for us to practice our buddy skills and bouyancy control. No rushing, plenty of time to get ready.

It would have been great to go out to Buffalo Ridge or Marathon Island for our second dive, but the compressor being down squelched that plan. Next time we go down, we will not ask the marina if they do tank fills, we will ask if the compressor is working. So we learned some lessons on dive planning as well.

All in all, a very worthwhile experience.

Tyki
 
It is nice to finally see someone closer to home on this board. Texas has enough people to have their own Swamp diving team. If you are ever looking for someone to dive with in KY or Southern OH then let me know. I am always looking for an excuse to dive.

BTW have you been to gilboa quarry. It is suppose to be near cinncinatti.

King Neptune, if you are ever nearby and want to dive KY let me know

Chad
 
ckharlan66

Gilboa Quarry is where we did our last 2 certification dives for OW. Gilboa was really neat, if you look through the boards you will see a few other posts on Gilboa as well as a link to the Gilboa website. Gilboa is about 2 hours north of Dayton Ohio, but definitely worth the drive for us.

Tyki
 
Well,

We spent some time on Lake Cumberland this week. The Diver's Den in Somerset is where we ended up renting our gear from. The shop owner was very helpful, and provided ideas on good novice places to dive. The marina where we keep the houseboat is the only marina that offers air fills. So we got one tank apiece planning to get the tanks filled during our surface intervals. Would have been a great plan, except the compressor was out of order. We made one dive to 38 feet right next to the houseboat in the cove we were tied up in. There was a significant thermocline at 35 feet, so other than dipping into the thermocline and deciding the vis wasn't good enough and the water was too cold without wetsuits we stayed above 35 feet. We didn't find out that the marina's compressor was out of order until we went in to fill the tanks. We didn't feel like making a 30 minute drive to get the tanks refilled so we only got the one dive in. We had fun working on bouyancy control and swimming together as a team.

We got wet, had fun and came back refreshed. Looking forward to our next opportunity to get wet.

Tyki
Which marina offered air fills (in case their compressor is fixed)? I'm thinking about diving Cumberland myself.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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