Soggy
Contributor
gmbaker, pkatzman, mer, fmike, negrats, and myself all went out to Stage Fort Park during the morning on Columbus day.
Gary & I buddied up and the other four chose to dive together. We had a good time despite the cold and crappy dive conditions.
Basically, visibilty was less than 2 feet.
Here's a report of the dive:
Gary & I discussed the plan on surface. Turn pressure was 1600 psi. We would follow a 180 degree heading, turn, and come back on the reciprical course. We discussed lost buddy procedure (look for up to 1 minute, then surface). We swam out several hundred yards toward some large rocks before we descended.
Gary & I lost each other upon our initial descent. We looked around for a minute then surfaced. We found each other on the surface then re-descended very close together. Once on the bottom, we anchored the flag with an 8 lb weight near a lobster trap (bad idea in retrospect...Lobstermen don't like divers) in 16 ft of water and silt six inches deep.
I was navigator for the dive. We went out on a 180 degree heading toward the end of the breakwater. I was focused almost solely on my compass and making sure Gary & I didn't lose each other. There were time where visibility was so poor that I couldn't see Gary who was less than two feet away from me. I knew he was there because we kept kicking each other. At one point we lost each other briefly, but quickly found one-another.
I decided to turn around at ~2000psi because vis was so awful. Gary didn't understand my turn around signal (we hadn't discussed it pre-dive) so we swam around in circles for a bit. After a minute I gave the thumbs up and we ascended so we could discuss what was going on. Agreeing that the dive sucked, we decided to head back in.
We set a heading back to the flag and redescended. We landed on a lobster line which spooked me a bit since I couldn't see where it went or if I had gotten tangled in it. On our heading back we came across a few lobster traps which, because of the vis, appeared out of nowhere and spooked both Gary and me.
We over-shot our flag by 50-100 yards and ascended when we had gone past the 16 fsw mark and the lobster trap that the flag was near. I did a horizontal ascent which worked quite well. On the surface we figured out where our flag was and swam to it. We descended, struggled with the weighted anchor for a bit and, because of all the silt and the weight of the anchor, decided to undo the weight on the surface.
Then we swam forever back to shore on the surface with an 8 lb weight in my right pocket which had me way off balance.
There is my admittedly dry trip report..I snagged it almost directly from my logbook.
Profile was 42 minutes of dive time (including 3 de/ascents) and a bottom of 26 fsw. My SAC was crappy due to all the air wasted going up and down plus the added stress of crappy visibility. Vis ranged from 3 inches to 2 feet. All I saw during the dive was my compass and a couple lobster traps that I almost ran into.
We decided against doing a second dive and retired to the local Marina restaurant where I had a nice bowl of clam chowder and the rest of the crew had lunch and hot deco drinks.
Gary & I buddied up and the other four chose to dive together. We had a good time despite the cold and crappy dive conditions.
Basically, visibilty was less than 2 feet.
Here's a report of the dive:
Gary & I discussed the plan on surface. Turn pressure was 1600 psi. We would follow a 180 degree heading, turn, and come back on the reciprical course. We discussed lost buddy procedure (look for up to 1 minute, then surface). We swam out several hundred yards toward some large rocks before we descended.
Gary & I lost each other upon our initial descent. We looked around for a minute then surfaced. We found each other on the surface then re-descended very close together. Once on the bottom, we anchored the flag with an 8 lb weight near a lobster trap (bad idea in retrospect...Lobstermen don't like divers) in 16 ft of water and silt six inches deep.
I was navigator for the dive. We went out on a 180 degree heading toward the end of the breakwater. I was focused almost solely on my compass and making sure Gary & I didn't lose each other. There were time where visibility was so poor that I couldn't see Gary who was less than two feet away from me. I knew he was there because we kept kicking each other. At one point we lost each other briefly, but quickly found one-another.
I decided to turn around at ~2000psi because vis was so awful. Gary didn't understand my turn around signal (we hadn't discussed it pre-dive) so we swam around in circles for a bit. After a minute I gave the thumbs up and we ascended so we could discuss what was going on. Agreeing that the dive sucked, we decided to head back in.
We set a heading back to the flag and redescended. We landed on a lobster line which spooked me a bit since I couldn't see where it went or if I had gotten tangled in it. On our heading back we came across a few lobster traps which, because of the vis, appeared out of nowhere and spooked both Gary and me.
We over-shot our flag by 50-100 yards and ascended when we had gone past the 16 fsw mark and the lobster trap that the flag was near. I did a horizontal ascent which worked quite well. On the surface we figured out where our flag was and swam to it. We descended, struggled with the weighted anchor for a bit and, because of all the silt and the weight of the anchor, decided to undo the weight on the surface.
Then we swam forever back to shore on the surface with an 8 lb weight in my right pocket which had me way off balance.
There is my admittedly dry trip report..I snagged it almost directly from my logbook.
Profile was 42 minutes of dive time (including 3 de/ascents) and a bottom of 26 fsw. My SAC was crappy due to all the air wasted going up and down plus the added stress of crappy visibility. Vis ranged from 3 inches to 2 feet. All I saw during the dive was my compass and a couple lobster traps that I almost ran into.
We decided against doing a second dive and retired to the local Marina restaurant where I had a nice bowl of clam chowder and the rest of the crew had lunch and hot deco drinks.