Ice Dive

[AfterDark]

The wife and I were going through pictures to use at our daughters wedding and I found these, the only old dive pictures I have. I thought I'd lost them. It was an ice dive at Stafford Pond Tiverton RI during the winter of '78 '79 with my first and all time best dive buddy Paul Dias. If you look close you'll see neither of us have BC's, octopus regs, redundant air, or even a rescue diver topside:shocked2:. We had a great day and dive.
How did we survive those days with so little gear?!

 

[overkillphil]

Very cool!!

 

[BoneCrusher]

Nice pics. Thanks for sharing.

 

[DCBC]

You guys seemed to have your act together; two lines with a six-pack tied on to anchor them...

 

[NielsBlokie]

Hehe, it would be considered totally irresponsible nowadays, especially if you look how we make ice dives nowadays...
But it looks great!
Thanks for sharing.

 

[AfterDark]

Very cool!!

No pun intended I'm sure

You guys seemed to have your act together; two lines with a six-pack tied on to anchor them.

I guess we were just lucky. We did this many times. Breaking the rules! Breaking the rules!
My wife tended the lines. We tied them around her waist. I'm not kidding.
Anyone ever solo ice dive? Now I'm joking.

 

[UCFKnightDiver]

Not to hijack the thread, but what are the general accpeted practices of ice diving today?

 

[fppf]

The general accepted practice for ice diving....
2 divers in the water diving, tied to a heavy guide line.
The guide line is tended at all times by surface support and is marked with length
2 standby divers are geared up ready to get wet tied into a second guide line that is longer than the first
The standby divers also have a tender standing by ready to go.
There is then an overall dive officer that does not do anything but supervise and bark orders.

There are other folks that treat an ice dive like a cave dive. However the proponents of the above practice will point out doing a lost line drill under a vast lake covered in ice is impossible.

You guys did not even cut the correct shaped hole

 

[DCBC]

My wife tended the lines. We tied them around her waist. I'm not kidding.

Poor girl; well she at least had the six-pack.

Anyone ever solo ice dive? Now I'm joking.

Yep; commercial divers seldom have a buddy.

 

[AfterDark]

You guys did not even cut the correct shaped hole

That's because we were pioneers. You guys learned from our mistakes. The hole wasn't even big enough to allow 2 divers to egress! Something we corrected on future dives. We dove with a LDS sponsored dive a few years after that and believe me it wasn't that different! We did have safety divers on that dive.
On this dive and every dive we used floating rope and tied it to harnesses we made ourselves and gave it a warp or 2 around our wrists. My buddy Paul was a new commercial diver and had all the material to make good sturdy harnesses. The theory being if somehow the rope became disconnected we could look up and find it, glad we never had to test that theory Thanks all for not flaming me, it was a long time ago and a lot of todays lessons hadn't been learned yet and some gear hadn't even come into common use yet. I forgot to mention neither of us had SPG's, but my
J-valve was adjustable to 600PSI (scubapro) and Paul used way less air than I so I was the canary in the coal mine sorta speak.