R.I. Day #3 (Demo Day #1) Trip Report and Photos

[King Kong Matt]

Another great day with Scubaboard members...three great dives...and a great meal to follow!

A number of us, including Raxafarian, Northeastwrecks, AaronBBrown, and Shellbird showed up yesterday morning in Jamestown, R.I. at a site called Ft. Wetherill.

Ft. Wetherill is basically a public park with access to a couple of protected coves. From the parking lot, there is immediate access to two coves, a smaller left one, and a larger right one.

Left cove

Right cove

Northeastwrecks (Dan) was practicing with some doubles gear in prep for his upcoming expedition to Lake Ontario and DIR-F. Shellbird (Michelle) was feeling a little under the weather, but provided great surface support in her kayak (ultra yellow...ultra cool). That left Rax (Ken) , Aaron (Aaron), and I to do a couple of dives.

Our first two dives were off the left cove. The vis wasn't great, but we did get a chance to get a little deeper than usual on a shore dive, while still managing to get a nice long dive in. The profile looked something like 50 mins wth max depth at 70 fsw and most of the time spent at 50 fsw.

For the third dive, Northeastwrecks was nice enough to re-rig his Halcyon Pioneer wing and BP so that I could do a test-drive. I'll post my thoughts about that in another thread, but the short version...awesome. While Dan was showing me his rig and helping me out, Ken was attaching a set of spring straps to his new fins. As you can see, very DIR.

After all the fun and games of the day, we all needed a bit of food and drink, so we headed up the road to Jamestown and found a great seafood place. Notice that the expedition members can't seem to agree which mix is best for deco procedures.

One of the lesser trained members of the expedition went unsupervised for a few moments too many and obviously came across some mix that didn't agree with him .

All in all, it was a great day...good friends, good diving, good food and beer. And the best part? It's October and we're still diving in R.I. without a hood and gloves!

Matthew

 

[GP]

Nice dive report Matt...thanks! That's nice having the pics posted too. It's good to be able to put a face with some of the members here.

 

[shellbird]

It really was a great time! I am sicker now than ever but it was worth it.

Had to stay home from work today - sniff, cough...

 

[Soggy]

Fun was had by all.

KKMatt was being generous when he said the vis was poor. I could barely see the fins that were 2 feet ahead of me at times. Vis was better on the first dive when we got below 50 feet or so.

First dive was pretty boring at first, as we swam out toward the middle of the cove...no fish, just sand. As we got deeper and closer to the rocks we saw a fair amount of marine life. Lots of small fish. We turned around at 75 fsw as we looked down below us and saw only the dark abyss. This was my deepest dive ever by 2 feet. It didn't have to be (the other guys profiles were a bit shallower), but I figured since I was down there, I might as well stretch my limits. Must've been the rapture of the deep dragging me down those 2 feet. On the way back, we hugged the rock wall and saw quite a bit of life. We did a safety stop at 20 feet for 3 or 4 minutes, ascended and went to shore.

Oh yeah...I was flag beotch...No runaway flags this time.

Dive 1
53 mins
75 fsw, average 50fsw

Shellbird showed up at this point with munchies (yay!) and her yellow SUV and Kayak. Our 2 hour surface interval passed and we got geared up again. Shellbird gave us a fischer-price magnetic, erasible "slate" to test underwater (it worked well), which Matt volunteered to bring down so he wouldn't have to tote the flag...but my massive stature intimidated tiny little Matt, so he agreed to drag the flag also. We were a bit worried about task loading, what with the flag and the slate, but he handled it well. He tested it and handed it to me...I knew it was too much for him.

The second dive was along the penninsula in the left cove. Miserable visibility and I was bouncing up and down like a yoyo. We swam out to the end of the cove, turned around and came back, saving a bit of air for Matt's equipment testing. Halfway back we lost Ken, so Matt handed me the flag gave me the "you stay down, I'll go look" sign. I hung out for a couple minutes on the bottom (which I had kicked up pretty well at this point, so I couldn't see anything) and decided to ascend to find the other guys. They were all on the surface chatting away with shellbird. We swam into shore and all was good.

Dive 2
SI: 121 mins
43 mins
34 fsw, average of 25 fsw

Dan got Matt suited up in his Halcyon backplate/wings configuration and we hopped in for a short equipment dive. I had only 1250 psi left in my HP 72s, so we knew it would be short.

Vis was the best it had been, and we saw more marine life than ever. We were in the right hand cove this time, and stayed at very shallow depths. I went off and chased a fish for a minute and lost track of Matt and Ken, so I surfaced. I looked over for Ken and he had inflated his lift bag and sent it up to the surface. Why? We'll never know.

Dive 3 (Test dive)
SI: 120 mins
21 mins
24 fsw


It was a great day and we finished it with a great meal.

By the way...clam chowder and pinot grigio go very well together.

Geez...that was long. Oops.

 

[shellbird]

I think Aaron likes the dry wine because he is always getting wet in his "dry" suit... Poor Aaron

 

[Northeastwrecks]

It was a good day to dive.

Started out with my LDS in the very early morning. I was DM'ing a small AOW class and trying out my doubles at the same time.

We were teaching the buoyancy and nav portions of the class, so we stayed in the right cove. However, I've never seen so many fish. Several large flounder and a school of literally dozens of little fish swam right in front of us.

The class portion of my day was enjoyable and educational. My instructor taught me how to perform valve drills, then watched as I accidentally missed the step of turning my right post back on. He let me go through the entire drill, which was great until I also turned off the left post. You'd be surprised how fast you can turn on BOTH posts simultaneously. Of course, the instructor was hanging there with his primary out of his mouth and ready if I needed it.

After we finished, I met up with Shellbird, Rax, KK Matt and Aaron. KK Matt is interesting in a Halcyon, so I re-rigged my Pioneer Wing and turned him loose with Rax and Aaron. Shellbird followed in her kayak (very cool). I was tired, so I sat on the rocks and watched the dive flag.

Afterwards, we retired to a local decompression chamber to relax.

Overall, a great trip. I'll try to post some pictures later.

 

[Soggy]

Hey, Rax...where are the pictures you took? Any of them come out?

 

[shellbird]

Folly Cove post. Guess we don't rate!

 

[raxafarian]

shellbird once bubbled...
Folly Cove post. Guess we don't rate!

diving yesterday came before the post dive photoshop session. Then I was much happier with my u/w shots from monday, so I worked on posting them first...

but HERE are the pics from sunday.

 

[raxafarian]

Had a few good dives.

1st dive: We dove the left cove at Ft. Wetherill. Started in the middle and took a bearing to the point...(left side of cove) Won't do this again... you spend too much time over plain sand until you get to the wall. Once we reached the wall/rocks the dive was great. Vis cleared up from about 7ft to 20 or so. We reached 70ft. pretty quickly and turned back. The depths, once you get towards the outside of the cove, drop fairly quickly.... to 100-120, even 160ft in the middle of the channel (which is more than 1/2 way to newport.) We stayed along the wall on the way back... much better diving the wall/rocks, than the sand . When we were at 25 ft, I pulled a little practice OOA on matt....swam up to him with the reg out of my mouth signalling "OOA"... he gave me his octo pretty quickly... I'll give him an "A".

2nd dive we stayed in the left cove, but dove the right wall. Not as good as the left wall, but still a decent dive. Shellbird paddled around in her banana... I mean kayak. Matt found a starfish bigger than his hand... see pics in post above.. vis was only about 15 or so.

3rd dive was for Matt to try a bp/wing. Vis was great... 20ft or so. We dove the right cove (boat ramp cove). Stayed shallow for about 5 minutes until Matt indicated he was all set (loving the bp!!) so we angled toward the left wall... poked around for a little while. I wrote a message to matt on my wetnotes expressing what I thought about him......
I believe I wrote "you suck"..... and that I was gonna practice deploying a lift bag.

So Aaron.... now you know why

Decent food after.