2009 in Review

[StreetDoctor]

Sitting here on my couch with a temperature of 36F outside and a couple inches of snow on the ground, I've had a chance to reflect on the 2009 diving season.

From beginning to end...

I started out the year with 45 dives under my belt and I did my first dives of 2009 in the beginning of May at the quarry in a 7mm farmer john wetsuit and a newly acquired single HP130. I started diving a backplate and wing the end of last summer but this year my girlfriend started out the season in a backplate/wing and she thoroughly loves it also. I did a lot of training dives this year in the quarry getting more and more into the "DIR" concept. In June we went on a trip to Bonaire for a week which was awesome and gave me my first real experience with tropical diving which had me amazed how much easier it is than local diving. No wetsuit and 150' visibility really makes a difference :cool2:

I purchased my first drysuit- a DUI TLS350 and did my first dive in it on 7/3/09 and strangely enough I had 73 dives to date. I had a couple dives in rental suits beforehand and had taken a drysuit class so I had a decent handle on drysuit diving, but this was luxury compared to the worn out rental suit I was accustomed to using. Around this time I also purchased a cannister light (used salvo 21W HID) which has come to be one of my most favorite pieces of dive gear to date.

I took Intro to Tech with Duane Johnson (Precisiondiving.net) and learned a lot. This is also where I met my regular dive buddy (scubainchicago) who I did the majority of my diving with for the rest of the year. This worked out awesome as he was pretty much on the same page with me on my progression towards "DIR" diving. On 8/1/09 I completed Intro to Tech and did my first dive in Double HP130's. This was dive # 81 one for me and although it was very different I could tell right away it was going to open up a whole new world of diving. It took me about 10 dives to get my trim back to being decent, although my SAC was still bad and I wasn't very comfortable yet I was handling them well and making a decent transition. It took me until dive #111 to really get comfortable and figure out I needed to add a tail weight to help with trim and cure my being underweighted with empty tanks. At this time my SAC rate dropped from an average .8 in doubles down to an average of around .5 over a matter of one day of diving. It's amazing what dialing in your equipment can really do. On 8/16 I also completed rescue Diver with Duane and had a great time.

In the beginning of september my girlfriend and I did a trip to Socal. We stayed in San Diego for a week and dove with the Marissa Charter on the Yukon, Ruby E, and a Kelp Dive. I had a really good time on this trip although I was spoiled with my HP steel tanks and Nitrox I had grown accustomed to back home. Strangely enough Nitrox was pretty hard to come by on charters in Socal and we ended up diving air which limited our bottom times on all 3 dives. We had also planned on driving up to Long Beach and doing a Charter to Catalina. This gave me the opportunity to show off a bit of California to my girlfriend because I'd love to move there someday. We did a Catalina Charter with Sun Divers and had the entire boat (30 diver capacity I believe?) to four of us. We dove Shiprock, twin rocks, and pirates cove. Capt. Kyaa was great and we will definitely be diving with her operation on our next trip. I have to say Catalina is also by far my most favorite place to dive to date. The kelp forests, visibility, and fish life are awesome. Again we dove air but we were lucky enough to get to use HP steel 80's instead of the aluminum tanks that required me to wear more weight on my waist in my drysuit. We enjoyed Catalina and Sun Divers so much we ended up driving up to Long Beach again a few days later to do 3 more dives with them that were equally enjoyable.

After I got back from California I hit the quarry pretty hard in preparation for an upcoming class. Working on S drills, Valve drills, Ascent drills, etc. while in technical diving gear. I really, really enjoy training dives. I don't think there's a dive that goes by at the quarry where a valve drill, s drill, or ascent drill isn't practiced. On 11/1 I completed GUE Fundamentals with Ed Gabe and was rewarded with a technical pass.

Class Report Weekend 1
Gue Fundamentals Weekend 1 of 2

Class report Weekend 2
GUE Fundamentals Weekend 2 of 2

This was by far the most demanding class I've taken to date and Ed was an extremely laid back instructor who was very easy to get along with. This class will demonstrate where the bar is set and Ed did everything in his power to help us reach it.

Two weeks after fundamentals I went on a cruise to the Bahamas and snuck in two dives with Stuarts cove. I did these dives in a rental jacket BCD with an instabuddy (and lived to tell about it!!! ) The shark feeding dive was pretty cool but probably something I won't seek out to repeat. It was extremely odd diving in a jacket BCD when I had become so used to my BP/W and doubles. I had only dove in a jacket BCD about 4 times previously and I didn't miss it.

I did a total of 95 dives in 2009 from May-November which gives me a current total of 140 dives, with about 45 of them in doubles. Next year I hope to get in the water much sooner now that I own a drysuit and should break the 100 dives/year mark.
I'm currently in the process of gathering equipment for GUE Tech 1 in the end of February. Some of my goals for next year are to complete Tech 1 and get out into the Great Lakes a lot more. I'm also working on putting together a road trip to Florida to Dive some of the famous wrecks in the beginning of September.

Here's a couple pictures that stick out in my mind.


An empty Sun Diver on the way to Catalina

Catalina Island dive site

Octopus near Catalina

Current at Shiprock, Catalina Is.

Milwaukee Car Ferry Wreck, Lake Michigan

Shark Dives with Stuarts Cove

Feel free to post similar reports of how your dive year was if you like.

 

[tstormdiver]

Well,... No pictures from me since I managed to lose my camera rig on a dive in Malaysia.... sorry:depressed:

I started out 2009 with about 275 dives (not bad for being land locked & 3 yrs of diving). In Jan./ Feb I escaped the Great Ice Storm in KY of 2009 & over 9 days completed my Cavern, Intro to Cave & got about 1/2 of my Full Cave done. In the spring I went to Malaysia with my LDS. I got in 42 dives in the 10 diving days we had. Did I say I lost my camera set- up there? It was phenomenal! I did 16 dives (over 4 days we were there) at Sipadan Island & most of the rest on the reefs around Mabul Island. During the summer I finally got my Instructor internship accomplished (no small thing since I work a crazy swing shift schedule) & began instructing Open Water students. To be honest most of my OWSI work this summer was doing the final check- out dives with them at the quarry, when the other instructors are unable to do so, since I'm there most weekends anyway. Aug./ Sept. saw me going back to FL to work my Full Cave some more. I went by myself with the instructor & got close to finishing, but not quite. The delay in getting back down was scheduling, the caves being wiped out from the flooding & my buddy who had family issue after family issue. In Nov. I went back to FL a 3rd time to try to finish my Full Cave & it was looking hopeful until a pretty disastrous last dive pretty much dictated that I will have to come back down again in the spring. Hopefully next year will have me finishing my Full Cave, working towards my Adv. OWSI & a trip of a lifetime to the Galapagos Islands. Who knows what other adventures I'll find myself doing.

 

[TSandM]

Fun posts to read!

In January of 2009, my husband and I took advantage of a special offered by a dive promoter in British Columbia, and went up to stay in the Brentwood Lodge and dive with Rockfish Divers. I was excited to see the cloud sponges, and also to use the stuff I had learned in Andrew's Helitrox class to do the dives on 25/25, with a little backgas deco. The cloud sponges were worth it.

In February, we went to Maui to visit Peter's father, and did some diving with Charlie99. Late in February, I managed to go diving with a woman I had really wanted to meet for a long time. I haven't managed to mesh scheduled with her since!

March was the month of visitors. BenV came up, and we did a scooter dive with him. Nilsdiver came up and we dove him into the ground, even diving in the snow. Rhlee and alwaingold came up, and we did a wonderful day on a charter with them, again diving in the snow and 40 knot winds.

Peter did his IE and got his OWSI rating.

April was quiet, and May involved going to California for my 25th medical school reunion, and of course, we had to head to Monterey for a few days of diving with KMD and HBDiveGirl and assorted other Montereyites.

June was a trip to California for a three day liveaboard (my first liveaboard trip!) with 20+ other divers, in the Channel Islands. We had 19 scooters, 25 batteries, and a charging station that would give an electrical inspector a heart attack. It was a fabulous trip, and I got to dive with a bunch of new buddies.

July finished up my UTD Tech 1 class, including two beautiful experience dives on sheer walls in the San Juan Islands. My wonderful friends volunteered two boats and two boat tenders to make the day perfect.

August was my disastrous attempt at GUE Cave 2. Not one of the better weeks of the year. In September, I basically didn't dive because I didn't even want to look at my gear.

The beginning of October, though, was the week on the MV Tala in the Red Sea, a trip which had been planned for a year and a half. THAT was fabulous -- doubles, scooters, deco; stunning walls and wrecks and a crew that bent over backwards to make sure everybody was having the maximum amount of fun that could possibly be extracted from each and every dive and every day. I can't say enough good things about the crew of the Tala, and I'd love to go back.

November was our second annual Thanksgiving trip to Mexico with a group of wonderful friends, and making some new ones. I passed NACD Full Cave, and got to find out how much fun it is to explore behind restrictions and off the main line. The highlight of November was finding a new cave diving buddy, someone truly to prize.

Today I got back in the cold water, and realized I'm going to HAVE to do something about heated undergarments, because I'm becoming a WWW.

It's been a good diving year, adding up to about 190 dives. I thought I had dived less this year than last, but it's about the same count.

Next year is the year of the West Coast. I want to get up into Canada more, and we'll do another June trip to California. And, of course, the cave diving trips don't count . . .

 

[StreetDoctor]

Lynne,

I saw your pictures on DM of the liveaboard and as a firefighter that does frequent building inspections the pictures of the charging station made me cringe! The amount of scooters on that boat was amazing and that's definitely a purchase I'd love to make next year.

 

[Sas]

This thread should be interesting, like to hear how other people spent the year diving

I started off my second year of diving since certification with 119 dives. January was a big month for buying new gear. I got a second tank as I realised I'd spent half the cost of a new tank in rental fees the year before. :\ I also switched to a BP/W after almitywife loaned me hers a few months before and I realised how much I didn't like my current BC in comparison. I switched from a console air integration computer to a simple wrist one after my console died and I had to borrow a computer. I got a p-valve for my drysuit as well and that really changed my comfort levels and how long I could stay under for. Oh and as of a few weeks ago now I have a pink harness, which has been my favourite change to my gear purely because of the reaction from my regular buddy.

I also bought a new camera as another lovely SB member bowlofpetunias encouraged me to get into underwater photography. In 2008 I borrowed my buddy's now and again but it wasn't the same as having my own camera. I bought a very cheap setup (76AUD) in case I didn't like it but I really ended up LOVING photography. Sadly my camera died at the end of October and I am currently waiting for a replacement camera to arrive. My favourite shots are here (though a few were taken by my buddy!): Favourite Dive Photos - a set on Flickr I learned how to do some postprocessing too despite being reluctant at the start to put any effort beyond taking the picture. Here are a few examples:

I joined a new club in January also after getting sick of the problems with the shop affiliated club I am in. I met some great people in my new club and a lot of the experienced members have been really helpful in showing me new skills and I've learned a lot. I'm now quite involved in the club and my regular buddy joined up as well.

I started the year with two regular buddies but lost one through the year. Life has gotten in the way of his diving. I've met a bunch more semi-regular buddies (mostly via the club I am in as well as SB and Facebook) as well so I don't want for buddies.
Two regular buddies

Never ask your buddies to 'act natural' for a photo...

I did a lot less boat diving this year as my regular buddy now prefers shore diving and saved a lot of money just doing shore dives But hoping to do more boat dives this next year. Me and my buddy explored a bunch of rarely dived sites and discovered why they are rarely dived... but it was still fun. Also got to dive a lot of great shore sites.
Ozone wreck - a wreck in 4m of water you can spend hours exploring

Mornington Pier, a favourite night diving spot

Sorrento Pier - favourite shore site but difficult to dive and only possible at night due to a larger ferry docking every 20mins or so

In March I went on a trip to Fish Rock in NSW with a bunch of SB'ers: bowlofpetunias, thanksforallthefish, Aardvark, almitywife, almity1, Tassie Rohan

Had a great time with everyone and we also got some awesome diving in Pics here: Fish Rock, NSW - a set on Flickr

I took another diving trip to Fiji with a few buddies in September. I had my favourite moment in diving, when a huge tiger shark swum over my head!

This was my first time diving in tropical waters (23-24C, when we left Melbourne it was 10C there) and I got to finally use my 3mm A trip report and pictures here if people are interested: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/pacific-islands/306293-beqa-fiji-sept-2009-trip-report.html

I also went on an trip to NZ in November with my non-diving partner. It was supposed to be a non-diving holiday but I was able to sneak in two dives in Queenstown , one to try out a scooter and the other was a river drift. These were also my first freshwater dives. The scooter was harder than expected but I got the hang of it towards the end of the dive. The river drift is something that isn't really available locally and I had a ball, especially going through the rapids (photos taken by the dive operator Dive Queenstown).
Scooter!

Nice scenery!

River drift

I started a course with BSAC as the dive club I am in is a BSAC club. It's Dive Leader and teaches you how to lead other divers on open water dives. I'm enjoying it a lot, have learned a bunch of things, not sure when I'll finish but I'm not in a hurry. I also signed up for the CDAA Cavern course, which actually starts tomorrow and should finish up on the 30th. Locally there are some caves in the Mt Gambier region (5hrs drive) so I decided I'd see what the fuss is about those and the course teaches a lot of good skills too, so I should benefit from it even if I end up hating caves! I didn't want to do many courses this year and feel rushed so things went to plan in that area

My overall diving, this year I've done 168 dives (or 203 hours underwater) and might end up with 175 or so by the end of December. Just going to miss out on doing my 300th this year So I got to dive HEAPS and it was awesome. Recently I got to dive the HMAS Canberra, a ex Navy ship sunk outside Port Phillip Bay. It just opened for diving in the last two weeks so is promising to be an interesting site to watch how the place changes over time. I got to do a lot of night dives as well, as me and my buddy tried to get out once a week after work for a night dive. We managed it pretty well with only a few weather related cancellations. I only missed a couple of weekends too for diving. So yea, all around I'm very happy with how my year went

Anyway, there's probably a bunch more I'm forgetting but I've already gone on a bit.

 

[TSandM]

Wow, Sas, you've been holding out on us in the photo department! Some lovely shots there.

 

[Sas]

Wow, Sas, you've been holding out on us in the photo department! Some lovely shots there.

Thanks! It's *killing* me not to have a camera at the moment. I ordered it last week so hope it is here soon...

 

[iztok]

Well this is a no picture post... haven't graduated to the camera yet.

All starts with me booking a trip around the world in first class in April as a gift to my wife for our 10th anniversary. Looking to do some sightseeing in Seoul, Beijing, and Bangkok, relaxing in Phuket and meeting my family in Munich.

Then in May a friend of mine tells me he is looking to get OW certified which got me thinking... Thailand is one of the greatest diving places in the world... if I get OW I can get few dives there for fun. So I sign up... he bails out on it.

So here I am buying some gear and getting my OW and by last week of June I get my OW card. Yay! Then realization hits me... I just learned that I don't know much! I need to dive more and get some more training as I really don't want to display this kind of (poor) buoyancy and trim in Thailand. So I go to sign up for AOW. Pick up some valuable classes, like Nitrox, PPB, Night, Deep, and Navigation.

Then I signed up for 5 specialties (Nitrox, Deep, O2 provider, Wreck, and Night) as I was working towards my Rescue class... now that class was a lot of work and a lot of fun. I am glad we did fresh water diving as I was to tired to do anything with my gear until two days later!

So here I am, wanted to have OW cert so I could dive in Thailand ended up getting MSD by the time the trip started in November. At 72 dives while one of the newest divers on the livaboard I was the second (to a DM from Germany that started tech training) in number of dives...

While I was not quite happy with my diving skills in Thailand I saw by large a lot worse things. People walking on the bottom, not clipping their octo, SPG etc... what a shame destroying all that great dive sites! Sure I was wearing full protection (suit, gloves, hoodie, boots) but I didn't touch things or destroy things and it saved me from some jelly fish that some has suffered from!

So here I am close to 90 dives and end of the year... started with 0, now having 6 AL90 tanks (I just doubled 2 of them), switched from BCD to BP/w and doubles, having 3, 5, 7, and drysuit... having a blast diving and trying to work on my skills as it goes.

Now my goal is to do 100th dive on 12/31!

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

2009 was a pretty good year for me ... I've gotten in about 260 dives so far.

Started out the year with a couple of trips to Vancouver ... working on preparing a ship for sinking as an artificial reef and doing a day of diving ... also a trip to Hood Canal in January. But the best dives for me were right near home, down to a bottle field in my local mudhole where I found these tiny little fish that are prized among divers called lumpsuckers. They aren't very common ... and many divers never get to see one outside the aquarium. I was finding them on almost every dive ... and among my friends became known as the "lumpsucker whisperer".

January was also the month I upgraded my photography equipment from a simple little Casio P&S to a Canon G10 and a pair of strobes. Not that it helped the photography much at first, because it took me a while to figure out how to use all that gear. But it was a step in the right direction.

February I took a trip to Bonaire with some friends ... and it turned out that fellow ScubaBoarder BDSC was staying at the same place we were ... Buddy Dive ... so it was nice to spend time with another SB'er while I was down there. I also took a half-day photo class that went a long way toward helping me learn my new equipment.

March was another trip to Vancouver ... working on the Annapolis ... and a LOT of local diving with friends to show them the lumpsuckers. By now I was getting a lot of company from out of town friends who wanted to see these colorful little cuties. I was also starting to get buried with classes ... which went on pretty much non-stop until about June.

In May my friends Penny and Bob came from the mid-west for a week of diving and fun. I also took a wreck penetration class that month, which culminated in a long week-end of diving in Nanaimo doing penetration dives on the Breton and Sasketchewan. The month ended with another visit from a friend ... Snowbear ... who came down from Alaska to spend a few days diving with me and Uncle Pug.

June was another trip to Vancouver for a working/diving week-end ... as well as wrapping up classes in preparation for taking a year off from teaching. I was also on the same Channel Islands trip as TSandM ... which was loads of fun.

July I finally made it out onto the Diamond Knot ... a wreck I've been trying to dive now for several years. Turned out to be less than ideal conditions, but hey ... I made it. Ended up doing the dive solo because there were only three CCR divers on the boat besides me and they didn't want to dive with an OC diver.

August was a busy month. I started it with a three-day trip to Neah Bay ... the highlight of which was a 10-minute "walkabout" with the largest Giant Pacific Octopus I have ever seen. Later in the month I traveled to Florida and finally took some cave training ... Cavern, Intro and Apprentice.

September I hit the tech dives pretty hard, culminating in another deep wreck I had been wanting to do for a while ... the Al Ind Esk a Sea. This was my deepest dive to date at 237 fsw. I ended the month with a long week-end out in the Straits on a camping/diving trip with a bunch of friends.

October was a month to stay local, with one lone week-end trip to Victoria to hook up with a friend I had known for a few years online.

November it was back to cave country for a week of diving with friends ... some I hadn't known I had until I got there. Among the highlights was diving with fellow SBers Baby Duck and DA Aquamaster. It was great fun.

And the highlight of this month brought me full circle ... the lumpsuckers are back at my favorite local mudhole. Last night I found nine of 'em ... which is more than most people get to see in their lifetime.

Been a busy year ... I managed to spend more than a cumulative 10 days worth of it underwater ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Buoyant1]

I mentioned some of this in another thread, but as usual, divers don't mind talking about diving!

This ended up being a slightly disappointing year for me diving wise, but only in quantity (and courses I wanted to take) I lost my job at the end of May, and really couldn't justify the expense of taking a few courses this summer, so I'll have to put those on hold until next year...well if I'm able to be re-employed by then....anyway!

I started the year by purchasing a dry suit. One of the guys in the group I dive with a lot and I were the last hold outs in the 7mm's..he said he ordered his dry suit, and I figured that I had better get on that wagon. SO the search was on. During the search, I saw two Dive Rite 905 "close out" specials on the Scubatoys website in the "extra chubby" size..so I ordered one of them, it was too long, so I talked to Joe and he said he'd send the other one to check out, and if that one didn't fit, save a little by shipping both together. Thankfully it fit, but had LARGE feet built in, so I scouted for a good solution to change out the boots for socks and got it done. A quick trip to a buddies house to get my seals trimmed and I was ready to roll!

My first logged dive of the season was March 22 which was the earliest I got out this (locally) ever! My friend and I spent a considerable amount of time on the platforms that day just getting the feel for the suit (mostly rising to the surface because we didn't know how to wrangle these air bags!) After a while we tamed them down and got a bit of a dive out of it. The next outing was about a week or two later, and it was definitely better, by the 4th or 5th dive we felt like divers again!

Out local quarry has Wednesday evening diving from the beginning of June through the end of September, so we took great advantage of that, I think I only missed three Wednesdays the whole season. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get out on as many weekends as I had in the past (or get out during the week to another local-ish quarry that's open all 7 days) but I logged a decent amount of dives.

After bouts with questionable weather at the end of November the past few years we decided to take our Keys vacation a month earlier and go at the end of October. The weather was decidedly better except for a few windy days at the beginning of the first week. (which prevented me from doing a night dive, and a few extra reef dives) My "scheduled" dives were all done, and my list of Keys wrecks gets longer! I was waiting (patiently) for the Vandenberg to get sunk, and finally it was! So I definitely had to get on that, and did two great dives upon it! I also had been wanting to dive the Adolphus Busch, and was able to get on that. For a few years I had wanted to dive the Spiegel Grove, but seemed to either get bumped for one reason or another (weather, lack of divers on that trip, etc.) This year I finally was able to get a dive on it, and it was all I ever expected it would be! The Keys trip was a definite highlight of the season!

I've hit a few dives since I've returned to cold Pennsylvania, and continue to keep my dry suit education progressing forward. Maybe next year at this time I'll be discussing the trials and tribulations of something else!

My dive reports for the year can be viewed at MOD SCUBA Home under the "dive blog" section...I post under "Jamin' Ben".

To sum up my year, I think I learned a lot, figured out how to dive in a dry suit, and did some wrecks I've been wanting to dive on. I didn't reach my goal as far as dives done, but circumstances beyond my control prevented me from some things. Oh well...I'll be back out soon enough in the cold water! (just hope it doesn't freeze, or I'll be forced to take an ice diving specialty!