Anyone familiar with Lake Cumberland, KY?

[tyki]

My family has been boating and swimming in Lake Cumberland Kentucky (houseboat capital of the United States)for years. I know there are a few people who have done some scuba diving there in years past, but I can't seem to find anything on the web about dive shops down there.

We have a week of vacation planned on my parents houseboat in August, and now that we have finished our Open Water cert class, we would love to take the opportunity to get wet again and get some more dives in. Since we are newly certified I would be interested in finding a divemaster who would come out with us for a local orientation dive and a good dive shop we could work with for our equipment needs.

Does anyone know of dive shops around Lake Cumberland?

tyki
hoping to get her face wet again real soon

 

[King_Neptune]

Kentucky eh?

What Country in that in? Or is that another planet?

hehe, I can honestly say that is one place I havent been diving.

=-)

 

[tyki]

Hi Ya King Neptune,

Lake Cumberland is one of the largest man-made lakes in the country. The lake was created by damming up the Cumberland River and flooding a mountainous area, including submerging several towns (my understanding is there is a stone church somewhere at the bottom of this lake). The lake has over 1400 miles of shoreline and lots and lots of little coves.
The hills/mountains that create the shoreline are mainly shale and can be quite steep. It is not uncommon to swim 5-10 feet from shore and be in 15-20 feet of water. The water in the lake tends to be fairly clear, and my sister commented last month that it was even more clear this year than it has been in a long time.

There are several marinas on the lake, and the one where our houseboat is moored used to have something on their website about filling scuba air tanks (but that seems to have disappeared this year).

What we are most likely going to end up doing is doing little mini-dives off the houseboat in the cove that Mom and Dad most usually tie off the houseboat. I don't believe that cove is more than about 20 feet deep. Who knows maybe we can even refill Dad's tool box with the hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches and pliers that have all decided to go for a swim over the years.

The main purpose for our dives (if we can get them in next week) will be to gain experience as a buddy team and try to improve our navigation skills. (Gotta learn to keep that compass level) Since this will be our first opportunity to dive after getting our certification we want to be smart about it and thought it would be best if we can track down a divemaster for at least the first dive. Our local dive shop gave us the name of a shop in Somerset Kentucky (about 30 miles from where we will be) that may be able to help us out.

Tyki
I wanna blow more bubbles and play with the fishies!!

 

[large_diver]

Tyki,

I used to live in Cincinnati, so I am familiar with Lake Cumberland. That was in my pre-diving days, though, so I don't have any info about shops in the area. One idea might be to contact some shops in the Cincinnati area and see if they know anything about diving down there, since Cincinnati is the closest large city. Lexington dive shops might be another idea (if any exist). If any of these shops are leading dive trips down there, they must have a local source for air fills and gear......

Then again you might be from Cincy and might have already tried all of this ;-)

Good luck!

 

[large_diver]

Another idea would be to post this on the scubadiving.com message board. There are at least a few Cincinnati-area regulars on that board who might be able to help. Just checked you "bio"...I see you're from Dayton...so the Cincinnati dive shop idea might be worthwhile.

DSAO!

 

[large_diver]

Some more data...

I was poking around on lakecumberland.com and found a phone book option (it links to switchboard.com). I did a search by business category using "scuba" and found a slew of listings in KY.....not all (maybe none..) of these are near
Lake Cumberland, but see at least one for Somerset, which I think is close by. You might also try nashville dive shops, since I guess Nashville is actually closer to the lake than Cincinnati.

Hope all this helps!
link

 

[Ladydiver]

Hi Guys,

Another option you might try is checking out the search at ScubaDirectory.com. I don't know if any of them are near Lake Cumberland, but it might help.

Cheers,

 

[socaldiver]

I am also familiar with Lake Cumberland but from fishing experiences not diving.

A couple of other cities to check would be Knoxville and Louisville, and maybe even Frankfort, as they are all in a close proximity to the Lake. Naturally it depends on what part of the lake your houseboat is, that is one big lake!!

 

[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

 

[socaldiver]

Sounds like it wasn't too bad Tyki. A little disappointment maybe that didn't get to do more but hey, anytime you can get wet - LIFE IS GOOD!!

BTW, how was the vis and water temp?