rab
Contributor
Well, conditions first. Scott and I got there about 7:30am EST (coming from Ohio's EDT so it felt like 8:30am). The sun was starting to get through the light clouds and it appeared that the weather would be nice (i.e., none of the rain that has been a fixture of the past several days) with air temps in the mid-60's -- by the time we left it was low-70's.
Surface temp was in the 61-63 F range for both dives. The thermocline is around 17-20 ft at which point the temperature drops to at least 54F and at around 30-35 ft the temp is 50F (the lowest my Mosquito recorded; deepest was 48ft).
Visibility was OK. My estimate was 15-20ft, Scott's was 25-30ft, but it definitely depended on what part of the quarry you were in.
Scott was in his relatively new dry suit and still getting his bouyancy and weighting figured out. On our first dive I found him carrying a rock about the size of a 2" 3-ring binder. I gave him the 6# of lead that I was carrying and that helped him get back down, but after touring around a while in the 30+ ft (and using up more air...) we went up to around 20 and he (I later learned) popped to the surface. I looked around for him a minute or two and headed to the surface. The dive was over at that point, but I was fine with that -- the 60+ F at the surface was a welcome change.
Oh! Did I forget to tell you that I was diving wet wearing my 5mm gloves, 3mm booties, 6.5mm hood, and 5/3 full suit (5mm in body, 3mm from knees/elbows out). The first dive was 36 minutes. At least I now have a known limit for my (only) wetsuit. Yes, there was a bit of shivering on the SI as I logged the dive. This was the first time I'd tried temps below about 70F without a rented 6.5mm FJ/J so I really wanted to find out what practical limit I had in my own wetsuit. (Scott did run back in to grab his 7mm FJ/J in case I wanted to see if it fit.)
I definitely surprised my self with my underwater nav. I'd been to Blue Springs once before last October. There was a recently placed (at the time) armored car that I was taken to and I found it pretty directly. On the second dive, we'd planned to head out from the north dock going west and then turn due south when the "wall" turned sharply. Well, we apparently missed the "turn" because we were too deep, but when I realized from the compass heading that we seemed to have gone around too much, I found the boat that we'd expected to see last and just worked "backward". We discovered that there is a line run from wreck to wreck in that area and the last one goes back to a training platform in ~20ft. Since I had taken a compass heading from our entry point to the bouys that marked the corners of the platform, I led the way back (300deg) and came right up to the ladder on the dock -- that was very cool!
After purging some air to get down close to 600psi in my PST E8-119, I did a bouyancy check and found that with zero weight, I seem about neutral at 5ft. (I could use just BCD and tank -- no wetsuit -- in salt water and be about right, but didn't experiment with a near-empty tank.)
We were all loaded up and heading out at 12:00EST (13:00EDT) after our 27 min second dive. Overall a great day! (Although ScubaToys.com has a 7mmFJ/J fairly cheap that looks enticing...)
-Rob
Surface temp was in the 61-63 F range for both dives. The thermocline is around 17-20 ft at which point the temperature drops to at least 54F and at around 30-35 ft the temp is 50F (the lowest my Mosquito recorded; deepest was 48ft).
Visibility was OK. My estimate was 15-20ft, Scott's was 25-30ft, but it definitely depended on what part of the quarry you were in.
Scott was in his relatively new dry suit and still getting his bouyancy and weighting figured out. On our first dive I found him carrying a rock about the size of a 2" 3-ring binder. I gave him the 6# of lead that I was carrying and that helped him get back down, but after touring around a while in the 30+ ft (and using up more air...) we went up to around 20 and he (I later learned) popped to the surface. I looked around for him a minute or two and headed to the surface. The dive was over at that point, but I was fine with that -- the 60+ F at the surface was a welcome change.
Oh! Did I forget to tell you that I was diving wet wearing my 5mm gloves, 3mm booties, 6.5mm hood, and 5/3 full suit (5mm in body, 3mm from knees/elbows out). The first dive was 36 minutes. At least I now have a known limit for my (only) wetsuit. Yes, there was a bit of shivering on the SI as I logged the dive. This was the first time I'd tried temps below about 70F without a rented 6.5mm FJ/J so I really wanted to find out what practical limit I had in my own wetsuit. (Scott did run back in to grab his 7mm FJ/J in case I wanted to see if it fit.)
I definitely surprised my self with my underwater nav. I'd been to Blue Springs once before last October. There was a recently placed (at the time) armored car that I was taken to and I found it pretty directly. On the second dive, we'd planned to head out from the north dock going west and then turn due south when the "wall" turned sharply. Well, we apparently missed the "turn" because we were too deep, but when I realized from the compass heading that we seemed to have gone around too much, I found the boat that we'd expected to see last and just worked "backward". We discovered that there is a line run from wreck to wreck in that area and the last one goes back to a training platform in ~20ft. Since I had taken a compass heading from our entry point to the bouys that marked the corners of the platform, I led the way back (300deg) and came right up to the ladder on the dock -- that was very cool!
After purging some air to get down close to 600psi in my PST E8-119, I did a bouyancy check and found that with zero weight, I seem about neutral at 5ft. (I could use just BCD and tank -- no wetsuit -- in salt water and be about right, but didn't experiment with a near-empty tank.)
We were all loaded up and heading out at 12:00EST (13:00EDT) after our 27 min second dive. Overall a great day! (Although ScubaToys.com has a 7mmFJ/J fairly cheap that looks enticing...)
-Rob
