MSilvia
Contributor
My wife and I went up to RileyBri's place in Burlington Vermont for the 4th of July weekend to meet baby Harper and give the new parents a bit of a break. Brian and I decided to dive a couple of the wrecks in lake Champlain, and our friend Rob generously offered to provide transportation aboard his beautiful 37' late 70s vintage Herreshoff Meadowlark ketch 'Onaway'. It was a beautiful day for a sail, but we were a bit late getting underway and opted to make a single dive on the schooner rigged canal boat O.J.Walker, which went down in 1895.
We slid our paperwork to log the dive plan with the Lake Champlain Underwater Historic Preserve System under their door before departure, and arranged a time slot on the mooring via VHF radio. We put on our exposure protection on board, but opted to stage the dive from the boat's inflatable dinghy, one at a time. I geared up first, pausing to fiddle with my drysuit inflator's extruded o-ring... to no avail. I put a bit of gas in my suit on the surface, and figured I'd just briefly reconnect the inflator once I was at depth to take the squeeze off. That worked out okay, although it did let some (thankfully fresh) cold water in. Once I had that project abandoned, I asked Rob to pass me my (just back from the factory) UK HID100 light, which I immediately realized I hadn't tied a bolt snap to. We secured a lanyard to it, and I went over a few last checks befoe I gracefully flung myself sideways into the water. Several minutes later, Brian joined me and we headed to the mooring ball, caught our breath, and started our descent.
It was my first freshwater dive on a "real" pristine wreck (Not counting the Field & Sea), and I have to say it was pretty awesome to see the deadeyes, masts, rigging, tiller, etc. all still where they came to rest. As I looked though, it occurred to me that Bri's Princeton Tech handheld was throwing a lot more light than my HID100, so I took a quick peek at the bulb to see if there was a problem. The water sloshing around the bulb told me there was, so I shut off the light, gave it the bird, and switched to my trusty photon torpedo backup. We circled the wreck twice, peeking into the cargo holds, examining the rudder, etc. and headed back to the mooring line after about 12 minutes on the bottom. Our ascent went off without a hitch.
We swam back to the dinghy that was rafted to the side of Onaway, and prepared to doff our harnesses so we could pass them up to Rob. It was my first time doing so in a BP/W other than for practice, and it was a piece of cake... no trouble at all.
Back on board, we stowed our gear and did a bit of sailing before heading back to the dock.
I rinsed my HID100 ballast in isopropyl, and left it out to dry overnight. I'll try to power it back on later this week, and see if there's any life left in it. The drysuit inflator is going in for service... the spare part I had was almost right, but not quite.
We slid our paperwork to log the dive plan with the Lake Champlain Underwater Historic Preserve System under their door before departure, and arranged a time slot on the mooring via VHF radio. We put on our exposure protection on board, but opted to stage the dive from the boat's inflatable dinghy, one at a time. I geared up first, pausing to fiddle with my drysuit inflator's extruded o-ring... to no avail. I put a bit of gas in my suit on the surface, and figured I'd just briefly reconnect the inflator once I was at depth to take the squeeze off. That worked out okay, although it did let some (thankfully fresh) cold water in. Once I had that project abandoned, I asked Rob to pass me my (just back from the factory) UK HID100 light, which I immediately realized I hadn't tied a bolt snap to. We secured a lanyard to it, and I went over a few last checks befoe I gracefully flung myself sideways into the water. Several minutes later, Brian joined me and we headed to the mooring ball, caught our breath, and started our descent.
It was my first freshwater dive on a "real" pristine wreck (Not counting the Field & Sea), and I have to say it was pretty awesome to see the deadeyes, masts, rigging, tiller, etc. all still where they came to rest. As I looked though, it occurred to me that Bri's Princeton Tech handheld was throwing a lot more light than my HID100, so I took a quick peek at the bulb to see if there was a problem. The water sloshing around the bulb told me there was, so I shut off the light, gave it the bird, and switched to my trusty photon torpedo backup. We circled the wreck twice, peeking into the cargo holds, examining the rudder, etc. and headed back to the mooring line after about 12 minutes on the bottom. Our ascent went off without a hitch.
We swam back to the dinghy that was rafted to the side of Onaway, and prepared to doff our harnesses so we could pass them up to Rob. It was my first time doing so in a BP/W other than for practice, and it was a piece of cake... no trouble at all.
Back on board, we stowed our gear and did a bit of sailing before heading back to the dock.
I rinsed my HID100 ballast in isopropyl, and left it out to dry overnight. I'll try to power it back on later this week, and see if there's any life left in it. The drysuit inflator is going in for service... the spare part I had was almost right, but not quite.
