Condition report: Chester Poling 7-23-05

[mer]

Beautiful day, flat seas (under 1'), and just a little wind from the Westish or NWish.

At high tide (pretty much slack), just surface wind blow current.
Bottom 45 deg, thermocline around 25', vis 30'+ (second best vis I've had on the Poling)
Lumpfish, huge flounder, and the annemonaes are huge this season.
Lots of fishing gear off the stern.

At tide running out, surface wind current and tidal current at all depths.
Same temps, bottom vis down a little (20'ish)

 

[mello-yellow]

Do you dive wet or dry? At Poling depth, 45 F in a wetsuit is... unpleasant.

 

[mer]

Do you dive wet or dry? At Poling depth, 45 F in a wetsuit is... unpleasant.

Is there anything other than dry?
I find, as long as I'm well hydrated, I'm good for at least 30 mins in 45 deg with 400g thinsulate... after that it's more of a issue with the hands (even with drygloves).

 

[JimJam]

mer-

Just to make you feel even better, I dove the poling Sunday and the currents on the first dive were ridiculous. We caught it just before slack tide, and it was still ripping. Vis was pretty good, but there were 3 boats at the time of our first dive tied up and diving...and there were a few divers with "issues" that made the ascent/descent line a real "experience" When we popped up the other two boats were gone, current had calmed on the second dive, so it made it worth the 3.5 hour trip for me. My buddy was shooting video, and he got some pretty decent shots.

 

[ScubaSarus]

Vis is kicking as# compared to diving in the Narrangansett bay. Seems the bay is really crudy lately. Glad to see you had a great dive

 

[PeaceDog]

I was diving with JimJam on sunday. We had two great dives, and we were joined by two first-timers who were from vermont. really nice folks, with a greater tolerance for cold than I - they were in wetsuits.

I personally don't think that the current was that bad on the first dive, but then again I've been out there when it's really nasty. There was certainly one running, But I was surprised to see so many mishaps that day on that site. The CAD II had someone pop to the surface prematurely and needed to be picked up by us and brought back over, and I don't even think the DayBreaker's people went down, because I never saw anyone else on the wreck but the four of us from CAD. Was a very weird vibe rolling up to the dive site and seeing so much chaos and traffic on the surface.

Once we got in the water, though, we had 2 beautiful dives, with vis approaching 25-30'. Massive difference in temperature, about 13 degrees from the deck to 15'. My video housing was not happy.