Crazyduck
Contributor
Well, we had a nice day of diving on Saturday.
We left the house in Keller about 6:30am, hit McDonalds, filled up with gas $50.00 and headed down to Austin. The drive was nice and XM radio paid for itself in spades. Construction through Austin is getting monstrous- starting to look like Houston which is sad sight. I remember 10 years ago pulling onto FM620 and there was nothing noda, now- wow batman it’s insane.
By 11am we were at Mansfield Dam Park and found the main pavilion was open- hurrah! We stopped by and saw the guys- warming up a late breakfast snack, we chatted for a few minutes, drooled over there doubles and stage tanks-nice. Well, we unloaded 7 scuba tanks, 100lbs of weight, 2 play scooters, drysuits and wetsuits and HID lights- hummm, is this expensive sport? This gear was for five divers.
I bumped in to a gentleman form the board he stopped by with his daughter and we spent a few minutes talking about the lake and active things that are happening at the lake. He mentioned something about rebreathers
. It was very nice to chat with him and to meet his daughter- hope that the birthday parties went well! I will let him give his impression of our motley bunch and gear parade at the pavilion.
Wow, too much dive gear. So after parking the truck we did the standard dive site evaluation. I still have to resize the pic’s but the lake was down by about 20ft. :11: Walked down the “stairs of shame” and from the bottom step it was a good twenty vertical feet to the water. Wow, nothing like traipsing down 90 steps and then having to climb over boulders to get down to the water. Hopefully the Corp of Engineers will use this time to replace the boulders with rock stairs or pavers- HA…don’t hold your breathe. Windy Point would have been a better selection with at least two sets of deep stairs and platforms and multi levels of entries. Oh well….
We did a total of three dives nothing special- first dive was a refresher diver for the other two divers and a gear shack down for Heather, Austin and me. I had to adjust the outlet for my Poseidon second stage- once that was adjusted then I was good to go. Heather watched the divers and I made a drop to 75ft with no lights. The water was warm but visibility was not the best. Once the other two divers settled we did get them to about 35ft- (open water divers.) I made appropriate stops for my dive.
Second dive was Heather me and our fun bunny scooters. They worked out well, we dropped down to 81ft- could not see anything at that point and called the floor based on visibility plus the boat noise was awful. However, it was nice to be cruising a lot and just enjoying the view. Last dive was a training dive and was a basic dive.
Texas A&M dive group (Galveston) was onsite and they were practicing rescues and some other advanced diver class work. We had a nice chat with a few of the instructors; they were giving us a hard time about our toys, really nice group of people.
We finished diving as light dropped over the dam and the water started to get dark. We packed up the truck and everyone showered. It can be said that Mansfield has excellent changing facility- with heaters for cold days, and the showers are good. Only problem is getting the ladies out of the showwers. We headed out of the park, grabbed some Chinese buffet on the way back to the highway and then cruised home. We hit the house at about midnight. Thank heavens for Monsters (the drink) unloaded tanks, dive gear, wetsuits, emptied the cooler and crashed.
All and all a great day of totally recreational diving. Nice seeing the known convicts and meeting some new friends.
Regards, Andrew
We left the house in Keller about 6:30am, hit McDonalds, filled up with gas $50.00 and headed down to Austin. The drive was nice and XM radio paid for itself in spades. Construction through Austin is getting monstrous- starting to look like Houston which is sad sight. I remember 10 years ago pulling onto FM620 and there was nothing noda, now- wow batman it’s insane.
By 11am we were at Mansfield Dam Park and found the main pavilion was open- hurrah! We stopped by and saw the guys- warming up a late breakfast snack, we chatted for a few minutes, drooled over there doubles and stage tanks-nice. Well, we unloaded 7 scuba tanks, 100lbs of weight, 2 play scooters, drysuits and wetsuits and HID lights- hummm, is this expensive sport? This gear was for five divers.
I bumped in to a gentleman form the board he stopped by with his daughter and we spent a few minutes talking about the lake and active things that are happening at the lake. He mentioned something about rebreathers
. It was very nice to chat with him and to meet his daughter- hope that the birthday parties went well! I will let him give his impression of our motley bunch and gear parade at the pavilion. Wow, too much dive gear. So after parking the truck we did the standard dive site evaluation. I still have to resize the pic’s but the lake was down by about 20ft. :11: Walked down the “stairs of shame” and from the bottom step it was a good twenty vertical feet to the water. Wow, nothing like traipsing down 90 steps and then having to climb over boulders to get down to the water. Hopefully the Corp of Engineers will use this time to replace the boulders with rock stairs or pavers- HA…don’t hold your breathe. Windy Point would have been a better selection with at least two sets of deep stairs and platforms and multi levels of entries. Oh well….
We did a total of three dives nothing special- first dive was a refresher diver for the other two divers and a gear shack down for Heather, Austin and me. I had to adjust the outlet for my Poseidon second stage- once that was adjusted then I was good to go. Heather watched the divers and I made a drop to 75ft with no lights. The water was warm but visibility was not the best. Once the other two divers settled we did get them to about 35ft- (open water divers.) I made appropriate stops for my dive.
Second dive was Heather me and our fun bunny scooters. They worked out well, we dropped down to 81ft- could not see anything at that point and called the floor based on visibility plus the boat noise was awful. However, it was nice to be cruising a lot and just enjoying the view. Last dive was a training dive and was a basic dive.
Texas A&M dive group (Galveston) was onsite and they were practicing rescues and some other advanced diver class work. We had a nice chat with a few of the instructors; they were giving us a hard time about our toys, really nice group of people.
We finished diving as light dropped over the dam and the water started to get dark. We packed up the truck and everyone showered. It can be said that Mansfield has excellent changing facility- with heaters for cold days, and the showers are good. Only problem is getting the ladies out of the showwers. We headed out of the park, grabbed some Chinese buffet on the way back to the highway and then cruised home. We hit the house at about midnight. Thank heavens for Monsters (the drink) unloaded tanks, dive gear, wetsuits, emptied the cooler and crashed.
All and all a great day of totally recreational diving. Nice seeing the known convicts and meeting some new friends.
Regards, Andrew
