Millbrook Conditions

[McCainiac]

Anyone been out yet this year?

 

[tedwhiteva]

two weeks ago - 43 degress, vis 3 feet down to 20 feet, then 15 feet vis below that

 

[BauderDesign]

I was out there two weeks ago for my OW certification and vis was about 7 feet down to 30 feet and water temp was 48 degrees

 

[banessi]

Did advanced with some students a few weeks ago. 40 degrees at 80 feet. About 25 feet vis at the plane, 20 feet vis at the shelf above the plane at around 60 feet with 45 degrees. Vis was pretty bad of the beach 2 platform (around 10) feet all the way from 30 the surface.

 

[BauderDesign]

Heading back out there on sunday to do my advanced I will let you know the conditions

 

[Pedro Burrito]

I finally made the trip to Millbrook today. 84 degree air temp, 82 degrees at the surface, 54 degrees at 30 feet at the third platform near Beach 2 and 42 degrees at the airplane at 60 feet. Visibility was about 5 feet until you got below 50 feet then it was 10 feet.

I can now say that I've been there and it's unlikely that I'll do it again.

 

[Tide19]

I have to agree with your assessment of Millbrook. It's not the temps that bother me, it's the vis. I've done Millbrook and Hyde's and the visibility at Hyde's was better IMO, even with a couple of classes going off the dive platforms.

I've only been out to Millbrook once, but speaking with a couple of local instructors, the conditions we had (5' or less vis, maybe 10' in a couple of spots) was pretty standard. Hyde's felt more like 10'-15'. The real bummer is that Hyde's isn't deep enough to do an AOW class in, so all of the local shops run them out of Millbrook.

I've heard the case for learning to dive in the those type of conditions, but my buddy and I decided to deal with the drive and hotel and do our AOW at Dutch Springs instead.

Has anyone done AOW out at Millbrook? Did you get anything out of it?

 

[davetowz]

Millbrook is ideal for the nav dives. You cannot cheat and just look for your original starting place. I like Millbrook as the place I spent my first 25 dives, I am very comfy in cold dark limited vis conditions. I prefer better conditions but am not bothered by deep dark cold diving. I give a lot of credit for that to developing early as a diver in a place like Millbrook.

 

[Tide19]

That's a very good point about the navigation at Millbrook. When I was out there, my buddy and I played around with setting a course from the dive platforms and swimming for 5 to 10 minutes, and then trying to set a return course and hit the dive platform. Made it the first time, but missed the second.

Although I wouldn't want to do 5 dives there for the AOW, I can see the value in doing some Nav training there.

 

[ChaosHokie]

Has anyone done AOW out at Millbrook? Did you get anything out of it?

So I took my AOW at Millbrook.

The deep dive was very "blah", I think we hit 65'.

Peak Performance Buoyancy was ok, but I'm not sure if being in a nicer location would have made a difference.

Wreck was interesting, because we were checking out a 15' "wreck".

Nav was great, because you couldn't cheat. My buddy on her square nav profile got lost and wound up swimming in circles until I spotted a landmark and we followed it back in. It's also a lot harder to maintain buoyancy in the soup because there aren't very many visual clues.

We also did Search and Recovery, which was crazy hard to do in the quarry, learned a ton about task loading.