OW Cert. + PPB Cert :)

[rottielover]

First, I want to thank everyone here that's been supportive, my wife and I really appreciated your words of encouragement!

We are now both Certified Open Water Divers, and Certified Peak Performance Buoyancy divers. (PADI)

Since we're in the Midwest we did our check out dives at Mermet Springs Quarry (Home of the 727 used in the movie "U.S. Marshals", www.mermetsprings.com).

VERY cool place to go diving IMO, they have many sunken "attractions" and guide ropes between the most popular ones. (Doing a safety stop on the top of a school bus is a bit more interesting than just hanging in the water )

Anyway, I want to thank our DM's and Instructors as they all did a WONDERFUL job with all us students, and my wife and I were really impressed by the spoonbill, catfish, and bluegill we saw.


So I just want to encourage anyone out there reading this and thinking about trying out diving, find a local shop and inquire about a "Discover SCUBA Experience". That's how my wife and I got started, it's an easy way to "try it out" and see if you think scuba is right for you.

 

[fishoutawater]

All Right Rottie!! Congrats to you and your wife! And welcome to your new addiction. Best kind to have.

So how 'bout the dives there? Visibility? How deep is the thermocline?
Everything go as planned? Any anxious moments? General observations?

I'm going down there one of these days.

 

[rottielover]

So how 'bout the dives there? Visibility? How deep is the thermocline?

The dives were great. We were the first one's in on Sat Morning and vis was wonderful nearly 30 ft. As the day wore on, and more and more divers got in the water, the worse the vis got until by Sun. evening it was down too about 3 ft in the high traffic areas. The Thermocline seemed to move from 1 day to the next, on Sat it was about 25ft give or take, and then on Sunday it seemed to be right around 22 ft. The training platforms we were using were at 20ft so we mostly stayed out of the cold.

Everything go as planned? Any anxious moments? General observations?

Everything seemed to go off without a hitch from our point of view, I only had two really anxious moments and both were on our 5th dive (PPB dive 1). We were diving on tanks with about 1100 psi and 1500 psi left in them, the planned dive was 20 min @ 20 ft. on the platforms for perfecting our bouyancy. Then we were going to swim over to some "swim thru's" (PVC shapes). By the time we got over there we were both at about 450 or 500 psi in the AL80's and we were a bit underweighted. My wife slowly went from 20 ft to surface @ about a 20 ft./min acsent rate VERY slow ascent, but could not get back down for anything. Me on the otherhand... Well I'm watching from the platform as the instructor is trying to help her get back down, sitting there with the DM, I look at my gauge and see 400 psi, I take one more breath and WOOSH! I'm flying for the surface! I managed to yank my dump valve and that slowed me enough to where I was maybe 2ft below the surface. After that we called the dive and went back to the bench for more weight. We finished our final skills on the next dive so it wasn't a big deal, all I needed was another 3 lbs. on the tank and my wife needed 4 lb's on the tank.

The major difficulty we had was equipment related. We purchased Passport BC's which are lightweight and designed mostly for tropical temps (not a lot of spots for lead, and no trim pockets, just the quick release pockets). Add to that we both had our 7/5 mm wetsuits (I forgot to put the 3 mil shorties in the truck)... I was diving with about 20 lbs of lead and needed really needed 25, but there wasn't anyplace to fit the extra lead.

But this was all worked out on the next dive, so it really wasn't that big a deal.

The only other scary moment for me was that my wife was getting a little tired on Dive 5 (PPB dive 1) (same dive as above) about 5 min before we started bobbing like corks, she started to sink, and instead of hitting the power inflator button to add a slight puff of air, she hit the deflate and let some air out and started to sink like a rock. By the time I realized what happened she was quickly fading from view in the murk, I got the DM's attention and he rocketed after her, but luckily two things were on our side, the bottom was only 25ft at that spot, and 2 my wife relized what she had done and corrected, by the time the DM got there she was already on her way back up to my level, but it was a bit scary to see my wife sinking out of view and I couldn't get to her in time.

The next dive we did (PPB Dive 2) we did a "wall dive" to see some spoon bill. On that dive we were properly weighted, had full tanks, and this time I held onto her arm. That dive was much more fun mostly because I was relaxed, and there wasn't alot of skills to demonstrate.

All in all it was a very fun experiance, but we were also very tired afterwords, and we FORGOT to take any pictures!!!!! ARRRHHHGGG! LOL That's ok though, we only had a cheapie, 1time use to 25ft. camera. Besides, I probly would have dropped it LOL

I'm going down there one of these days.

Hit the website, they have a map of all the cool stuff out there. Also, If you want the run down on the local hotels, PM me. I can tell you that I stayed in a town about 7 miles away because the closer hotels are not as nice.

 

[theskull]

Sounds like a great experience, RL.

Welcome to the world of diving. Mermet is one of my favorite MW dive sites. Hope to run into you at some MW dive site this summer.

theskull

 

[fishoutawater]

Great dives! You and your wife's experiences are very typical. Just a matter of more downtime and you'll be pro's. Now when you dive in salt water, you'll have to figure in even more weight for that particular wetsuit. But with the 3mm shorties, you won't need much at all.

I tried one of those disposable 25' cameras once. I was only at about ten feet, squished the button for a picture, and the button wouldn't come back up until I came up to about 3'.
Useless.

 

[O'Malley]

Bravo! Group of us have been talking about making the 6 hour drive down to Mermet to check out the 727...sounds great!

 

[fishoutawater]

I'm game.
When we going?
I think I'm only about two hours from it.

 

[lord1234]

rottie: you should always head for the surface when you hit 500psi....not doing so can lead to unpleasantry...

 

[rottielover]

rottie: you should always head for the surface when you hit 500psi....not doing so can lead to unpleasantry...

Keep in mind that we were "using up" these tanks from the previous day (started the dive with about 1100 psi each), the plan was to do those swim thru's and then end the dive, we figured on having about 200 psi left in the tanks when done (those PVC shaped swim thru's are only in 5' of water).

I agree that normally you'd already be back on the boat with 500psi in the tank, but this wasn't normally.


Also wanted to tell you guys that the 727 is sitting right-side-up on an angle and the tail is at ~15' and the nose is in about 50' of water. At the tail that day the temp was about 78 F and at the nose the temp was about 50F (spring fed quarry, bottom temp is 42 F ). Really cool dive, just make sure you bring multiple wetsuits or even a drysuit if your going to be planning dives to multiple attractions... Our 7/5's were confortable for the plane dive with 7mm gloves and hoods. The rest of our shallow dives I really would have rather been in 3 mil shorties, but the 7/5's weren't that bad either.