A quarry dive is a dive. Do it. Log it. Count it.
But remember...
The
first time you're on a crowded 6-pack, fifteen miles from land, and you've been hurling breakfast and then dry heaving the whole hour trip out, and they just spent another half hour setting the hook while you were struggling to get your dry suit on in 4-6 seas, overheating while the cold spray is stinging your face, and there's a ripping current with 5-foot viz, and you're slinging a bail-out bottle for the first time, with more weight than you're used to, and you're about to do your first "Jersey Roll" over the side into choppy 45deg water, when you notice that you're "buddy" who hit the water just a second ago is long gone, and you're praying that the 50' boat doesn't slam down on you after you hit the water, and you're hoping that if you don't get to the downline to the Carolina rig quick enough that you can at least grab the trail line before the current takes you past the ball, and you're trying to remember which compass heading to follow because the wreck was wire dragged and depth-charged sixty years ago so it's nothing more than scattered hull plates, and then once you get down to 90' it's not only snotty viz but "night-dive" dark, and you're all alone, hoping you can find your way back to the anchor at the end of the dive without getting tangled in your wreck reel, so you can do your ascent on the line, otherwise you'll need to shoot a bag in the middle of the ocean and hope that the boat sees you, and that you don't drift even further away while you're doing your safety stop, puking through your regulator, and when you finally do get back to the boat you need to perfectly time your exit with the boat hopping +/- eight feet so you don't have the ladder crack your skull, and you're struggling to get your fins on and up every step, so you don't fall off, potentially getting swept past the ball again, so you can get to the top without pinching a finger off as the metal ladder repeatedly crashed into the boat, and climb over the transom with 100lbs of gear on, shuffle back across the crowded deck back to your 18" of space on the bench, with what little gear you could bring aboard stuffed into a milk crate under your seat, so you can get out of your rig, while not slipping on the deck or tripping on scattered gear as the boat is still tossing, in order to get your BC off your first tank and onto your second, changing your regs over, with both tanks bungied to the rail so that they don't fall and break someone's foot, while you try to make sure your mask doesn't go overboard, because you just remembered that your backup is in your trunk which is not across the parking lot but back at the dock, and you're starving but forgot to bring anything to eat and there's no snack bar on a boat, and the captain is now trying to get everyone back in the water for the second dive because he wants you back on board by 11am so he can slam you around for an hour while you're breaking down and stowing your gear at 20kts to get back to the dock in time for you to get all your crap off the boat in about 30 seconds without forgetting anything, and wondering how much to tip the crew...
"I don't think we're in a quarry anymore..."
All the time spent in the quarry has prepared you for this dive to
some extent, but know that - like any new environment - this is your first dive like this!
Brutus,
