Stage One & Bridge Span 14 09/16/2006

[Rick Murchison]

I picked up me a camera for underwater to give this type of photography a try

Great! Looking forward to seeing what you get
Rick

 

[mwhities]

UR,

Great pics. I would love to try my hand (literally) at some underwater photography. Between you and SBM, I may go and get a small camera setup once I get evrything else caught up.

Maybe one of these days, next few months, we could meet up and I could follow you around on a few dives. SBM swims to fast... (Or I just suck.) (Go with the latter..)

Michael

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Mike, its that 'lucky fin' of yours Just kidding man Just gotta get your trim and weights straightened out and get some UW time under your belt and you'll be flying around like everyone else!

 

[mwhities]

Yeah, my poor nub "lucky fin" gets a lot of slack with everything.

Ohh, don't worry. I'm sure after the wedding/cruise, you may get tired of me.

Michael

 

[The Kraken]

Rick,
How do you get your pics inserted into your posts???

the K

 

[Tom Smedley]

Here's my prize for the trip...

 

[Tom Smedley]

Stage I was constructed in 1957 and put in service in January of 1958. The structure looked somewhat like an oilrig. The laboratory on Stage I was 105 feet by 105 feet and weighed 718 tons. It was 13 miles offshore and the water depth around the rig was 107 feet. The structure rose 40 feet above the water and was designed to allow helicopter landings to transfer personnel and equipment. Scientists and support crew stayed on the structure for up to 30 days at a time. After dozens of storms and the weathering effect of salt water on metal - the Stage was declared unsafe for overnight habitation in 1980. It was dismantled in 1984 and the last charges were set on August 9th. The buildings on top of the structure were dismantled and dumped in another location. The legs were blown off about 60 feet beneath the surface and the top part of the tower toppled.

This left a mess of pipe. Once I went to the bottom and followed a pipe for a ways and came up on another square structure. I confidently came to the top of the pipes and went all the way around looking for the anchor. Oops. I peered into the distance and saw a cloud of bubbles rising and shot a heading. As I swam across I gradually heard the generator running on the Island Diver.

I just sat there for a minute and felt grateful that I did not have to free ascend and do the swim of shame. Stage One is a confusing place and if there is a current running across the top it makes things worse. The beauty of the colorful encrustations and great number of fish make the dive well worth it though.

For the past few times we have seen an Oscellated Frogfish that is really an old cromudgeon and not afraid of anyone. The Blue Angels are also not afraid and put on a really good show.

Did you have as much trouble navigating stage 1 as I did? That thing is huge and it all looks the same. Here is some video I took when I first dove it.

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Rick,
How do you get your pics inserted into your posts???

the K

{img}www.krackenspics.com/mugshot.jpg{/img}

Just use square brackets in place of the brackets above

 

[Tom Smedley]

My provider gives me web space where I created a simple photo album page. I had some results with Mat's code but sometimes it failed. Rick showed me the icon

If you click on that and paste the URL it comes up as a picture but you have to have it on a web page first.

 

[Rick Murchison]

Rick,
How do you get your pics inserted into your posts???

Tommy & Suprbugman answered it - just use the

in the editing tools line above the posting box and insert the address to the picture. I just load 'em onto my own webpage (you can see 'em all on www.murchison.bz under the "Some pictures" tab on the home page)
Rick