Uncle Ernie
Guest
Yesterday and today I did my AOWD cert dives in the Media Luna lake (http://www.buceomedialuna.com/ing/index.html), in the mountains of central Mexico, about 3000' high. It's a water source with 3 craters, the deepest goes down to 100'. Water is fairly warm, some 85ºF, and there are petrified trees, some fish and turtles and plenty of mud, as well as a short cave with openings every ten feet or so. I was the only AOWD cert diver, but we had about 5 buddy teams doing OWD.
1st dive was deep and multi-level, we spent a few minutes at 100' (12 including decent) and I did some bottom math to show the effects of nitrogen... didn't go to bad. Then we ascended to 45' for some 20 minutes, and spent some 18 minutes between 10 and 20 feet to finish.
Later we snorkeled around to map the lake and after 2:30 SI, went down to repeat the surface swim underwater. I got lost big time because there weren't any visual references in one of the sectors I had to swim, about 200' long, I didn't pay attention to the compass and swam to fast. We had to surface, take a compass reading, descend and swim the sector backwards. When we got to the buoy marker I was aiming for, there was a big sign I didn't see before... a diver from another group was proposing to his gf, a good thing to see
After (late) lunch and waiting for the sun to set while floating idly in the warm water for an hour and a half, we went down around 8:15 for the night dive, which involved redoing the navigation I botched in daylight. I nailed it but I must confess I was quite worried. Then it was beer time!
Today's first dive involved burying a rock in the very muddy bottom and taking natural and compass references to find it later. We only spent 15 minutes including safety stop underwater, at 35', and did a 0:10 SI before going down again. In the second dive we started by looking for my rock, which I found promptly, a great thing since there was a $50 penalty for loosing it... then we went around the lake for 50 minutes, saw some turtles and took some pictures of the group. A thoroughly enjoyable dive!
We spent the afternoon offgasing for the drive back home, which involves climbing back up to 6000'. We got our test results and everything went fine, thus I achieved my first SB challenge, AOWD cert! :cool2:
1st dive was deep and multi-level, we spent a few minutes at 100' (12 including decent) and I did some bottom math to show the effects of nitrogen... didn't go to bad. Then we ascended to 45' for some 20 minutes, and spent some 18 minutes between 10 and 20 feet to finish.
Later we snorkeled around to map the lake and after 2:30 SI, went down to repeat the surface swim underwater. I got lost big time because there weren't any visual references in one of the sectors I had to swim, about 200' long, I didn't pay attention to the compass and swam to fast. We had to surface, take a compass reading, descend and swim the sector backwards. When we got to the buoy marker I was aiming for, there was a big sign I didn't see before... a diver from another group was proposing to his gf, a good thing to see
After (late) lunch and waiting for the sun to set while floating idly in the warm water for an hour and a half, we went down around 8:15 for the night dive, which involved redoing the navigation I botched in daylight. I nailed it but I must confess I was quite worried. Then it was beer time!
Today's first dive involved burying a rock in the very muddy bottom and taking natural and compass references to find it later. We only spent 15 minutes including safety stop underwater, at 35', and did a 0:10 SI before going down again. In the second dive we started by looking for my rock, which I found promptly, a great thing since there was a $50 penalty for loosing it... then we went around the lake for 50 minutes, saw some turtles and took some pictures of the group. A thoroughly enjoyable dive!
We spent the afternoon offgasing for the drive back home, which involves climbing back up to 6000'. We got our test results and everything went fine, thus I achieved my first SB challenge, AOWD cert! :cool2:
