Saturday I went down to the local Scuba Shop to buy some of the 1lb weights they had a pile of. I'm pretty darned happy about these weights - they do not flare out during monofin acceleration like my two pound weights and they have about half the profile.
I got into a conversation with Jack - the former owner of the shop; who still works there. He invited me to join a bunch of scubies for an ice dive on a wreck called the Keuka - which is up in Lake Charlevoix - about 50 miles north of where I live. I've never done a serious through-the-hole ice dive before.
While we were talking - he told me the story of the Keuka - which is a wooden freighter from the late 1800s and is about 180 feet long.
Here's my transliteration:
(water was 1.2c - according to my TOTALLY FREAKIN AWESOME LIQUIVISION XEN)
We walked about 800 meters out on the ice - it was a beautiful day. Air was about -5C, slight wind, bright sun. I never even got close to getting cold.
The scubies each have a tender - who manages their teather on the surface - and they stay down about 20 minutes. So they applied the same protocol to me - which gave me about 4 dives. (Normally this time of year I'd do about 30 and be in for 90-120 minutes.)
All too brief though it was, I was grateful for the opportunity and my thanks to Jack and the other divers and to Scuba North - which hosted the dive.
I was pretty sure I'd be comfortable under the ice, but you never know - so my first dive was straight down and up. Next one I wandered around a little and on the third I swam quite a ways out under the ice. I've wondered about the peculiar comfort I feel holding my breath under water. It seems to increase with depth and the ice above me had the same effect. I kept the dives short, but I did swim out to the end of my teather - about 100 feet from the hole. It was awesome under there and the Keuka is a very interesting wreck - lots of hatches to swim through and a mostly solid deck which is about 20 or so feet up off the 45 foot bottom depth.
With so few dives I only got two decent pictures - and none of the wreck.
I got into a conversation with Jack - the former owner of the shop; who still works there. He invited me to join a bunch of scubies for an ice dive on a wreck called the Keuka - which is up in Lake Charlevoix - about 50 miles north of where I live. I've never done a serious through-the-hole ice dive before.
While we were talking - he told me the story of the Keuka - which is a wooden freighter from the late 1800s and is about 180 feet long.
Here's my transliteration:
(water was 1.2c - according to my TOTALLY FREAKIN AWESOME LIQUIVISION XEN)
We walked about 800 meters out on the ice - it was a beautiful day. Air was about -5C, slight wind, bright sun. I never even got close to getting cold.
The scubies each have a tender - who manages their teather on the surface - and they stay down about 20 minutes. So they applied the same protocol to me - which gave me about 4 dives. (Normally this time of year I'd do about 30 and be in for 90-120 minutes.)
All too brief though it was, I was grateful for the opportunity and my thanks to Jack and the other divers and to Scuba North - which hosted the dive.
I was pretty sure I'd be comfortable under the ice, but you never know - so my first dive was straight down and up. Next one I wandered around a little and on the third I swam quite a ways out under the ice. I've wondered about the peculiar comfort I feel holding my breath under water. It seems to increase with depth and the ice above me had the same effect. I kept the dives short, but I did swim out to the end of my teather - about 100 feet from the hole. It was awesome under there and the Keuka is a very interesting wreck - lots of hatches to swim through and a mostly solid deck which is about 20 or so feet up off the 45 foot bottom depth.
With so few dives I only got two decent pictures - and none of the wreck.
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