Freeze-a-palooza

[Fondueset]

I dive in the same water temps here in a 5mm elios black shadow suit - with some cheap parkway 5mm boots and 6.5 mm henderson gold core gloves. I generally stay pretty comfortable. In fact alot of times it takes about 45 minutes for my toes to finally warm up after the walk to the site. I also use a henderson ice mask which eliminates the intial face hit and seems to save alot of body heat overall.

Last weekend the air was pretty cold and windy and I got a bit chilled before getting in- about the time I had to get out and head home I was starting to feel really comfortable
Air temp here just got REALLY cold - 0f this am - warmed up to 8 now with alot of wind. I'm thinking ice flows!!

 

[iceselkie]

]Sounds like wicked fun..just got back from my first ice dive today. Don't have any cool underwater shots, but everyone liked my snow carvings.. and then we had to pull this SCUBA diver out... j/k this is my good buddy Dale!!
Sorry no shots of me, too busy diving!

 

[Jon]

Looks like you had some fun there Brianna!

One more word about wetsuits.

Nylon out suits are much stronger and don't fall apart as fast as smoothskin suits- which makes them much better for wreck diving and spearfishing where you scramble over rocks.

However, for shear warmth, a smoothskin out suit will keep you warmer under conditions like these. That's because the outer layer dries so fast and there's no moisture trapped there sucking away your body heat- especially if there's any kind if wind.

This is something that we have to tell new divers all the time out on the charter boat, in Lake Michigan, in the summertime. Just because your wetsuit heats you up before your first dive doesn't mean it will keep you warm during your surface interval. It's always best to take those, nylon out, suits off in-between dives and let them dry out while you put on dry clothes while we motor to the next dive site. We can always tell who listend to us too, because those who didn't make very short second dives while those who did dive almost as long on the second dive as the first.

IF you've ever used a drysuit and seen the difference between ice dives of a Viking (all rubber) suit compared to a neoprene (nylon covered suit) it's pretty dramatic. The Vikings dry off in minutes, while the neoprene suits get covered in a nice layer of ice. This is also the reason so many dive teams use them since they can be de-contaminted a whole lot easier than fabric covered suits.

Having said all of this, I have wetsuits that I use for spearfishing (5mm,nylon-backed) and a special suit I use just for ice diving (6mm,opencell/smoothskin).


Jon

 

[Fondueset]

Tomorrow I have to go do a photo shoot for the local newspaper. It's been extremely cold and windy - not at all the sort of weather I'd normally dive in. I plan to wear a windbreaker and nylon warm-up pants over my suit to avoid, as much as possible, the wicking effect. It's really pretty noticeable - even across you back if your out in open water with a stiff breeze on a really cold day.

 

[iceselkie]

Definitly, if you have a nylon outer and it's wet between dives it will be a colder suit. I've seen some of those guys in the rubber suits; they have been reccommended to me by an icediver I know in QC. If I was going to have a few suits (down the road) I would absolutely make sure one was a smoothskin. For now, because I want it to last, it's nylon outer: the same icediver reccommended wearing a full body Mustang suit overtop to stay warm between dives.

 

[Fondueset]

Great dive today - except somebody called the cops on us ?! Must've thought we were mining the harbour.

Went in at the boat launch to make things easier for the photographer. It was 24f out with a stiff breeze - I stayed in about an hour - never got cold at all - even after getting out - wind is not really a problem if you just wear a windbreaker. I don't generally have a problem in my black shadow suit anyway until I take the hood off - mild chill if I'm exposed for 20 minutes or so without some kind of wind shell. My legs normally never get cold but I can see where warm up pants could help if you were out on a boat.

The amazing thing is my daughter went in her 3mil 'summer' suit - plush lined and has a separate hood!! She did great - stayed in about 20 minutes! First shot is before she figured out the gloves need to be tucked in.

 

[iceselkie]

Wow! Nice photos!

 

[Fondueset]

heres a shot of the newspaper Photographer from u/w ....
be interesting to see what they do with the article. Another sky shot - mostly just big logs down about 10 meters or so - used to be a lumber port.

 

[jimdoe2you]

:vangry You guys and your ice diving!!!

I'm down here breaking a sweat just walking outside to my car because it's 87 degrees out!

Oddly, ya'll probably want to switch with me because your sick of the snow, well I'm sick of 11 month long summers!

(just letting off steam, .............pun intended)

 

[land shark]

no no It's Ok you keep the hot weather. The really nice part about the cold weather is all the Tourists go home. and we get it all to ourselves MUhahaha.

o yea did I mention all those babes parading around in parkas hacha!!

 

[Fondueset]

Righto - it's fabulous here april through june and again end of august through november - clear waters and tons of fish. Another Great dive today with some cool pictures of this fish-shaped ice flo taken from a ways down.

 

[Fondueset]

Another nice dive today

Stopped by the local scuba shot to drop off a dvd of my u/w pics and buy some weights. The guy who owns it told me about a wreck just offshore nearby so I checked it out. Also ran into a lonely carp. Check the bottom of my site for more wreck shots.

 

[Jon]

That's pretty cool. Does the wreck have a name?

How far are you from Manitou? There are a bunch of shallow wrecks along the shore and out on both of the islands. It would be pretty easy for you and your daughter to dive them.

Jon

 

[Fondueset]

It does, but I don't know what it is - I think it may have been a tug. It's about 10 meters outside one of the buoys marking a public swimming area - right after a very abrupt drop off.

We're about 30 miles from leland - where the manitou ferry is based. Plan to do a camping trip out there this spring and visit the Francesco Morazon - a grounded freighter off the south end of the island. Should be pretty cool !

The water in this part of the bay - today at least, was not as clear as the south end (west side) and judging from weed growth there are alot more nutrients in the water. I could see plenty of sign of carp feeding in the area and Jack at the scuba shop said he'd seen lake trout in the marina while working on bubblers.

 

[Jon]

I assume your north of Leland?

There's a bunch of stuff along the lslands and the passage or even down south byfrankport. I don't see much north until you get to Lake charelvoiux where there a wreck in 35'-50'.

Jon

http://www.michiganshipwrecks.com/manitou.htm#Francisco Morazan

 

[Fondueset]

Traverse City - South and East. We're right at the base of Grand Traverse Bay. (Actually about 4 miles West of TC) The one in the pics is actually right in west bay near the Bay West Marina.

 

[khel]

Fondueset, it's always a pleasure to browse your gallery, keep them coming! I think I'm going to spend much more time on Lake Michigan this year

btw, isn't that a burbot??

or is "freshwater ling cod" just a different name for it?
Oh, and I heard that they are tasty

 

[Fondueset]

Thanks.
Right. I'm hoping to find some healthier ones this spring - that one was a good subject - but a bit under the weather.

 

[Fondueset]

Went again to the same location yesterday. It was glassy calm and went from 5f to 42 by noon. I wanted to check the visibility there again to see if the lack of wind made any difference. Vis was the same - probably 50-60 feet around the wreck. Alot more suspended particles in the water and way more plants and stuff than where I've been diving most. That spot has really spoiled me with phenomenal visibility.

This was a fairly miserable dive. 1/2 inch of ice overhead made me nervous- so as I swam under it to get out to the clear water over the wreck I felt the need to stop every 5 or 10 meters or so and punch a hole through - making sure I had enough reserve to make it back if it turned out to be too thick. The stuff was pretty much invisible on the surface so i swam edge-on into drifting pieces a few times - cutting up my forehead a little. Amazing the psychological effect on breath hold of ice overhead - I felt out of breath 10 feet under the ice - but very comfortable at 50 on the wreck..

It's an interesting spot - I'd like to explore around the big breakwall near that marina some more but the vis around it was relatively poor - have to wait and see how it looks this summer. I'll finish photographically documenting a year around the Clinch Breakwall this summer - then on to the next thing

 

[Jon]

Sound like fun.

I check our local lake on Saturday and the whole thing was frozen over, eve the outelt for the first time in the 6 years that I have lived here! Last weekend the lake was 1/2 open and you could have sailed a boat across it! We got dumped on with snow last night, it's actually snowing again right now, but it should hit 50 by the end of the week.

Be careful with that ice stuff. We had a couple of deaths here a few years back in one of the quarries when some scuba divers went down in an are of wide open water and the wind blew the ice over the top of them while they were under- they never mad eit out alive. I know that it is less likly to happen when freediving but still something to be very aware of. I know that your going abou it safely, we just want to keep seeing those great photos you've been taking!

Any idea what wreck your on in the 50' section? One of the neatest wrecks I've ever dove is just to the north of you. She's called the Cayuga and she sits in aobut 95' of water. She's a few hundred feet long and, at least on scuba, you can swim her full length on a couple of different deck levels. She even has a salvage barge sunk next to her from the early 1900's- rumor hasit that there's a hardhat diver still buried underneath that barge as well!

Jon