Sunday, May 26, 2013

Dive 234 Memorial Weekend Sunday Dive

Today was a beautiful day to go diving.

I met up with Chad and Keith at the Union Lake boat dock. The sun was shining, it was warm but not hot, and only a few boats were on the water.

My suit was back from having a new TIZIp zipper installed and being pressure tested for leaks, I had freshly re-webbed my dive harness, my tanks were freshly serviced and I was ready to go diving.

The dive did not disappoint. Putting my dry-suit on, I marveled at how much easier the TIZIp zipper is to close than the old YKK that used to be on it - it was very easy to close, no feeling of fighting the zipper to get it shut, nor an early stop like on the YKK where you think its shut but if you don't check you'll find out the hard and wet way that its not quite closed. The harness was a bit snug but I'll loosen it up a bit later and trim the webbing down accordingly as now there's way too much - however I've learned my lesson that you can cut more later, but you really can't add it back once you've cut it.

In the water everything was great - I had excellent buoyancy control, good trim and just had a fun time fining around. The harness and suit felt real good and I was nicely in control.

We had a nice long dive, out past the north boat into deeper water. We spent some time around the Skippy boat - a 20 footer on its nose deep in the mud, jutting out like a monolith. Very cool to come up on it out of the gloom. We then had fun ascending up one side and then back down the other. We were starting to get a little chilled as the temperature was about 46 degrees - still better than the low thirties in winter, but it started feeling cool after such a long dive.

We then headed back to our entry point, did a deco stop at 20 feet, watching the sun's rays shine in the water, and then slowly ascended up to the surface to end a fantastic dive.

The best part - I was nice and dry getting out of the suit and everything worked just as it should which was very happy making.

Max depth: 52 feet

Time: 68 minutes

Water temp: varied from 46 at the bottom to 60 at the surface.

A great dive to start the open water season.

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