Dive 244 - Drills In Union Lake

Union Lake is getting colder, but the visibility is yet to improve, and some people are still putting their boats in and kicking up the bottom.

The lake was a consistent 52 degrees from the surface to 34 feet, which is as deep as we went today.

Pretty decent sized group diving today: Keith, Chad, Maki, Jeff, Fred and myself.

Today was also an opportunity to watch Chad and Keith drill the heck out of Fred as he's off to take a cave diving class in Florida in November, and they'll be going down to Florida with him to do some more advanced cave classes.

On the way out we passed the paddle boat

Then we tied off the flag

So Fred got to start to run a line

At 9 minutes into the dive:

Then they started beating on him:

That's a simulated valve failure where the other diver runs his primary regulator non-stop beside Fred's valve post. He needed to diagnose the problem and shut down the valve and go to his backup, which he did quite well.

Next they went out of air on him:

The out of air diver is in front breathing off Fred's primary long-hose, with Fred on his backup necklace regulator.

Fred did a good job the whole time.

Once that calmed down, Jeff and I did some valve drills.

Then we all stopped by the mirror to see how good we looked.

The mirror rests against the frame of a Model T:

Then it was time to untie the flag and head in.

I had my heated vest on under my drysuit and it helped chase the chill away, except by the end of the dive my hands were getting quite cold.

72 minutes of diving in 52 degrees of water - A good, cold dive full of good clean fun.