ABFT-DT Dives 252 and 253

After a five month hiatus, I finally got back in the water today.

While not nearly as warm nor as tropical as my last two dives these were pretty good.

I got an invite from my old dive instructor to come along with him and some other divers to Whitestar Quarry just to go get in the water and kick around.

The other divers were all pretty new - one had five dives, another 30, so taking them through the Whitestar Quarry tunnel was right out.

First we passed by a bicycle:

Then we swam by a dog peeing on a hydrant:

Imagine swimming by that if you were narced. Since it was only at about 40 feet, no one had any narcosis, but it sure causes most divers to do a double-take when they see it for the first time.

We then went to the crusher building and showed the newbies the entrance to the tunnel:

The tunnel entrance beckoned most invitingly, but it will wait for another time.

We then came out of the rock crusher building the way we came. Note how the new divers are vertical in the water - a sure sign of new divers who are taking their vertical position on land and adapting it to the aquatic environment. More experienced divers get horizontal for streamlining.

Then we swam back and that was the end of dive one.

Dive Time: 39 minutes

Maximum depth: 66 feet

Water Temp: 70 degrees

psi used: 1,000

For dive two I was paired up with one of the new divers who now had 6 dives to his log book.

He had some problems at the outset, having reduced the amount of weight he was carrying based on an instructor's suggestion as he had way to much during dive one - unfortunately he took too much out and could get down. No problem, he just held onto the manifold of my double tanks and I was the express elevator getting him to depth.

The other newer diver wanted to shoot some compass courses so we followed along.

Here she is shooting a compass course

We saw rocks

We saw more rocks

We saw trees and rocks

Having encompassed all the rocks that could be seen on that heading, we headed back having basically swam right across the quarry.

Things then began to get slightly interesting.

Not only was the diver with 6 divers running low on air, his low air state further reduced his weight (yes, air has weight when it's in a scuba tank) and he promptly popped to the surface from 20 feet.

I went up and got him and after making sure he was ok, brought him back down but he really couldn't stay down unless he went deeper and used more air, for as soon as he hit 25 feet he'd start to porpoise for the surface. So after a bit of kicking around trying to get him to a happy medium without running him out of air, we finished the dive with a surface swim back to the entry point.

Dive Time: 39 minutes

Maximum depth: 48 feet

Water Temp: 70 degrees

psi used: 1,000 (including some used during the surface swim.)

Not a bad couple of dives to get back into the scuba of things.