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.

Dive 187 - White Star Quarry

For Dive 187, Keith and I went to White Star Quarry in Ohio.

Benefits of the quarry over Union Lake include greater depth and much clearer water with attendant improvements in visibility.

Another benefit was that there was even a cell phone if you had to make a call:

Unfortunately the reception was pretty lousy.

White Star is run basically on the honor system: you put $15 in an envelope and put it in the payment tube and keep a tear-off receipt from the envelope to be placed on the window of your car. The system works well, and there's random checks from the park rangers to make sure people paid their entry fee. So we paid our fees, filled out the paperwork and off we went.

Its quite a nice quarry and the water was warm, 77 degrees at the surface and 59 degrees at depth.

There's the usual stuff in White Star, a sunken sailboat, fish, some trees and other things, but the main attraction is the subterranean tunnel between the old rock crusher and the block house.

This photo shows the stairwell leading down in the crusher:

Ending at around 73 feet deep at the crusher and rising up to 38 feet, this square concrete tunnel is pitch black inside, requiring lights, a redundant air supply (in our case double tanks with manifold and two regulators), and some training to travel through. It is rather large, easily fitting two divers swimming wing-on-wing without either diver touching the walls, ceiling or floor which is helpful in preventing the tunnel from being silted out and losing all vision inside it.

Here's what it looked like:


As you can see, it was dark in the tunnel, with no outside illumination until you reached near the end.

Overhead environments underwater are no place to go unless you have the training, breathing gas supply, and redundant light sources to handle that kind of environment. After all, if something goes wrong, you can't just make a bolt for the surface (which you really shouldn't do even if you are in an non-overhead underwater), you need to solve the problem right where you are.

When you see one light make a circle with the other light making a circle in reply, that was an underwater question "Are you OK?", with the prompt response "I'm OK". Lights can be for communication as well as illumination.

The tunnel was pretty cool and good training in an overhead environment, and we spent a full 60 minutes underwater exploring the quarry after we did the tunnel.