Thursday, August 28, 2008

Last Wednesday Night Dive of the Season

Dive Flags

Look at all those dive flags! If it's one thing that noticed, the local divers like to dive almost as much as they also like to eat! Tonight's dive was the end of the season cookout, as you can see the turn out was good. Diving and eating, that can hardly be beat, add the socializing and the stories and it really becomes a fun night.

Tonight, we tried something new. I hooked my GPS to my dive flag as we went on our dive. Becca was convinced I only swim in circles, so I felt it necessary to prove to her that I really do have a general idea what I'm doing. I wasn't sure how this would turn out, but I think it looks good. We did do some looping, but that was because we followed were the railroad tracks when we were down.

Here's our Path:
Gull Lake Dive Tracks

Anytime we find an object underwater, that's a major accomplishment for us. One of these days, we'll try to raise those expectations some, but for right now, finding something equals a high five. The railroad tracks proved the easiest object to find tonight. We also found what was left of a car, it looked like a Model T or what was left of Model T. I think I could have fit it in the glove box of my car! The highlight of the dive for me were the fish. We saw a number of schools and it was funny to approach a barrel only to have a fish come shooting out. My favorite moment was thinking that I found something shiny on the bottom only to find a good sized pike laying in the weeds. We startled it before we could get a picture of it, but I thought it was an awesome discovery! It did remind me of the barracuda we saw in Maui.

Here's a fish smaller hanging out:
Fish!

The food was great after our dive. Nothing better then surfacing and smelling BBQ! The evening ended with watching some video from our deep water dive in Gilboa. Luckily, Becca and I didn't get captured often because the videotographer was in the other group, which was a good thing because our form still needs work. But the video provided a number of laughs.

Haven't made our minds up yet which dive we are going to do this weekend, but I know we'll be getting wet again. Last dive of the season with the local people, but it won't be the last dive of the season for us!

Monday, August 25, 2008

Naui Advanced Class Weekend

Deep Dive

First, I'm disappointed we didn't get actual pictures from our weekend. The Gilboa Quarry really was a cool place to dive, there was so much to see. With the class and the required dives, it was difficult taking the camera, plus it was just another piece of gear to drag around and keep track of. Walking away from our weekend, that is the only thing I feel bad about, but I look at it as a reason to go back. So, the picture for this entry is my deep water dive profile for our trip, 77 feet down at a balmy 46 degrees!

This entry also comes with cliff notes, because it's going to get long and detailed. So, if you want the quick and short of our weekend here it is: First dive fun, second questionable, third wow lost, fourth laser light show, fifth deep and cold, and sixth a goat rodeo but fun. I'm sure we passed, we are both alive, and are tired from carrying gear and getting into wet wetsuits! We had a good time, learned some things and overall was a good experience. That's it for the quick and short, stop here if you don't want the details.

Dive 1
The first dive was a weight check. The purpose was to remain neutrally buoyant and hover about a foot off a platform around 20 ft under. Surprisingly, Becca and I both had our weights to the instructor's liking. There were a total of twelve advanced students and we were broken up into three groups of four. After all four of us were checked out, then the instructor picked me to lead the dive. My first question was why, because I had no idea what direction to go. So, I picked a direction and headed out. Of course, I picked the one direction that has no objects in it's path and leads directly to the wall that drops down to 120 feet. I was relieved as dive leader at this point, to a more logical choice of another person in our group who had dove here before. I was also criticized on the surface for swimming too fast! I can't help it if people can't keep up! I think my dad could out pace the other two underwater, so I don't feel bad.

Once on a course to find things, we did. Our first object was a pop machine, I didn't attempt to put any money in it because I figured I already dumped enough cash into this sport. Next was a plane. I have to admit, that was very cool. The instructor even let us go inside it. I did, after I bashed the top of my tank into the doorway with a nice underwater bang sound! There are fish everywhere in this quarry, tons of rainbow trout. Becca yelled at me, but I couldn't resist the urge to reach out and grab one. It wouldn't fit in my pocket, so I let it go.

The major event that will stick with us for the rest of our diving careers, is the fact that we lost one of our dive lights. Because we needed to do so many dives for this class in a short period of time, we got two additional tanks. With our previous lack of visibility in the local lakes, we got bright yellow tanks and put special underwater lights on them for our night dive which we would do later in the class. We had never used these tanks yet, so we decided to use them on our first dive to test them out and feel confident they would work for our night dive. They worked great, the issue became when Becca surfaced after our first dive and we were changing tanks, we realized her light was gone. Brand new light, never used, lost without even getting used! Talk about a bummer. Going back to the learning, lesson learned, attach the lights to the tank better!

Dive 2
Technically, this doesn't even qualify as a dive to me. The purpose was to snorkel around and try to dive deeper then you ever had before. Our first stop was out to a set of big truck tires suspended on a buoy making it possible to swim through them. I'm not exactly sure how far down they were, but I made it through the bottom tire and that was probably between 20 and 25 feet. I thought that was good enough and much deeper then I ever remember going before. Next, was a sunken boat with an entry in the cabin and a hole in the bow, the point being to swim in and through it. I did that as well, making sure to clear the hole in the bow, because it was a much smaller hole and I didn't want to become a permanent attraction. We went to a few other objects, but I didn't bother to dive down to them. My ears were already bothering me, plus we were in a very large group and three quarters of the people weren't even trying, so I figured why bother. As a whole, I thought the exercise was rather silly and would have rather got an actual dive in.

Here's the sunken boat:
Sunken Boat

Here's me about to swim through it:
Swimming In

Dive 3
This was the navigation dive. I thought this would be an easy dive, it proved anything but. By this time in the day, enough divers were in the water that the visibility was reduced from the thirty feet in the morning to a dismal eight feet at the most. That played a big factor in the underwater fiasco that was about to play out. On land we were given our course, four compass headings to locate clothes pins on various objects. Grab the pins, lap the course twice with each person navigating, come up with eight clothes pins total.

Becca has a touchy compass to begin with. It's nice that it's built in to her computer, but it's very difficult to operate and needs to be kept perfectly level to read the bearing. Then to make it even more difficult, for some reason they put the heading towards the bottom of the display which makes it hard to read. We knew this going in, but figured we could deal with it. We started out with her leading the way. I checked a couple times on my own compass to make sure we were heading the correct direction. We came to two guide wires for a platform first and swam between them, didn't see anything and kept going. Soon it became apparent to me that we must have passed the first point, so I gave the signal to turn around. Got back to the wires again, playing a hunch (probably my geocaching skills), I decided to check further west, sure enough on the third guide wire, there were a bunch of clothes pins. Yay, found the first one and although we over swam it, I felt good because it was only the lack of visibility that prevented us from finding it quickly.

At this point, I knew Becca was really struggling with her compass, so I took over navigating. I really didn't fair much better, for one thing it's surprising how much the compass is effected by metal. So after finding the first one, just the metal from the platform (which the wires were attached to) messed with the compass. Second object, the same thing happened as the first one. We were off just enough, probably only about ten to fifteen feet, where we swam right by it without seeing it. Again, had to turn around and waste time and air looking for it.

The third one was the worst. Again swam right by it, not once but twice. At this point Becca had a problem with her mask, so she went to the surface to fix it. I stayed below and watched her. As I was waiting, I got to thinking about the heading and the distance and really there was only one object in the general area which happened to be a motorcycle. Once Becca came back down, I headed us back to the motorcycle and I circled it one full time before I spotted the clothes pins. With the color of the bike and the color of the clothes pins, it was next to impossible to see them. Any more then a couple feet away and they were invisible. We had three out of four, but we were also getting low on air. I knew there was zero chance to have us both completely the drill and wasn't confident that we'd even get all four.

The fourth was more of the same, pass it, swim by it, turn around, circle it and find it. At this point I was just relieve to actually have all four. After the hunt for the third one and the time it took, I was sure we were coming up without finding them all. The most amazing part was after all the difficulty finding the clothes pins, I did get us back to the exact point we entered the water.

It wasn't a complete disaster, but it definitely was more challenging then I thought it would be. If the game ever becomes navigating accurately underwater, then we'll both get analog compasses. The ones we have are nice because we don't have to carry anything extra, but they are not the easiest to use. They will get the job done for what we need currently, but finding clothes pins in a large body of water, I'd prefer to have my gps!

Dive 4
This was the night dive, probably my favorite dive of the weekend. Becca did get a loaner light for the dive and we didn't loose it, so it was a successful dive just from that point. It was a free dive, so it was only Becca and myself and we had free reign to go wherever we wanted. We both like dives best where we can go explore on our own without a specific purpose. We went to the the plane first and looked for her lost light. She had bumped her tank exiting the plane, so we hoped to find it in that area, we did not. The helicopter was sweet. It's huge and has big doors on the front to load cargo (well now only divers and fish).

Next, we followed a line out into complete darkness. The line brought us out to sunken tubes that I can only describe as large drainage pipes. Up until this point, nothing has rattled me underwater, this was as close as it got. First, the water temp dropped as we got closer to them and the complete darkness made them feel very eerie to me. At one point my light hit a fish (I can only guess...or maybe it was a monster) and for a brief second I saw something white and moving. That freaked me out a little and it almost came to the point where I drew my knife, gutted Becca, and left her corpse for the monster as I made my escape. Luckily, for Becca's sake, I didn't see the monster again.

We headed back and found the majority of the other divers. It was almost like a laser light show as light beams could be seen all over the place. The only way to describe it is it reminded me of the scene in ET where all the action is taking place in the woods and light beams are flashing all around in a chaotic fashion. We surfaced and exited the water, it was fun to watch the light show from the surface as well. I so wish we could have got pictures of this.

This was the end of Saturday. Both of us were completely whipped from putting equipment on, taking it off, carrying it, moving it. It was a chore just getting back to the hotel and then we still had to log our dives, so basically homework!

Dive 5
The morning came way too fast. Our first dive of the day was our deep water dive. Looking around at the other divers, I wasn't the only one who could have used more sleep!

Looking at my profile, took about five minutes to get to 77 feet and I did have to slow down for my ears a little. Talk about an express elevator down, this was it. It was a cool dive and I mean that literally and figuratively. By the end, my fingers were numb. The wall of the quarry is almost a vertical face down to around 120 ft. It was strange to look below and see nothing but darkness, yet see a wall on our left side. For the record, Becca is gloating because she hit 80 feet to my 77. For the record, I think my buoyancy control is better and I stayed with the instructor better! That's my story and I'm sticking too it.

I'm glad that not only did we have an instructor with us, but also had a backup helper watching us from behind if there were any problems. One guy in the other group did have a freeflow problem. I'm very confident in my equipment and my dive buddy, but not much room for problems. I think that is about the limit where I'd feel safe without any backup gear. I wish as a group we would have gone deeper, I want to hit triple digits bad. It was a fun dive though. I liked the trout that came over to us and checked us out doing a safety stop at 40 feet. It was the only fish I saw on that dive anyway.

Dive 6
This dive was our elective dive. You'd think with the amount of camera gear I have, the photography option would have been the logical choice. Instead we opted for something called surface marker deployment. I figure I have some much camera experience that my time would be better spent learning a new skill. Surface deployment becomes useful when on a ship dive and you become separated from group, you deploy a buoy so the boat can find you. Much better to take the boat in, then that few mile swim to shore!

The marker reminds me of a long balloon. Concept is simple, add air, let it pull a line up to the surface. Once on the surface it sticks out of the water enough for the dive boat to see you. I deployed it first from about twenty feet under. I could see it from below and it didn't look like it stuck out of the water much. When it was Becca's turn, I signaled for her to put two breaths of air into it. She deployed it fine, but the challenge was dragging the damn thing back down to do it again. I took two of use to pull it down. Obviously, we couldn't talk underwater, but I knew on the surface, I was going to catch some sh*t for telling her to do that. I did.

We could only do that for so long before it got boring, so we still had plenty of air to use to drain the tanks, so we went on one last tour of Gilboa. It turned out to be our longest dive of the weekend, we were down for an hour.

By the end of the weekend I was sore and tired. My fingers were sore from being in the water so long. I'm not sure how that's possible, but raisin hands is a understatement. Becca and I both decided that we'd like diving even more if we had a dive caddy. You know, somebody to carry all our gear, clean it, and put it on for us.

Should be next week and we'll have nice and new advanced diver certification cards.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

New Dive Buddy

Diver Below

I officially want a new dive buddy! My current dive buddy proved that she is smarter then me, so I'm taking applications for lessor divers, to replace her! Last night, was of course the test portion of the Naui Advanced Diver class. I figured it was going to be an easy test. My dive buddy scored a 100% and I missed one question and had to settle for second place with a 98%. The worst part is losing to my competitive dive buddy, now I have to take another class with her, just so I can beat her (I'll use any excuse I can to take another class, they are fun). The second worst part, the question that I missed, I knew the answer! What's the most accurate way to measure distance underwater? Answer, using your arms. Even though I knew that, I still want to say fin kicks every time because when I think about measuring, I think long distances, not a quick estimate of a wreck for example. So, in essence, I "wrecked" my perfect score by answering it my way.

This weekend when we are diving and my dive buddy is giving me sh*t for beating me on the test, I'm going to accurately measure the distance from myself to her with a good solid punch! Bam! Yup, 35 inches away. What do you know, it is accurate ;)

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Almost Famous

IMG_1328

My fifteen minutes of fame may come as the result of my cat! I suppose you take it as you can get it. Sure, I would rather mine come as a result of finding sunken treasure (making me rich in the process) or saving a life, but I can't deny I have a cute cat!

I can only imagine what my mom is doing (I really think she is very proud of her four legged grandchild), but she's taking a week long painting class with her favorite artist. That artist has fallen in love with Rascal and there's a chance that she will paint Rascal's portrait and use her for future classes. If the artist does, then I would get the original painting as a royalty. Not exactly the endorsement I would hope for owning a famous cat, but who knows, maybe the cat food deals will come rolling in once her face gets out there!

Kind of funny actually. I've always told Rascal, next to Shania Twain, she is the best looking girl out there. Maybe it's true ;)

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Are We Learning Yet?

Low Vis

In case you are wondering, no this photo wasn't taken in Maui! Want to know something really funny? That's probably some of the best visibility we've dove in so far! This came from my third dive in Gull Lake, but I'll get to that in a minute.

I missed telling about my previous Wednesday night dive, there's a reason for that, it wasn't the greatest. It was a themed night, the object was finding a sunken treasure chest full of prizes. Becca and I both decided there was no point for the two of use even attempting to search for it, we are lucky to find the water when we have all of our gear on, let alone a box in the water. We did not find the treasure, but we were in the area and it was a pure accident, that should count for something.

Two dives in, everything is a learning experience. The lesson on this night, look at your compass before you enter the water! What I thought would be an easy straight out, then 90 degree turn to follow the shore turned into a goat rodeo at about 20 feet under. All it took was a small stop, then all sense of direction was lost and it became a shrug our shoulders and pick a direction. It was a rather embarrassing dive in terms of trying to accomplish something. Next time, read the compass, check.

For some reason we had quite a bit of air left in our tanks after our Wednesday night dive, so we decided on Sunday to burn through the rest of our air in Gull Lake. With our lesson learned, we set our compass heading before entering the water this time. We headed out, reached our turnaround point without seeing anything interesting, then decided to head back. It was at this point where we found the motorcycle and the phone booth. Woo Who! I was hoping we would find something, too bad Murphey's Law stepped in when we were already low on air. It was fun to say we found something again, even though we couldn't play around for long. I know Becca wanted to ride it!

Since we were low on air, we did a surface swim to shore. The lesson learned from this dive, when doing our 3 minute safety stop at 15 feet don't hover, continue swimming to shore! Can't wait to see what our next lesson is, our next series of dives will be in a quarry for our advanced class this weekend. I'm super excited about them! I know our underwater navigation could use some work, but I also feel that with our trials and mistakes we swam away with some great experience already. I'm predicting great things for us and I expect to be labeled "Rock Stars" from our instructor ;)

Friday, August 15, 2008

Keb' Mo' (It looks like Henry to me)

Keb' Mo'

My dad really has some horrible tastes in music! The basement is filled with boxes and boxes of albums, cassettes, and CD's which I'm convinced the only organization that would get any use from them is the CIA as they could use them for torture! Then again, we have to be humane with torture nowadays, so waterboarding it is and his collection is safe.

Growing up, I was given the reason it was good for me to be dragged to horrid concerts, somehow it would build character or class. We can all see it didn't do any good. Now that I think of it, I distinctly remember my dad listening to more of my music then his! Now there are exceptions to everything, one such exception is Keb' Mo'. With as vast of collection of junk as my dad has, there has to be at least something that is listenable. Now you take however small that percentage is and add the unlikelihood of me liking it, you have a miracle. Keb' Mo' is that miracle.

It just so happened that Keb' Mo' was in concert last night in Grand Rapids. Figuring this was my one and only chance to attend a concert with my dad that we both would enjoy, this was it. As it turns out, we both attended, but I was the only one who got to see Keb' Mo'! My dad's early schedule (hectic retired life) couldn't keep him out late enough to make it to Keb' Mo' making it on stage. The opening guy was rather so-so, so it was fitting that we both got to listen to not the greatest music.

When Keb' Mo' made it on stage, he was very good. I was hoping for a couple of my favorites from him, but only got a one or two songs that I enjoy. In the end, things could have worked out a little better, but in my book I still got the only concert I would enjoy with my dad in, that's all that matters!

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Little More Then 6 Ft Under

Gear'd Up

Wednesday was the day, sink or swim (or should that be submerge and live or submerge and become fish food for the possible outcomes) to start my underwater adventures. Sure, I've accomplished the pool work and my open waters, but this would be my first dive on my own without an instructor around to provide some kind of guidance. Sorry for the lack of drama, but it should be obvious that I survived!

The local dive shop promotes "Wednesday Night Dives" throughout the summer. There are some themed nights, but most are dives at some of the lakes in the area. This week happened to be Martin Lake (Lake 16). Simple concept being that if you enjoy diving, show up and meet some other divers in the area, dive, then go out afterward for some food. My dive buddy and I showed up at the "posted" time. I admit, we put on our gear slow, but there were people already finished with their dives as we were walking to the water! Not being in the loop yet, I think the "posted" time is entering the water time, not the lets all meet in the parking lot time. I'm sure glad we did this though, a woman gave us a great pre-dive briefing, that alone made the dive that much easier.

Let me tell you, 7mm wetsuit, gloves, hood, 18 lbs of weight, and all your gear in 82 degree air temps...is not fun. Not to mention the 200 foot swim on the surface to get to the point where it is possible to dive, I felt like a hot dog in a rotisserie grill. I couldn't wait to find the 50 degree water.

Down we go. I thought the visibility was horrible in Gull Lake for my open waters, this was 6 times worse! Visibility was literally a foot. Becca and I got down to the dive platform which was about 15 ft, gave each other the okay signal, then the next trick was finding a underwater line to guide us through the course. I was so worried about losing Becca that I'd start moving along side of the platform and two seconds later I couldn't see her. Sometimes I would stop and she would appear out of the darkness in my face, other times I would swim back to her only to again almost bump into her. Our lap around the platform helped, I think it got us comfortable with how close we needed to be and what we needed to do to find each other. We did find a bight yellow line off the platform, so off we went...only to find it going to shore and get us up to about 8 ft under water, obviously wrong cord.

Next guess proved better, it took us down to around 20 ft but again stopped. Lights on, we looked like two lost burglars searching randomly. Somehow Becca managed to see a chain leading deeper, so down we went again. This time we were lead to a sunken speed boat, success! At this point we both did an underwater high five because we both had zero expectations of finding anything. We looked around the boat for a little while, then continued deeper down the line. I set my dive computer to warn me at 60 ft, I figured that was a good safe depth. Martin Lake is about 80 ft and without doing the advanced class, figured this was our stopping point. At this point we turned around and headed back.

All in all, I'm very happy how we did. We found a boat, saw some fish, and more importantly lived to tell about it. It was great hearing some of the other divers complain about the visibility and cold at the restaurant. At no point did I feel cold and although the visibility was poor, I thought Becca and I did an awesome job of sticking together. I know I could improve my body control, can't count the number of times I put my knees in the mud, but I'm blaming that on not seeing the bottom and wanted to stick to following the line. Can't wait to give it another try, with a better idea of what to expect.

Here's my dive profile:
First Dive

Official Dive #1 in the books!

Sunday, August 3, 2008

The B's Have It

One of the Few

Saturday morning was spent over at Mejier Gardens. This summer seems like it's been so busy, I believe this was my first visit since spring. No, Meijer Gardens does not have good diving, this was a chance to give my other hobby a chance. It was a beautiful day, but for some reason I just wasn't feeling it.

Lighting plays such an important part, in this case the sun was blasting away and I probably should have got an earlier start. Most of my shots look like they are getting hit with a laser beam, but on the positive, I did see quite a bit of wildlife. Turtles, frogs, dragonflies, ducks, geese and even a deer.

Had the most fun attempting cool bee shots. Fun is a loose term because it was next to impossible. I have to imagine child photography would work in much the same manor. See the action, focus on the spot, only as you press the button to take the picture not only does the subject move, but it disappears. Okay it's frustrating to have an out of focus subject, but it's embarrassing when the subject isn't even in the frame! In the picture below, the bee is actually sticking it's tongue out at me as I'm sure it knows I'm not even close to being able to focus on it.

Sticking Tongue Out at Me

That's why my favorite photo of the weekend is going to this one. First, it's a flower, although sometimes the wind can make it challenging, there's NEVER been a time when attempting to shoot a flower, did I completely miss it. The second reason, this shot involved teamwork. It really wasn't in the greatest spot, so Becca posed it for me. Take that nature! We can get creative too.

Orange