Written 5-6-07:

Dives #28 and #29:

Did these dives yesterday with Michael. Started around 4 PM, finished up the second dive around 8 PM.

Dive #28: I lead the dive for the first time. I tend to swim faster than Michael would like and since I'm still working on so many aspects of my diving, I'm fine with following and looking around and working on fin kicks and buoyancy without having to worry about navigating. But since I'll be taking an U/W Navigation course in May, I figured now is a good time to really start thinking about what I'm doing with that.

There is another plane in the quarry that you can reach by entering the platform at the north/northeast wall, way in the back. Neither of us had entered the quarry from that area and I wanted to see what it was like back there so we decided to dive from that entry point.

I really liked it. There seemed to be more fish and since there had been probably close to 30 divers training in the quarry that day, viz wasn't too bad back there since not many people seem to venture to the back corner. Found the platform and tried gliding over it, just a few inches above it without kicking up silt or bouncing down onto the platform itself. Didn't do too bad. Found the computers that were on the other side of the platform.

From there, I kept the wall on my left (about 10' away from it) and off we went to go around the tip to the 50-60' area on the east side of the quarry. I thought the plane was on the other side of it, more towards the beach entrance but that's not the case. It was an overcast day with low light so it was hard to see further than 20-30' and my mask was fogged like crazy. We finned around, checking out the area in the deeper portion, turned the dive and headed back. I took the compass reading and kept leading. We passed one of the buoy lines and thought it might be down near that area but since I was getting cold and a bit low on air, figured we'd attempt it the second dive.

I am also working on keeping a safety stop at 15' without holding onto anything, just feeling how my body hangs in the water at that depth and getting familiar with it. Since it's much deeper there than where we normally exit, there was no bottom to hug and that's another reason I wanted to try diving from that back entry point.

No plane but I got us there and back without a problem. I think it was a 45 minute dive.

We went up to the shop to top Michael's tanks off, though he had plenty, talked to Dave about where EXACTLY was that dang plane and headed back over to try it again.

Apparently, we had gone a bit too far past where the plane was supposed to be and we should have made a turn to the right once we dropped down into the deeper section. The buoy line we found wasn't attached to anything but was supposed to be attached to a barrel. So, still didn't find the plane!!! By this time, it was starting to get darker out and there wasn't a whole lot of light. So, we just sort of did a bit of a search pattern and after I was REALLY getting cold, turned the dive to go back.

I've found that once I reach a certain level of being cold that my buoyancy skills really start to suck because the only thing I want to worry about at that time is getting up into the warmer area of water and get OUT. The thermocline in the water is very apparent right now. Probably a 5-10 degree difference from 50' up to 15-20'.

It was excellent though. Two very good dives with a lot of stuff new to me (leading, new dive entry point, tracking compass readings) and I think that was the most fun I've had on any dives in the quarry.

If we get a chance to dive today, I'd like to work on a bit of coordinates instead of just the N, S, E, W compass readings.

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