This was a great event, and everything was put together very well. The weather was great and the food was also very good. For all of those that missed out be sure to mark it on your calander for next year. Not only is it a good deed but also a great chance to meet other divers in the area. I know that I saw a few numbers being passed around for future diving partners.
Happy diving!
We had a beautiful day for the clean up event once again. Many of us managed to walk away with a nice gift at the end of the event. Maynards provided good food. Mike, thanks for taking the lead with organizing the event again.
While the event is fresh in my memory here are my recommendations for next year:
1) Divers should hand the waiver forms to the boat captain (or some other representative) before getting on the boat. Otherwise the event coordinators have no way of knowing if all divers actually signed the forms. You could also use hand stamps, bracelets, etc.
2) It would be helpful to pre-assign divers to specific boats rather than the rush to find a seat. The coordinators could try to assign boats by team and fill in empty seats where necessary. We had 9 on our slow boat and the fast boat next to us had 4.
3) Each boat captain should be given a specific location (GPS coordinates) to take divers rather than a general list of locations. Keep it simple. The past two years our boat captains had no idea where to take us or deviated from the coordinators instructions.
4) It would be great if the locations were scouted out in advance to make sure there was a high probability of trash there. We had nine divers on our boat with no trash collected.
5) All boats should be equiped with working depth gauge. This isn't as important if you have charts and know where you are going. We ended up using a spool with a weight tied at the end to determine depth. Hey, it worked.
6) The t-shirt needs to have a dive flag somewhere on it so that it can take its proper place in our dive wear collections
I agree Jason! Our boat could have taken a few of your 9
All in all, it was a lot of fun, a great way to meet local divers, and a pleasure to meet the mnscuba groupies that I did.
Although I didn't find much "treasure," I think I left my mark in front of the biggest house on Lake Mtka.
It was probably the most fun I've had in the water this year. Our skipper and Gilligan were awesome! They even invited us to dive off their lakeshore down the road. It was great to see all the history roll out of the lake too. I agree with Jason about pre-assigning spots. We did eventually find trash, but burned up alot of air until then.Did anybody by chance see what happened to the bong after the event? ;D J/K
Scubadog 76 - When my number was called for a door prize, I asked if I could have the bong instead of what was on the tables (joking of course), she said "no!"
You guys have me curious? I am dying to know what this "bong" is?
Jean
P.S. Hey , I did my part. I picked up 3 hair ties and a nice gold earring from the bottom of the pool.
well at least we know you limit your smoking to tobaco. a bong is a specialized pipe where the smoke passes through water to cool it and take the burn out making it easyer to hold in your lungs and makes a smother smoking experance with less coughing.
um or so I've been told :
Sure Jean, like you don't know what a bong is ;D. Actually, 1 team found a ceramic bong in the lake. The guy who found it was a police officer too. It won the prize for strangest item found.
I sure had a fun time, met some great people and came away with a âvaluableâ Blatz bottle, old dive mask, boat trim tap and some golf balls. I saw a map being passed around of the lake that had parts of the shore highlighted for good places to go diving. It would be great to get a copy of the map for next year. (or even for this year). I think the prize list was something like this:
Trophy: MN frogmen
1st place: fire extinguisher found by a fireman in front of Maynards
Bong found by the cop
Huge chain
Modern aluminum anchor
Mickey mouse fishing pole
Most bottles
Most cans
...?
My prize was a kiddie mask and snorkel - so maybe I will be bringing my kids out for the 2013 event!
Thanks to all who participated! We had a great turnout. As of Friday we were expecting 55 divers and we had 71 show up for the clean-up dive. I appreciate the feed-back on how to make the event better. I am printing it out and planning for next years event had already started.