First open water dive of 2010 (in MN)

[goaliemn]

I'd love to do the Madeira, but would need some extra help/patience to get adjusted to the drysuit.

BTW, Jeff, this is Mark.. I worked at postal with you years ago and always talked about getting into diving.. finally did it

[mattd]

I'm saying this again for your benefit.....

Isn't that wreck sitting in 20-100ft of water with most of it around 50-60ft?  This is not a good first dive for a drysuit.  Maybe you'll be a perfect natural at it, but you've got a better chance of bubbling up feet first from depth and giving yourself DCS.  I'm a little worried about that myself.

Your first several dives should be in 10-20 feet of water.  That would be the safe(er) way to do it - IMHO.

[goaliemn]

[quote author=mattd link=topic=6078.msg34464#msg34464 date=1268571729]
I'm saying this again for your benefit.....[quote]
I saw you the first time.  I also was under the impression that the Madiera was much shallower than that as many talk about using it for wreck classes and such.  I'm just going to drop out of this thread for awhile.

[DetectorGuy]

I agree Matt 100%. The Madeira was my first drysuit dive in open water, and also my first dive in Superior. This dive was a planned solo dive with hopes of buddying up with someone at the site. The water was 39 degrees at the stern section and my max depth was 57'. Because I was so green at diving dry, I did not have all the kinks worked out of dumping air from my suit. I was very lucky to be able to grab the mooring line to stop for my 15' safety stop.  I could not dump air fast enough otherwise. The only reason I could find the mooring line quickly enough to do this is that my dive flag was tangled up in it (that is another story). I was just plain lucky (and dumb)

First dive or two in a drysuit should be in about 20' of water and preferably on a platform like Square or Perch.

[mermaid]

Looks like you were very lucky Detector...

[arcFlash]

Drysuits are not sudden death so everyone needs to relax about getting bent. The Madeira is a fine site to work it out if you spend your time at the bow ~25 feet. Lots of stuff to see. If you go around the corner there are acres of debris in less than 15 feet of water. Vis is usually good. You're going to have to go see the shallow stuff anyway, might as well do both. Get someone else new to suit and go work it out.

Just hold out to see the stern for another day, it's not going anyplace.

My only drysuit advice is, get the weight right. Don't go overboard and it's a lot easier.  You can wade out and check yourself at the site.

G: go use the suit.

[DetectorGuy]

I agree that there is no deep dark hidden threat of diving dry. A member of the site PMed me asking about it so that maybe they can learn from what I experienced and I started to explain it an a personal reply to them but then I thought I should Cut/Paste my response here so that maybe someone can learn from my mistakes.
In construction we fill out "near miss reports" when something that could have hurt someone but didn't. In construction we share these "near misses" that happen weekly with our staff so that we can prevent injuries.
It helps to show trends and because the near miss reporting is done by the people doing the work, we get a good view of what is really happening where the rubber meets the road.

Here is my near miss and maybe it will help someone:

That dive I dragged the dive flag out to the stern buoy. there are two buoys on the wreck that the GLSPS places every year as part of what they do. One is at the bow section (closer to shore and in shallower water). The other is at the stern section about 150 yards further out into the lake and in deeper water. My dive plan was to surface swim out to the stern buoy, take a compass heading to the bow buoy, drop down to the stern, take a few pics and then head underwater to the bow section, take a few pics of that, surface, swim to shore.

I dropped down to the stern at 50' took several photos, swam around it a few times, dropped down the starboard side to 57' and took a few photos. At this point I was going to swim toward the bow section and I noticed that my dive flag was tangled up on the mooring line (near the surface). This prevented me from following through with my plan. I spent the balance of the dive looking at this stern section until my air got down to 1000 PSI. I made my slow ascent as I was winding up the dive flag line on my winder deally.

Now when I took the dry suit certification through Naui, I was taught to use the suit only and not the BCD for buoyancy control. with this fresh in my head, I had my BCD completely empty so dumping air there was not an option.

As I got up to about 20' I was holding down the exhaust valve on my left arm of the dry suit to vent out and slow my ascent for my 3 minute safety stop. This is when I noticed that the air was not venting as fast as I would have liked and stopping was not going to happen.

This is where the luck came into play. Because my dive flag was tangled on the buoy line, I was ascending next to it. I just reached out and grabbed it at 15' and stayed there for 3 minutes. I ended the dive with 500 PSI and did the long surface swim back to shore.

The culprit to my problems were many but not letting them cascade into panic were key. I found out later that many people just tie their dive flag to to the buoy to prevent it from tangling up. I also found out that the Weezle Wear undergarments are loftier than the fleece that I used in class, and that the nylon outer shell of the undergarments do not transfer air as rapidly as fleece. (I remedied this by melting several holes in the undergarment in the exhaust vent location). I also believe that we need to plan your dive and dive your plan but when you run into a "situation" you need to adapt and overcome.

Would I have got bent by missing my safety stop? Probably not, but this safety stop was in my plan. Was I too light in weight? Right after the dive I thought I was about 5 pounds too light, but now I know that I was probably over weighted.

[goaliemn]

detector: I do appreciate your story and I do plan on starting out with simple stuff.  The shallow end of the Maderia was one thing I had been thinking of.  Plus if a group I knew was going and willing to help, I thought it may be good.

I'll probably just head to Square and see if I can find a buddy or 2 to come along and help me balance things out.  I still haven't taken a scissors to the seals yet, so I've got alittle ways to go

[joekarels]

One thing that I had told a friend of mine when he got his dry suit was 'Be ready to get a little frustrated.' You need to redevelop your buoyancy again.It took me 10 dives before I started getting comfortable with it. Maybe I'm a slow learner. But I think taking a class is definatley worth the fee.

[mermaid]

Thanks Shark', though I'm not looking for another c-card, I'm definitely planning on taking a ds class.