The camera is back in the water!!!

FINALLY!!! It's not that I haven't been diving, I just haven't had my camera. I've been diving my Optima all summer, and I figured it would be smart to get used to that before task loading with a camera too.

Today we dove the Advance off of Nags Head, NC. The water on top was cool and blue, the bottom water was green and cloudy. We only had about 20 feet of viz, with a lot of particulate in the water (so it was a great day in NC). I had an itchy trigger finger and I didn't give the lens a chance to focus on most of the pics. I'd love to blame it on something like new gloves, but it was really an ID10T error.

After 5 years of diving in NC, I finally saw a shark! I have always heard other divers on the boat say they saw one, but I always seemed to miss them. This time I was in luck. Unfortunately, between swimming after it, and it being the first dive of the summer with the camera, none of them came out very good. Let's hope it's not the last time I see it.

~Enjoy

Summer Lightning

One of the best parts of summer are the storms.

It's January In The Outer Banks

A rare January snow in the Outer Banks of North Carolina! It's a nice change of pace!

~Enjoy!!

Optima CCR Training

First and foremost I need to appologize to Cleatus, I haven't been updating my blog as often as I should, but I haven't been diving much since it's winter. For about four years now I have been travelling down to Northern Florida to dive over Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. I did my open water certification dives in Ginne Springs, I did my cavern and basic cave dives in Madison Blue, Cow, Tory, and Peacock systems.

This time I was there for rebreather training (take this with a grain of salt it is the internet you know Rebreathers). I chose the Dive Rite Optima as my rebreather. There are plenty of others on the market, but my local dive shop and most of my CCR dive buddies dive it. Most importantly it did what I wanted it to do and I'm a Dive Rite fanboy. I was slated to take my training from John Jones, down in Lake City, FL. We started out with 2 hours in his pool learning the basics. Setup, safety checks, getting comfortable on the loop, and emergency procedures and bailouts. The next day we went to Troy Springs State Park. I've been there many times before helping out with open water classes. We spent a good three or four hours diving, doing drills and having fun.

Day three involved 3 hours on the loop as they say, in Orange Grove, part of the Peacock cave system. I got in my two deep dives to 100 ft, of course doing drills the whole way, and getting way overloaded with tasks, running reels...etc.

It was a whole lot of fun, basically learning how to dive all over again. I still have a lot of work to do perfecting skills and just having some fun dives and getting some time on the unit. To me it was money well spent, and I can't wait until this long Outer Banks winter is over so I can get into the ocean with it.

Here are some pics. Sorry, no underwater pictures this time. I had my hands full as it was. The cows and goats didn't dive, they were neighbors of Amigo's dive shop, where we got all our gas fills.

Enjoy...

It's not easy being green

It's nearing the end of the dive season here so every chance to dive is precious. I was given the opportunity to dive today, so a day of vacation time was well worth it. We headed to the U-85. It was a wonderful day to be on the water, with clear, crisp blue skies, and nice water. On the bottom visibility was anywhere from 10-25 feet depending on where you were. With the sun so low in the sky, the wreck was a bit dark, and the water still churned from past storms, gave the wreck an eerie hue of green. There's no better way to dive a U-boat!

Enjoy!!

Bill's Wreck

After of month of stormy weather, we were finally able to go diving. We visited "Bill's Wreck". It lies in about 25 feet of water. The visibility was very poor, probably around 8 to 10 feet. Being so shallow it makes for a nice long dive.

With the visibility as poor as it was, photography was a bit of a challenge. Not to mention it's been about 6 weeks since I've used my housing. It's amazing how quickly some of those skills get lost. On my way back to the anchor I swam right over a Loggerhead Sea Turtle. It was a mature female the best I could tell. She probably weighed about 150 lbs. I snapped off as many pictures as I could before the flash annoyed her enough to leave, but it's always an privilege to be so close to such an amazing animal.

Enjoy!!

Love A Storm Part 2

And I thought I was going to go diving this weekend...The wind is supposed to shift to off shore on Sunday so maybe we can at least get some surf out of this. These pics are from the Comfort Inn in Nags Head.

-Enjoy!!