This is now my fourth weekend at Dutch Springs this year. I`ve done much of my training here, OW, AOW, wreck and now Dry Suit so I can brave winter and do a few chilly willy dives....

I`m here this weekend with Dan, owner of Sterling Silver Scuba and who is my instructor for the weekend and Jason, newly certify as an instructor. A couple other guys from West Virginia joined us for the dry suit certification.

We left the dive shop around 5:30am, planning to start diving around 10am. The drive went fine with Jason driving all the way here while most other passengers were sleeping...

Did four dives this weekend (#48-51). They were all fairly short 30-40 mins, but in cold water (40-50F). Air temperature was around 45F. It was freezing cold.

The first dive was to practice buoyancy with the dry suit. I spend thirty minutes on the platform at 30ft controlling my buoyancy and recovery upside-down. I also removed and put back the BCD while wearing those 6mm gloves and the dry suit. There is a lot to think about and the various connectors are hard to manipulate with the gloves.

Second dive was with Jason and the other two dry suit students. We visited the crane at 55ft, boat at 55ft, trolley at 65ft and old car at 85ft. It was cold (48F) and visibility was so so down there...

Third dive of the weekend was on Sunday with some Open Water students (can`t believe they manage 4 dives in 7mm wetsuit....) who just completed their certification. I went with them to see the boat at 65ft - of course they stayed about 60ft... the water was so cold for these poor chaps that the dive ended up after 20 minutes.

My last dive of the weekend was with Jason. We wanted to find the 6x6, 5tons military truck at 85-90ft in the middle of the quarry. Contrary to Saturday afternoon, we planned ahead and surface swim until we were above the truck. We went down directly at 90ft where the water was at 47F. We saw the truck, which is in very bad shape, before starting our swim back to the platform. We followed the wall at 80ft for a few minutes until we got to a boat, then, went on to the crane at 55ft. We continue our ascend stopping by the Cessna on the island and headed to the deck. During our safety stop, Jason found a flashlight in working condition and I found a weight pocket with 11 lbs (5 + 6).

After the dive we packed our equipment and headed back to Northern Virginia....

In a couple weeks, I`m heading down to Cozumel again.... this time to do my Rescue Diver certification. Stay tuned.