Finally made it to the Oriskany
Sunday I headed down to Arkansas and stayed with Cody as we prepared to embark on our epic journey. These kinds of trips are always adventures and we were just hoping this one would turn out well. We headed south on Monday morning... think it was about O’dark ridiculous or something. We had chosen to drive down and the journey down was pretty unremarkable. We were moving for time and not really lollygagging anywhere on the way. We did run across a bit of rain... ok, hours of rain. We were follow...
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A Beaver Lake Weekend
This was the weekend I had signed up to assist with a shop trip down at Beaver Lake. This was a busy weekend too. We had 9 Open Water students, 2 Rescue course students, 4 fun divers (non-course), and 2 non-divers on the trip. Greg was the OW instructor and Gary was the Rescue instructor. I was able to help Gary out a bit, but with that many OW students, obviously my tasking was to that group. That didn’t bother me too much, figured the rescue people could get along fine without too much assista...
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Mermet Springs Trip
So the week before I went down to Beaver Lake with my shop for a class. We had 7 OW students and another instructor had 2 rescue divers. The lake was the worst vis I had seen yet. We did find one cove that has spring feeding that was the clearest, but we were still forced to do everything one on one rather than in groups. We got through everything and fortunately everyone on that trip turned out to be pretty good or it could have been a mess. We had clearance troubles here or something else ther...
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Pumpkins
Originally I was going to join a buddy down at lake Ouichita for a pumpkin carving contest. Wasn`t able to make it down that far... my dive buddy`s gf was very involved in activities at the university homecoming, so we couldn`t take off like that. So we hit Beaver lake instead and got in some great diving. We started Friday night and figured we`d ledge out to around 100` and then progress back up the steps until we were at 15 for safety. When we got down to around 70` he signaled up. He told me ...
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Fun at the lake
We had a great weekend down at the lake this weekend. Steve and I went down on Friday and got a couple of dives in over at the north dam site. The first we dropped down to around 105` and then came across a sunfish sail boat at about 77` on our way up. We diddled around the boat for a while before continuing up and following terrain around for safety stop depth. The next dive in that sequence we set 80` as our hard deck level. Where we went in we ran out of down at 63` though. It was definitely ...
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Finishing Coursework
I headed down Thursday to hang out with friends and then headed to the lakehouse on Friday morning. Joe had told me that Mark was down doing some work on the boat, so figured I`d drop in and see what help I could be on the matter. Steve and his son Davis were down also and we got quite a lot done. When we had our work finished up, Steve, Davis and I took a couple dives in the cove behind the house. Nothing really monumental, but we gave Davis the lead for some navigation skills and he did a pret...
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A good weekend at Beaver Lake
I initially was thinking of hitting Oronogo this last weekend, but was talking with Joe and Mark up at the shop and decided to take a trip down to Beaver with the shop crew. That trip slate had been posted as full, but there were 2 padi referals and one fun diver that rescheduled. So I put myself on the list and headed down. It was a pretty good mix of people. There were two other fun divers down this weekend, neither who had ever dived in fresh water, specifically cold fresh water. They had a b...
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Stress and Rescue Weekend
Figured I`d be a bit busy to do anything with the camera this weekend so I didn`t even take it along. So not picture with this entry Knowing we were going to be worn out Sunday we decided to go down early and do some fun diving on Friday evening. Was a beautiful day. We took the boat out to Starky`s Island and Robert and I buddied up and Mark, Steve, and Joe buddied up. Robert and I surface swam around to the south side of the island where the channel cut laid. Our plan was to drop to around 100...
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Two things I forgot to mention
While we were doing our North Damsite dives when we got past the forest shelf we found a dropoff cliff that we could see bottom. The shelf was about 60 feet and we could see the floor about 20 feet below. So we did our slow motion cliff diving imitations there. It was kind of silly, but still pretty fun. Topside, Margaret told us that a couple of jetskis had been using our dive bouy for target practice. Unfortunately for them, there was a sheriff on shore watching them, so they each got about a ...
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Going Deep
Last weekend was great weather down at Beaver Lake. Went down with my dive shop for a weekend trip. Initially I was going to finish up my advanced course work but there was a bit of a snag with instructors so I just went fun diving. Wound up that Lee didn`t have any dive cons with him for this trip so I offered to help him out in whatever way he needed. Pretty much I took care of the boat for him and helped his class into and out of the water. I buddied up with one of the guys in the class for a...
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DUI Days at Beaver Lake
Went down and stayed with Robert in Fayetteville. We hit the DUI Demo day both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was about 35 degrees out and most of us were wondering why scuba diving would have come to mind under such conditions. Sunday was a nice sunny day and I thought the absolute perfect day for Dry Suit diving. Had some bouyancy issues on Saturday, but got them ironed out on Sunday. Had great bouyancy control Sunday. We took the camera and big light out on Sunday and played a bit. Some of the...
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Beaver Lake in October
We were thinking it was going to be cold on the trip, but as soon as the sun broke through the lake fog, it was very nice on deck. This is the first time I used a 7/5 full wetsuit and it was great for most of the weekend. The surface water was 72 with the first major change at about 42 feet. That one was chilly, but alright once you got used to the difference. Jill and I took two dives on Sat morning and two more in the afternoon. On Sun morning we went out to find a boat that is supposed to be ...
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