Day Island Wall Today, 090808

[cardiver]

Tomnic, Bassman, Bnboly and myself learned something at DIW today.....Don't try to squeeze two dives into slack!
On our first dive we headed north on the wall in 10 fsw viz. There were plenty of wolfeels and a few very large GPO'S in their dens and one poor fella who like like he was about done in.
This one my first time doing the wall as a shore dive and only my second dive here, overall. I look forward to getting back the next time we have a good exchange. Greta buddies and an excellent dive.
I'll post a few pics here and there are plenty more on my page.

[spatman]

Tomnic, Bassman, Bnboly and myself learned something at DIW today.....Don't try to squeeze two dives into slack!

c'mon, ron! don't leave us hanging! what happened?

[Diver_C]

Tomnic, Bassman, Bnboly and myself learned something at DIW today.....Don't try to squeeze two dives into slack!

Yes, that is an excellent lesson to learn. Bblemkr, RSDancey, and I learned that lesson two years ago Labor Day Weekend. Got a lot of exercise that second "dive".

Nice pics Ron!

[Sounder]

Dude. You guys didn't seriously try to sneak a 2nd dive in on a slack, did you?! ](*,)

How far did you end up hiking back? ](*,) ](*,) ](*,)

[cardiver]

We crawled out and rode the current right back to the entry. When Tom and I peered over the wall on the second dive we looked at each other and both thought, "no way"
We ended up crawling along the bottom and heading south in the shallows for 50 minutes.

[Tom Nic]

Yep... we "hit the wall" at DIW. ](*,)

I seriously should have known better than to try and do a second dive, but was lulled by a .9 knot flood. I know folks who dive this site on a bigger exchange, but I'm not one of them. Again, my apologies to those who had an unpleasant dive as a result - I should have known better - my fault. We dropped on the second dive in a pretty decent current (couldn't make headway on the surface), got negative and headed toward the wall. Our other buddy team thumbed early on, we went to the edge of the wall hoping that there would be some relief over the wall, but it got worse so we slowly worked our way back to shore, facing the current, and looking at the critters that were hiding in the "weeds".

I really HATE diving in current. I remember Val and Bob coming up from an hour dive here in the current and I was wondering to myself "How do they do it?" Since then I'm learning to relax when I do get in current (yesterday's dive, a couple weeks ago at TTN), get nice and level to present as little to push against by the current, and slow my breathing down and again, relax.

I used to not be able to do that at all. A current dive would result in me blowing through my air - not just because of the exertion, but because I would become anxious. I'm getting better at it now - the second dive in current was 50 minutes and I still had 1500 psi left because we went no deeper than 50 fsw. Mentally relaxing was the key.

Not that I want to do current dives anyway!? But it's nice to know I'm getting better at handling them if I'm in the situation.

The first dive was a nice one - I had hoped for better viz, but there was lots of particulate in the water. It was my first dive with a new Casio - the Ex-Z1200. I was pretty fumbly fingered and was not real happy with the conditions or how the pics turned out - still got some learnin' to do. I'll post a few once I get them uploaded. I just don't seem to have the time to upload pics much anymore...

[spatman]

well, i'm glad everything turned out ok, guys. strong current is not my favorite either. it's a good reminder that we really don't belong underwater and we are at nature's whim sometimes.

[Tom Nic]

It's a tribute to the skill of the other divers that things turned out well. Some folks panic in those situations... never good.

On the picture front, a few pics from the dive are here

I like the detail on this young wolfie.



Teeth cleaning, anyone?!



There were a couple of HUGE octos denned up. I'm sure we missed a couple as well. I forgot my "rockfish swatter" as well to take care of the pesky brown rockfish that muck up your pictures!









I liked the detail on these moon snail shots.





I know I have a ton of stuff to work through on this camera, and I'm hoping to work on it some in Bonaire as well as play with a strobe set up. We shall see...

[bnboly]

Here's a few more pics from the dive:

[Scubak]

What time was your first dive?
If it was later in the day you should've been on a very low exchange with hardly any movement.
Just curious for further dive planning.
Kirsten
Scubak@comcast.net

[GetWet]

Thanks for the lessons, and the pics!

[cardiver]

Three of us had three different times for slack. I was assuming 1420 for slack. We were all within 15 minutes of that time and we got in the water at 1345 or so ( help me out here, Tom. I don't remember our exact time) and had no current for the first 45 minutes of the dive. It started ebbing with about 15 minutes left.

[Tom Nic]

1st dive we went in the water around 1:15, probably dropped 1:30 or so. Haven't downloaded my dives yet.

What time was your first dive?
If it was later in the day you should've been on a very low exchange with hardly any movement.
Just curious for further dive planning.
Kirsten
Scubak@comcast.net

You are correct Kirsten... if we had done our second dive a couple hours later it would have been perfect. For the Second dive my guess is that we went in 3:45 or 4 PM. Thought that the exchange was small enough that it wouldn't be a problem. I was wrong! Everyone had other things to do or we could have waited a couple more hours for the second slack.

[BASSMAN]

My thought is... Even if you got a minimal exchange and less than 1 knot current, stick to one dive at Day Island and do the second dive at Titlow.

Unless of course you can wait until the next slack. Or, if you were doing it as a live boat dive.
It was kind of funny how on the second dive, after pushing through the current for about five or ten minutes, I looked back at Bnboly(Bill) and gave him a look like, "What the heck are we doing here?" his response was, motioning with his index finger, Do you want to turn around? I shrugged my shoulders and he then repeted the motion with bigger eyes, and I agreed. So I tapped Tom's shoulder and motioned to him ,"Bill and I are turning back!" We immeadiately went shallow swimming against the current(That was trying to suck us towards the Narrows bridge!) just to find out we actually over swam the current and came up South of the entry. After being in this current suituation before, we both new it was not worth the effort to complete this dive. I mean, "Why run, when there's no one chasing you?" Right?.

First dive went perfect! we literally had "No Current" for most of the dive! :occasion5:

Day Island is so awsome!!!