I spent Labor Day weekend diving at Dutch Springs with Sterling Silver. This was the busiest weekend I have seen at the quarry. There were tents everywhere and the access ramps were always busy... Nonetheless, with the gorgeous weather and great dive team, we had a wonderful weekend! I also met a group of fellow French Canadian divers from Montreal. It was fun to speak about scuba diving in French - a new experience...
Anyway, I arrived Saturday morning with my wife Nathalie and daughter Stephanie, and, Kevin, Carmen and Austin, with whom we caravaned from NoVA. Had a couple fun dives with Nathalie and Julie, accompanied some students on a wreck adventure dive. Setup camp, had dinner and then went for a good night dive with Carl and Derek: we did a grand tour of the quarry following ropes: starting at the south peninsula, going to the cesna, tanker, bus, and coming back while passing several platform. The dive lasted a little over an hour... and we were out just in time to not be kick out of the camp site...
On Sunday, Kevin and I had two deco dives. In between these, I accompanied Nathalie and Julie for a guided tour of several wrecks (crane, boat, bus) and the wall of the peninsula.
For the first deco dive, we started by accompanying AOW students on an deep adventure training dive. After the students were sent to the surface, we continued our dive in the whole at about 85-90 ft. We practice drills such as backup and primary regulator failure, air sharing (long hose) and stayed at the freezing bottom (40F) following cracks and looking around until we reached deco. We stayed for a little longer before ascending to 60 feet, swimming towards the south peninsula ramp. Once we reach our destination, we inflated our lift bag and started our deco stops. The first one was at 30ft (simulation) for 3 minutes and the second one at 15 feet for 5 minutes (We actually came out of deco on our 30ft stop, so we simulated at 15 feet instead of 10ft for the actual planned stop). Total dive time was 57 mins at max 90ft and avg 77ft.
For our second deco dive, we started by touring the pump house. After 10-15 minutes, we navigated NW towards the peninsula until we reached the big boat at 60ft. Since we still had a lot of air and I was leading, I decided to go towards the crane, trolley and then go down at 90 ft until I would reach deco - we adjusted our plan... On our way back toward the platform we started our decompression procedure. I had 9 mins of deco at 10ft and Kevin had 10mins. Total dive time was 65 mins, 90ft.
Once we got out of the water, the camp was all pack... We quickly packed our gears since our families were waiting for us... We exited Dutch at 6pm sharp, had a nice dinner and hit the road toward NoVA reaching home at 11pm.
Overall, it was a great weekend. I was thrilled to complete two training deco dives. I did not have many opportunities to have such deep and long dives at the quarry... Nathalie also logged a few dives. It was the first time she dived without me as her buddy and dived dry all weekend.