Rochester Scuba & Snorkel Club

November Meeting Notes

Treasurer's Report: 2453.84 as of 19 October 2004.

Club member introductions set a new speed record at 13.2 seconds overall!

The Cub Scouts were meeting next door and periodically howled with festive glee.

Dave Merbach suggested that we either set up an on-line discussion group for the club or make use of the Minnesota Scuba Board. Joe Velie has since created some discussion forums.

John Westgard reported on his recent trip to Cozumel with Claudia Campos and 8 other divers. He found out what a lesser electric ray looks like. And now that he maintains a saltwater aquarium at home, he described his new fish ID system: $ $$ $$$.

Reminder: MDC Sports is hosting several trips to Cozumel in March.

Some of the guys went to Lake Wazee to survey the dilapidated training platform at the North Site near Sherwood Forest. The platform was gone! Apparently someone else has removed it for repair.

John Martin gave an interesting presentation titled "The Basics of Gas Management". He also gave a brief trip report of their trimix dives on the Kamloops off Isle Royale in Lake Superior. Roger Southwick showed some underwater slides from his last trip to Isle Royale in 2000.

December Party Meeting Notes

We had a good turnout for the party. The prime rib dinner was awesome! I pigged out on red meat and didn't try the chicken, but I heard that was pretty good too.

Joe Druga won a new drysuit from MDC Sports, up to $25 value! (i.e., a $25 gift certificate) Many other people won prizes too, but I was busy eating red meat and didn't keep track of them all.

The current club logo.

We've extended the deadline (was there a deadline?) for the "design a new patch" contest. The first entry was rather... um... unsuitable for family viewing. But we've received 2 more entries! Check out this Google Image Search for some inspiration.

Club officers for 2005 are:

President	Joseph Reynolds
Vice President	Joe Velie
Treasurer	Ron Oman
Editor	Roger Southwick

1. Should we reduce the yearly dues required for club membership?
2. Info about the August trip to Isle Royale will be available.
3. We'll discuss suggestions for this year's club activities.
4. John Martin will describe the basic DIR ("Doing It Right") gear configuration using his equipment as an example. He'll also talk about the contents of the upcoming DIR Fundamentals class and some things we can be practicing in the pool to prepare for the class or simply to improve our skills.
5. Perhaps John M will also report on his recent trip to the Our World Underwater scuba show in Chicago.
6. We'll get John Preston and Joe Velie to describe their local cave-diving adventure from this past Saturday.
7. Maybe John Westgard can fill in some of the details of his recent Caribbean Cruise.
8. After the meeting, the divers who are interested in taking the nitrox and trimix gas-blending classes will get together to plan the class schedule. Remember to bring your calendars!

Dive Forums On-Line

Our new Vice President Joe Velie has set up some discussion forums for divers on his web server. These forums (fora?) will be an excellent way for us to make plans for weekend dives and to discuss various diving topics. Have at it, but please be polite!

Isle Royale Trip

Roger Southwick has chartered Ken Merryman's boat the Heyboy for 4 days of recreational shipwreck diving in August. Check out all the information here.

A Weekend at Wazee

Gas-hogs Joe and John emerge after The Crossing.

Club members Joe Druga, Dave Merbach, and Lonnie Tucker completed their drysuit specialty class on a chilly Sunday in December. Strong winds blew the snow flurries horizontally at 40mph and whipped up the lake with whitecaps and 1-to-2 foot swells -- seriously! The surge from these waves could be felt down to 20 feet, and the "surface" current was noticeable even at 40 feet. Other divers were there to help: Jim Campos, John Martin, Joe Velie, John Preston, Todd & Alex Carlson, and Roger Southwick.

John P teamed up with Joe V for Joe's first crossing of the lake from Sherwood Forest to the south boat launch, via the line on bottom at 210 feet! They reported a chilly 41 degrees F from surface to bottom, so apparently the lake has turned over for the season.

Check out more pictures from the weekend at Joe Velie's Rochester Scuba & Snorkel Club gallery (thanks Joe!).

Turkey Dive 2004

Hanging out at Maggie's Restaurant after a dive. photo: Anne Pappas-Owen

This year's Turkey Dive in Bayfield Wisconsin provided a relaxing weekend for the seven festivants: Joseph, Lucy, Roger, Kate, and Dave & Anne & little Colin. We stayed in a nice condominium above the liquor store near Gruenke's Inn. Soon after arriving we helped to spread baby toys throughout the living room. I think this was the first Turkey Dive involving a 5-month-old, and it was quite fun. We watched Baby Einstein videos and relaxed most of the time. There were balloons of course, but not the binge-drinking that still tarnishes the image of Turkey Dives everywhere.

The breezy Saturday afternoon dive required entry into 2-foot swells and a quick swim out to the junk-pile next to the south pier. Water was 45F and fairly clear once we got past the surge. The junk-pile has been enhanced since our last dive in 2000. There is now a hide-a-bed sofa in addition to the things we found before: a white telephone, a string of Christmas lights, an electric baseboard heater, and flashlights. I hadn't realized it before, but the pier is pretty big -- it's made from giant Lincoln Logs and goes down 35 feet to the bottom. It's a popular spot to get rid of furniture.

After the dive, we walked a couple blocks in our drysuits to meet our women-folk at Maggie's Restaurant. Since it's the off-season the restaurant wasn't busy and the staff didn't seem to mind our dripping-wet drysuits as we sat at the bar. After a beer we headed back to the condo to cook the turkey dinner. As usual, it was excellent, and as usual, we all lounged around and went to bed early.

"Ice" Diving at Wazee

Some of the guys did an ice-ish dive on December 27th. You can see the pictures here.

Wreck Diving in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada story and photos by Roger Southwick Part 1 of 3 "Well, the Neebing should be here somewhere. Hey Rich, the gas gauge is below 1/2. Did we have full tanks when we left the dock?" "Yup." "$#|+." It started out auspiciously enough -- a warm, sunny Thursday morning in September -- when Rich Good, David Walters, and Joseph Reynolds met me in Cannon Falls for the 8-hour drive into Canada. We arrived in Thunder Bay after Thunder Country Diving had closed for the day, but Wally Peterson waited for us anyway. Last year he went out of his way to help us. He gave us loads of details on the area's wrecks, directed us to the sites ("line up the big tower with the notch in the end of the island..." -- no GPS allowed?), and even loaned us a bunch of power tools to fix Rich's boat. Again he was very helpful, excitedly suggesting some other sites that were a little more "adventurous", meaning hard to get to. For some of them we had GPS coordinates, but for others we had to take detailed notes from Wally's elaborate navigational schemes. After a nice dinner at Montana's (MEAT!) we relaxed in front of our rooms at the elegant Kingsway Motel & Mini-Golf with a couple Cuban cigars (thanks Joseph!), some fine scotch, and some of Rich's "rusty nails". Launching from Little Trout Bay to dive on the Howard. Friday morning was cold and clear as we headed to Husky's, our favorite truck stop for breakfastses. We drove south about 20 miles to Little Trout Bay to launch the boat near the wreck of the Howard. As we loaded the boat, a small red fox galloped over to check us out. I didn't know that foxes could gallop. Soon a couple other divers showed up to launch their boat. They were real live Canadians! One of them was Dan Kuss, who was involved with the "shipwreck graveyard" project featured at the 2002 Gales of November in Duluth. Dan is a very knowledgeable diver. We found out later that when he said "the visibility on the Neebing isn't so good, eh", we should have listened. Our boat followed the Canadians out to the Howard and moored up with them. We prepared to dive and tried to understand their foreign accents as we made small talk. We splashed in and scouted around the wreck. The tug Howard lies nearly upside-down on its port side. The single-expansion steam engine and boilers are pretty interesting, and there are bricks everywhere -- even inside the boilers. The prop has 4 1/2 foot long blades and the construction on the wooden rudder is quite impressive. Water was a comfortable 52F but we ended up getting cold since we had sweated in our drysuits on the ride over and foolishly avoided swimming very much. Gotta work on staying dry and moving around more. After surfacing from the Howard we decided to try a dive on the Monkshaven, and debated whether it's pronounced "Monks Haven" or "Monk Shaven" as Wally calls it. This wreck is located near an old lighthouse at the south entrance to Thunder Bay. It seemed a bit odd to drive the truck 20 miles south and then pilot the boat 18 miles north, but it was a nice voyage past scenic islands on a perfect day. Cap'n Rich takes us out to the Monkshaven. We hit bottom only once. WHAM! Rich cut the throttle to figure out what happened. The depth finder had been reading around 145', but here it was 2' and we had just grazed the solid rock below. The props were ok so we continued to the lighthouse with more caution. Wally told us that the Monkshaven was "right off the lighthouse". We made a guess and set the anchor. After splashing in we discovered a pretty strong current running south out of the inlet. The vigorous swimming helped to keep us warm, but Joseph & I got separated from Rich & Dave, so we explored on our own. Boulders, flat rocks, gravel. We swam at a westward angle into the current and found some wreckage. Lots of little pieces, all twisted and smashed. Then bigger pieces. We found the prop hub, which had all of its blades shorn off. Did they hit the rocks with the props running at full steam? This was solid metal about 3" thick and it just snapped off. By this time we had moved into the lee of the island out of the current so we could move around more easily. Wreckage lay everywhere. It was quite shallow (35' max), but the amount of damage to the wreck seemed out of proportion to what you'd see from ice damage. We found out from Wally that the wreck originally stuck out of the water and had been a navigational hazard to other boats. To remove the hazard, salvage crews stuffed sticks of dynamite into old fire hoses to keep the fuses dry, then strung the hoses over the ship. Light one match: problem solved! Nowadays divers find the brass hose fittings and wonder what the ship was doing with them. Joseph and I swam back east along the ridge we had followed to the wreck. Somehow we missed the anchor and got swept out past the boat about 100 yards, making for a long swim against the current. Now I was too hot. We boarded the boat, enjoyed a relaxing ride back to Little Trout Bay, loaded the trailer, and drove back to Wally's. Cap'n Rich had decided that being among all those islands without a navigational chart was a bad idea. We dropped off our tanks for Wally to fill and headed to the map store, which was closed. So we went to a fancy restaurant called the Aurora Grille (rare MEAT!) and got seated in the back section with the ruffians, but the food was great. After dinner it was back to the Kingsway Motel for scotch in our parking lot "patio". Tune in next month for Part 2....

Upcoming Events

Jan 12-16 2005 -- Our World-Underwater Dive & Travel Expo, Chicago

Aug 12-15 2005 -- Shipwreck diving at Isle Royale

See the calendar for more details.