Another dive season has come and gone

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blobbottlebob

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Finishing up my story.
Once I made it into shallow water, I took the gear off of my back and set it down in the rocks along shore. Next, I emptied the boat out, one item at a time. I had a second tank which went into the rocks as well. I threw my paddle and life jacket on shore and dragged the boat up the rocks as best I could. Once up on the grass, I was able to dump quite a bit of water out. Then I was able to haul the canoe up on the grass and completely empty it. Now I was back in business!

I changed tanks on my gear. I placed the gear in an accessible spot in the canoe for dropping it in the lake. I re-loaded everything and went back out to try again. I had already decided that I was not going to spend a second tank looking for my fin. I was never going to be closer than I was when I was anchored to the spot where I lost it and it wasn't worth wasting more time on it.

I went out a bit deeper. When I dropped my gear overboard, I carefully set it on the rail and slid it over. It went smoothly without a hint of capsizing. On the bottom, I set a compass heading so that I would not be circling around on one fin. (Huntindog just noted in his post that having one fin on is likely to make you circle because one leg kicks harder than the other. I've done it before so, I made every effort to stay as straight as I could). I didn't have a ton of luck out there but I did find some glass. The coolest thing was a quart soda bottle from about the 1920s with an embossed horse on it. I later saw my niece who loves horses so, I gave the bottle to her. When I surfaced, I thought for sure that I would find that I did not swim very straight. Amazingly, though, I was far from the boat and relatively straight along the heading that I set. After swimming back to the boat on the one fin, I paddled in and decided to call it a season.
 

blobbottlebob

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Here is a selfie I took before I headed out. I was anticipating a fun trip with a chance at cool bottles. I was blissfully unaware that I was about to nearly sink.
canoe.jpg
 

blobbottlebob

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Here's the quart Manhattan bottle with the horse head on it. Not as old of a bottle as I was hoping to find, but kind of cool.
manhattan.jpg
 

coldwater diver

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Another dive season has come and gone


Say it aint so Bob. My season begins. Sorry to hear about your mis adventure. Sh*t can go sideways quick underwater and on it. I usually take these as a sign from God, today I should have done something different . I did not get much time to dive this year. I have researched alot of areas just hope the Ice stays away for a while. You might try a dive or fishing kayak they cant sink and they are sturdy.
 

blobbottlebob

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Hey Coldwater.
Really nice to hear from you. I'm glad you are getting out there. Hope you find some amazing stuff. If I had the chance to find some of that early glass you get, I might not hang it up. But I'm not finding much and the colder it gets the more painful my wet suit becomes. I'd do it if I were on great spots, though.

Funny comment about taking it as a sign from God that you should be doing something else. I know it certainly feels like that sometimes. I went to early morning mass before the dive so, I should have been covered there. Hard to argue that I wouldn't have been better off doing work around the house, though.
 
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