The diving industry is one giant pyramid scheme. The truth of the matter is the SCUBA diving industry (recreational, professional instructor and even in some cases technical diving) is one giant cluster fuck of a pyramid scheme solely designed to sell you cute little plastic cards (well ok now eCards™!) while separating you from your paycheck.
My gear is barely dry and rinsed from two weeks of Great Lakes diving but I had almost forgot that Annie and I were scheduled for a Gauntlet charter this Sunday on the wreck of F/V Patriot which sits in about 105′ of water in NOAA’s Stellwagen Bank Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Massachusetts. If I can be completely honest the F/V Patriot is kind of a small and uninteresting shipwreck. By that I mean it’s not a historical, very large or unique wreck. It is a 60′ modern…
Not a lot has changed with my compressor setup. I’m still running my Alkin W31 compressor and have about 250 hours on it. I bought it brand new in mid-2019. So far the only maintenance I’ve done is regular oil changes and filter changes. Full disclosure: I did have 2 issues. The 240v to 12v transformer on mine failed (broken wiring/ bad contact) but Alkin shipped me a new one overnight. Also the pneumatic valve on my autodrain was sticking closed but that’s more general maintenance. It was very easy…
I decided to get one last trip on the wreck of the Roy A. Jodrey before the end of the season. “End of the season” is of course a bit of a misnomer. There is still plenty of diving to be done in the St Lawrence river in the winter but most charter boats are out of the water by mid-December and the ice starts to become an issue by February. If you get really desperate you can shore dive at the Islander or Bonnie Castle but you may have…
Why you should build a nitrox stick instead of doing partial pressure blending
Scootering to the wreck of Burlington Bay Horse Ferry from shore.
Is the OJ Walker in Lake Champlain a shore dive? It is now.. 🙂 With DPVs anything can be a shore dive it’s just a matter of motivation and perspective. Ok maybe it’s a little more than that but I personally like a good challenge. For those that are unfamiliar with diving in Lake Champlain the OJ Walker is a wreck dive that is north of the Burlington Breakwater in about 60ft. It is typically a dive that you need to a boat to get out to. When I told…
I haven’t really been updating this blog but I am going to try to start adding some new content, DIY articles and reviews shortly. Last fall in early November, I switched over to a ScubaForce SF2 rebreather. I have been diving it all winter, taken 2 trips to Florida (Cave Country) and another trip to Missouri to dive some mines with the unit, in addition to some local diving. I just broke 100 hours / 6 months on the unit and hope to write about my transition from the rEvo…
I have been interested in building an O2 Cell Checker for a while now, not only to test if my rebreather cells are current limited but also to check the linearity of them. That is when I remembered seeing an older thread on RebreatherWorld.com aptly named “The Under $50 Cell Checker” A bunch of people on that thread had some really cool designs. I merely copied what other people were doing and can’t take any credit for this idea. So the question is can you build a cell checker for…
I finally got around to “finishing” my DIY drysuit heated vest project. While I have been using a Thermalution heated vest for the past two seasons I wanted something with a little longer runtime that heated over a larger area. I also wanted the ability to isolate the battery in the event of failure.  I really can’t take credit for this design as I pretty much copied the parts list from my friends Matt and Lea who designed their vests before me. I waited for them to be guinea pigs until…
