I was originally scheduled to dive the Pinthis on the Gauntlet but unfortunately the winds were not cooperative at all this weekend. It was a nice ride out but the forecast was predicting that winds were going to gust up to 25-30kts SW in the afternoon which would have made for a not-so-great boat ride back from Scituate so Heather opted to stay local and we dove the City of Salisbury which “can” at times have decent visibility. Keyword here being….can.
Dave and Tim splashed in first to set a mooring. Myself, Matt, Lea started gearing up to go in as a second team. The water on surface had an almost green pea soup consistency so it was not very encouraging but part of me hoped that this was just a layer on the surface and that the visibility would clear up as we descended. Not so much unfortunately. I ended up jumping in before Matt/Lea so I didn’t overheat in my drysuit. As I descended the visibility did not improve at all, in fact I think it actually got worse. Dave and Tim were on the line doing their deco when Dave gave me the “reel up” signal so I knew it wasn’t going be great.
Overall it turned into a nice solo braille dive on the City of Salisbury. The general consensus was that the visibility ranged from 1ft to 3ft. I think a solid 3ft was too ambitious.
Max depth: 82ft Runtime: 45 minutes. Water temp: 46f.
I got bored running a reel for 40 minutes on the bottom when I couldn’t really see anything and figured I didn’t really need to do anything longer. Matt/Lea opted to run their own reel. We did run into each other or rather the faint glow of each others’ lights from time-to-time on the bottom.
Also, the Gauntlet is running low on duct tape. Pretty soon a new surcharge will be added for fin lashing for those that forget their rockboots. Whatever works to save the dive I guess..
