Unfortunately my regular dive buddy John decided to abandon me and move to bum-fuck Tennessee. As a result we haven’t gotten any dives in together this year. I don’t blame him (ok only a little bit); The weather is warmer in Tennessee and I’m sure the cost of living is much better than New England / New York.
Anyway he still does National Guard in Vermont and flew back this past weekend. We had talked about getting in a dive together when he was here but unfortunately it would have to be after-work. The only day that would work was Friday the 13th in October and it would have to be at night. Normally most people are superstitious about this particular date but they’re all fucking morons who will use any excuse not to go diving. We decided to call it a spooky dive to the OJ Walker.
I told him if he was serious to just bring his drysuit and undergarments and I would supply him with everything else he needs including a scooter, primary light, doubles, regulators, backplate/wing, a stage bottle and heater vest battery. I’m sure that I missed something else except fins apparently. I don’t own any monster-sized XXL fins so he had to bring those.
In October 2021 John and I installed a permanent guideline from the end of one of the Burlington water intake pipes to the wreck of the OJ Walker. It’s actually a pretty simple but boring DPV dive provided you have enough gas reserves and battery life in your scooter. Shallow water, relatively simple navigation following a water intake pipe most of the water and a good exercise real-world in gas planning. We did the dive a bunch in 2021 and 2022 but unfortunately did not visit the wreck at all in 2023 so I had no idea if our line would still be intact 2 years later. The whole scooter run is about 2.4-2.5 miles roundtrip (we measured this multiple times by towing a dive flag with a GPS running Navionics and exported the track line).
A lot of things tried to worked against us on this dive but I’m pretty stubborn and I wasn’t going to drive 3.5 hours to NOT get in the water. Last week it had rained +2.5 inches in Vermont and all the river tributaries are now dumping mud into Lake Champlain. This typically means visibility will be shit and by shit, I mean literal shit. A lot of the rivers will be pumping sewer overflow into the lake.
When I arrived on-site at 4:00pm the lake was flat with no wind at all. By the time we started gearing up there was a steady and persistent 15-20kt wind blowing into shore. Luckily the breakwater helps shelter the entry point. The entry point also sucks now. They removed the derelict dock that made for an easy staging point and step down into the water. The entry now involves scrambling down some rocks although it’s honestly really not bad compared to some Cape Ann shore dives.
The visibility in the shallows was bad, I would say 1-3f. It probably didn’t help that it was dusk and the sun had started to set. We began the dive by heading in the complete opposite direction because I thought John was navigating and I forgot my scooter compass. After we solved that problem we overshot pipe because the visibility was so bad.
When we finally got on the correct water intake pipe things started to improve. Below 25-30ft the visibility improved to a scant 4-5ft (~1.5m) and the water was warm. We had 58-62 degrees (~15c) the entire scooter ride out to the end of the intake pipe. At some point before we reached the end of the intake pipe John had motioned/signaled to me and asked if I wanted to turn around. I signaled in my best attempt possible (I think he understood ) that we might as well go to the end of the intake pipe and inspect our line since we were already here and committed. I should mention here that there were really no issues beyond bad visibility. Scooters were working and we had plenty of gas. If he really wanted to turn I would have turned.
When we got to the end of the intake pipe we decided to just say fuck it and go to the wreck. Our line that we installed in in October 2021 is still perfectly intact. Some parts are slightly buried in silt but everything is easy to follow. We did extend the line another 50-75ft or so because we had agreed the last time that it is a little far off the wreck. We originally wanted to make sure nobody would accidentally find it and follow it. Next year I’ll need to come back and add a few more silt stakes at the end.
Our navigation was perfect and we ran right into the stern of the wreck with a 225-230 degree compass heading. I should say John’s navigation because didn’t have my scooter compass and my wrist compass is hard to use while scootering whereas John has a fancy Perdix with a digital compass. All of my computers are old-school Petrel 1s or Predators that do not have digital compasses.
Not much to report. The OJ Walker is still there and it’s still a shipwreck. We did a couple scooter laps around the wreck and decided that is was way past beer-o-clock. On the scooter ride back home we saw lots of what I know now were American eels. I had actually never seen that many before. We probably saw about 15-20 of them on the scooter back along the intake pipe. They were pretty startled by our primary lights.
The exit out of the water was a bit sporty. The winds picked up to around 20-25kts and there were some waves but nothing too serious. Gary and Ellen provided surface support and helped grab bottles and scooters.
All in all, the dive was a success. Probably not too many people willing to do a night DPV shore dive 2.5 miles offshore but if you really think about it, it’s not vastly different from the parameters of a cave dive. Dark, no daylight
