Saturday 7/10 was a “Tale of Two Cities” day. The morning was spectacular, one of those days you know why you buy a boat. West winds <7kts, West wave <1ft, surface water temp 72F and 46F at 45FT with viz +50FT. We again had a surface current from the SE. We were were headed to the Mack & Wells. We had a great group of divers, including a family of three. Everyone had a great dive on the Mack. We next moved to the Wells where the thermocline moved up to 15Ft and the temp was 65F. Combine the water temp with viz in excess of 50FT and you are having a great day of diving on the Lake.
As great as Saturday 7/10 morning was, Saturday afternoon was about as awful as you can get. Though we started out just fine, very similar to the morning with a slight increase in wind, things went downhill from there. The first dive was on the Wells Burt and things went fairly well. Conditions were similar to the morning and except for a little coughing fit by one of the divers I thought things went well. Dive 2 was on the Wings of Wind. By the time we got there we had solid 1’s but I was able to singlehand the mooring without a problem. Our divers suited up and hit the water and then when things began to change. The wind picked up as did the sea state. There was a good current and one of our divers drifted off the descent line and surfaced behind the boat. I immediately grabbed my throw bag, and tossed it to her, on its path to her, I thought “boy what a good throw”, then right before hitting her the bag veered downwind and it missed her by 6 feet. Not far, but with the current it was too far. Now it was decision time, I had 4 divers down and one diver at the surface floating away. The divers who were down were going to be gone for over 30 minutes so I knew I would have time to retrieve the diver at the surface and come back for my other divers. I fired up the motors and cut loose from the mooring and in short order we had a tired diver back in the boat. Sounds easy now, but the seas built quickly to 3ft which meant that I could not tie in again by myself, so I would just idle nearby. Then things began to get worse – much worse! Did you ever see the movie “White Squall”? Well that is what happened here. It began to rain hard, actually horizontal rain is a good description and wind speed increasing to over 25mph. I fired up the radar and all I saw was blue around me. There was so much water in the air I couldn’t differentiate water from sky. After waiting for all the divers to get up and hang on the mooring line, I swooped in and through them the tagline and got them on board as quick as possible. Then it got WORSE!! Have you ever seen horizontal hail? 35KT winds, winds so strong that they actually knocked down the height of the waves from 3ft to 2ft but created so much water spray that you couldn’t see the bow of the boat? That is what we were in for about 20 minutes. After that, we were allowed to motor in. Along the way I actually saw a speed boat (uncovered) about 1/2 mile away that had no radar and no where to go but sit and weather the storm, boy I was glad to be in the R/V Aquatica.
When I got back to the harbor I was as happy as I could be because it could have been a lot worse, we were lucky. I unloaded the divers, finished my logbook, and opened up a 312.
Sunday July 11th was like Saturday afternoon never happened. The morning trip to the Bucc and the Holly was ideal. Flat seas, sunny skies, light winds – just perfect. The afternoon trip was a 2-tanker on the Mack and it was the same, just beautiful.