Sunday July 18th started out great. We had a light 7kt wind out of the south and waves, <1FT also from the south. The weatherman had called for afternoon thunderstorms so I wanted to get underway early. I met my boatload of IID divers, well actually one of them called me as he had over slept, I told him to go back to bed as we weren’t waiting, at 0700, we loaded up and headed out of the harbor just past 0730. We headed to the Bucc and within a short period of time we had DM Andy jumping over the side with our mooring. Its a little tough tying up by yourself with wind but, after a couple of attempts I was able to moor the R/V. Our divers readied themselves and the first group of three were on their way. As I readied our last diver, Andy was working with his dive buddy, when I see one of our earlier divers at the surface but way behind our tagline. He gives me the OK and starts his swim back to the boat. What he had done was tried to do a free descent to the wreck. Every time we go out I tell you divers that this is not a quarry or the ocean and that you need to use the mooring line for ascents and descents. Getting to the bottom is not the goal, getting to the wreck is! The use of the line is based on my thousands of Lake dives and you will see how it is demonstrated shortly. Anyhow we get him back on the tagline and then on the wreck so it all worked out. Now, while our last pair of divers is getting ready to head to the bow, one of them drops his camera. Both he and DM Andy want to descend after it but I stop them, I reach into the cooler for a marker buoy and give it a toss where they were just at, which it about 10FT from where they are now. I get the look like, “that’s the wrong spot” but what people forget is that the boat swings on the mooring. Anyhow, Andrew is low on gas so I have him get our divers to the wreck and then come back to swing out tanks. The divers all come up with stories of a great dive and one diver still wondering about his camera. With a fresh tank, I send Andy below to unclip our mooring, which he does in short order. I then tow him over to our drop marker and send him down to get not search for the lost camera. Andy is back up in no time with the camera which was 6 inches from the drop marker (good thing I didn’t hit it with the weight). I must admit that 6 inches was lucky I was expecting 6 feet. Oh yeah, water temp at depth 47F and viz was crummy 30FT.
Dive 2 was the Tacoma. Everyone loves this wreck even serious seasoned divers because she’s pretty. Sitting upright on the bottom with great viz she is a sweet little wreck. The wind had picked up to 10kts and I could see clouds building to the West, so I told our divers 45 minutes and that is it. On cue all our divers were there and back and they had a great dive: Viz >40FT and Temp @ 63F. We gathered up everyone and headed back to Burnham as the skies darkened. When we got to the touch-n-go dock there were two boats sitting there. I could see the storm approaching and Captain Pete was on the radio to me telling me about lightening. I was maneuvering to another dock when one of the boats cleared. I immediately motored over to the touch-n-go dock and the wind literally finished my docking for me as a >25kt gust of wind pushed the R/V into the dock. Andy jumped off and tied off the boat quickly as I put up the drop curtain to close in the helm. Then it started to rain. Horizontal rain, lightening, cooler temps, true wrath of god stuff. 25 minutes later … all gone and the sun is out and everything is perfect except for the 4 inches of water in my dingy.