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Hi Editor,
Not sure who you are, but my name is in my profile. I don't know Boon, I'm afraid. Perhaps you know my brother, who happens to work for AD?
4 wetsuits! LOL
As for ice diving, it's even more equipment and labor intensive than regular diving.
For one thing, we have to wait until Old Man Winter freezes the lake surface to at least 3 feet of solid ice. Then we drive (fingers crossed) across the lake to where we want to put in. Now comes the fun part: cutting that hole, then getting that chunk of ice away from the hole. It's always fun trying to get that chunk back into position over the hole: usually we push it under the ice, so to re-position it involves a lot pulling and tugging while trying not to slip back in ourselves! Once we had so much trouble getting the damn thing to go under, we decided to pull it out. BIG mistake. The ice chunk froze onto the lake surface. Oops.
Other wacky things that have happened to me ice diving: one of my diving buddies brought her dog with her. I guess dogs don't understand the yellow "crime scene" tape we had looped around the hole on sticks to warn others that there's a hole in the ice. The poor little mutt was running around and fell into the icy water. :( Ever since then, she's stayed away from our ice diving hole! LOL
Now the thing about ice diving is to see whose equipment's going to freeze over first. Inevitably, somebody's reg goes free-flowing even with environmental kits (yep been there). Or your LP hose goes, at which point you're in danger of going off like a rocket to Mars. Remember the LP disconnect skill we all did in our basic open water course? Comes in handy here! That's why it's so important to have high performance equipment: your LP hose must be able to vent faster than it can fill up your BCD.
Of course, nothing beats your dry suit inflator free flowing. Talk about a blimp! LOL
The other unique thing about ice diving is that you're tethered to the surface, where your line is connected to a tender. If anything goes wrong, you'll get pulled in instead of having to search for the opening in the ice. Again, sh*t can happen here. I was once tethered incorrectly and ended up having to call my dive sooner than I would have liked.
I felt a weird tugging, signalled my buddy who couldn't figure out what was wrong, so I continued diving with that annoying tug on my reg. A few minutes into the dive, my reg started feeling really wet. I'm thinking: what the heck's a high performance reg doing breathing wet on an ice dive? Made no sense. When we surfaced and looked at the equipment, we were amazed.
Just before jumping in the hole, my reg had free flowed at the surface, so to stop that, we pour hot water on the mouthpiece to thaw the ice that's causing the free flow. Problem was: I dive with a SeaCure mouthpiece. As you know, these mouthpieces soften up in contact with hot water: that's how you set them. Well, because the tether was routed under my reg, it was jerking my reg out of my mouth and causing stress on the now softened mouthpiece where it connects to the reg. Between the pressure I was exerting on the mouthpiece between my teeth and the force that was pulling the mouthpiece out of my mouth by the tether, my mouthpiece actually ripped, causing my reg to breathe wet.
I drank the lake for about 10 minutes before I decided I wasn't thirsty anymore and finally called the dive! LOL
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you imagined." Thoreau
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