Matt asked me if I would like to dive today, and I of course said yes.
We planned on meeting up at the dive shop at 11, then plan from there. I was a little early, so I purchased some new gear. I finally bought new gloves with thermal protection, and they seem to rock.
New Equipment
The gloves are the Aqua Lung Aleutian Kevlar 5mm Medium ($49.95) (http://www.aqualung.com/us/content/view/349/). These gloves rock. Good tight fit, and warm. One of the things that is nice about these gloves is they are natural on your hand. That is to say, the fingers are naturally rolled forward on the glove.
I also took the opportunity to purchase new dive boots. These boots rock because they have an actual shoe sole. Those are Deep See 6.5MM Manta (Size 11) ($59.95) Boots (http://www.scubacenter.com/scubacenter_onlinestore/wetsuits/Deep_See_wetsuit_boots.htm)
The new boots were awesome today! Last week, when we did the annual New Years Day Dive in Burlington, I could feel the cold of the ground through my old boots. With these boots, and the sole on them, it was like walking in regular street shoes. EDIT – The only problem with the boots is drying them after a dive. I’ve had them upside down for a week and there is still moisture in them. I’m going to make a little plastic box with a space heater to put the boots, gloves and hood in, to dry them slowly with heat.
Once in the water, the new boots rocked as well. The water that got in didn’t seem to be as bad as my other pair of boots.
Today was also the first time I was able to dive with my computer moved off from my instrument panel and to my wrist. I have a Suunto Gekko dive computer. I purchased the wrist mount housing which was only something like $13 from the local dive shop. I also purchased the watch straps from them for $34. If I were to do this again, I wouldn’t purchase the watch style straps, but do like Matt has, with the bungie cord. The bungie cord seems to work better, because of the compression of the wet suit when going under water.
About Today’s Dive
We dove in Burlington at Perkin’s Pier. The air temperature was 26 degrees. The water temperature was 36 degrees. The dive time was 21 minutes with a max depth of 19 feet. I dove this with my orange 72 steel tank. My starting pressure was 2250PSI and ending was 1200PSI. The water had around 16 feet of visibility, much less than I have been seeing as of late in the colder, little used lake water.