scububa
September 7th, 2008, 11:32 PM
Spent the weekend at Norfork diving off a friend's houseboat (not a diver) with another friend (diver :-). Various schedules caused us to not get in as much diving as we first planned, but it was a still a great weekend.
Friday night as we unloaded our gear, we met a guy from Wright City (Rick) that was a diver (cave, too) and talked for a while. Then we pushed off to go do a night dive. We weren't sure where we were going to dive and finally selected a wall dive off of Bidwell Pt. campground. Steve is pretty unbashful about backing the boat up close to bluffs. As we are backing up, Steve says, "Did you hear some one in the water?" (It was dark.) It was the same Rick. He had a camper in the campground and said he first thought he recognized the sound of the motors and then recognized our voices (???) and he put on his wetsuit and swam out. It was pretty funny. Anyway, we did a nice little dive. I was in dry suit and doubles to keep my practice going. Steve always has the food just finishing on the grill when we get back from the dive.
Saturday was a bust for diving as Ryan had to support a project at work and took my truck back to town. Steve and I hung out at the boat, had a few naps, beers, etc. and then took his run about out for some cruising. He took me to some areas of the lake I had never been to before. It was a gorgeous day. And, we ate pulled pork I had smoked for this trip. I also spent some time on the top deck studying some for my upcoming cave written test.
Sunday we took the houseboat over and dropped the anchor on Henderson bridge. We did a nice dive on the bridge. The vis was pretty poor for the whole dive. At first I thought, this is stirred up from us dragging the anchor across the bridge. But, it never got any better all along the span. Four or five feet was a strain to see Ryan's UK HID. Even though it was an NDL dive, at 30 ft. I shot a bag for practice. (For SLIM and theskull, I can only think of one word..."flawless" :-)
We had sausage, egg, hashbrown burritos during the SI. Steve had just canned some fresh salsa the previous week and it went great. Oh, and Steve always has some hot coffee when I get back on the boat. There were virtually no boats on the lake this morning.
We did a second dive off of the bluffs that off Robison point/island that were along the old river bank. This was the best vis of the trip. I had Ryan monitor me doing a couple of valve drills at the end of this dive as planned.
Then we brought it back to the marina and I packed up for the trip home.
Water was about 60 deg. Thermo is about 32 - 35 ft. The vis is as described above. Overall the lake is still up quite a bit. The deck of the bridge was at 52 feet a few years ago (per my log book). The deck is at 72 feet now.
Friday night as we unloaded our gear, we met a guy from Wright City (Rick) that was a diver (cave, too) and talked for a while. Then we pushed off to go do a night dive. We weren't sure where we were going to dive and finally selected a wall dive off of Bidwell Pt. campground. Steve is pretty unbashful about backing the boat up close to bluffs. As we are backing up, Steve says, "Did you hear some one in the water?" (It was dark.) It was the same Rick. He had a camper in the campground and said he first thought he recognized the sound of the motors and then recognized our voices (???) and he put on his wetsuit and swam out. It was pretty funny. Anyway, we did a nice little dive. I was in dry suit and doubles to keep my practice going. Steve always has the food just finishing on the grill when we get back from the dive.
Saturday was a bust for diving as Ryan had to support a project at work and took my truck back to town. Steve and I hung out at the boat, had a few naps, beers, etc. and then took his run about out for some cruising. He took me to some areas of the lake I had never been to before. It was a gorgeous day. And, we ate pulled pork I had smoked for this trip. I also spent some time on the top deck studying some for my upcoming cave written test.
Sunday we took the houseboat over and dropped the anchor on Henderson bridge. We did a nice dive on the bridge. The vis was pretty poor for the whole dive. At first I thought, this is stirred up from us dragging the anchor across the bridge. But, it never got any better all along the span. Four or five feet was a strain to see Ryan's UK HID. Even though it was an NDL dive, at 30 ft. I shot a bag for practice. (For SLIM and theskull, I can only think of one word..."flawless" :-)
We had sausage, egg, hashbrown burritos during the SI. Steve had just canned some fresh salsa the previous week and it went great. Oh, and Steve always has some hot coffee when I get back on the boat. There were virtually no boats on the lake this morning.
We did a second dive off of the bluffs that off Robison point/island that were along the old river bank. This was the best vis of the trip. I had Ryan monitor me doing a couple of valve drills at the end of this dive as planned.
Then we brought it back to the marina and I packed up for the trip home.
Water was about 60 deg. Thermo is about 32 - 35 ft. The vis is as described above. Overall the lake is still up quite a bit. The deck of the bridge was at 52 feet a few years ago (per my log book). The deck is at 72 feet now.