TRINITY'S 1st Annual 2010/2011 Icing/ Anchoring Challenge

[DetectorGuy]

Weather for Saturday "up North" looks like a bit of wind, a little cool, little rain, chance of finding anchors is high.

[DiverQueen]

After today's weather, you may have to swim to the site before you can cut the ice!  A co-worker of mine got a message from a friend on Mille Lacs.  "There is a foot of water on top of the ice!"

[arcFlash]

I have all the gear Joe and a site 800 feet from shore. Locals are telling me it's a hot spot for lost gear with a local confirming he lost one anchor.

[Shooter]

Team Isanti (despite brutal conditions) sets the bar even higher!!! ;D ;D 8) 8)

[arcFlash]

It doesn't look like I'll get out this weekend. I told Joe and Pat that I'd go but as of now I have not gotten a reply so I'm moving on other plans.

[Hydro]

im still in, we were waiting for a reply from the other 2?  :'(
are people waiting for 80 degree weather for ice diving!?

[DetectorGuy]

Remember 11 months ago when we set the record for pulling 18 anchors from one ice hole on 2-6-2010?.. We waited for nearly a year for someone to rise to the occasion and smash that record called "The mother of all anchor dives". 

Well Team Isanti took it upon ourselves to break our own record yesterday (New Years Day 2011) by pulling up 19 anchors from one 4'x4'x4' ice hole! The temp at 7:00 AM was zero with a stout 15 MPH wind. We set up a perimeter using signs on wood lath at the edge of our radius to let fishermen know not to drill holes or fish inside that perimeter. We flew the flag also but some fishermen need more than just a flag. Even with the less than pleasant weather we still had some luxuries. Nate deep fried Grouper on the ice  and Art brought soup for lunch. This sounds like we had a cushy day but we had our challenges as well. My BC inflator stuck and I needed to use the drysuit only for buoyancy control. I know Naui claims that the dry suit should be used for buoyancy only but in the shallower water buoyancy is easier for me using the BC. Nate had a complete drysuit flood on his second dive so there is no way of knowing what the final count may have been if that didn't happen.

I won't divulge the location of our record setting dive or our running total of bottom time for fear of sending waves of panic through the other camps, but here are some of my personal stats from my meager 3 year long diving career to date:
174 total logged dives since May 19th 2007.
110 hours and 2 minutes of total logged bottom time since May 19th 2007.
28 total logged ice dives since Jan 23rd 2009
Hours of fun had while diving... Countless!

Here is the official anchor count from the New Years Day dive:
Nate = 9 anchors
John = 8 anchors
Art  = 2 anchors and a tackle box

Here are the obligatory photos of the record setting day. The first one is of Nate and I with 18 of the 19 anchors. The second one is of Nate and Art with 18 of the 19 anchors. The third one is of all 19 anchors as the 19th was sitting on the other side of the shelter during the first two photos. The last one is showing the section of plywood floor near the hole with the biner coming through the hand hole in it.

[doug67]

Very nice haul guys. I see most of them are real anchors and not buckets of cement.

[DetectorGuy]

Thanks Doug, There were two clunkers in there and the rest were good ole cast iron. One that Shooter found looked like a naval contact mine that was a metal sphere attached to a steel X on the bottom. I have never seen one like that yet. We couldn't get right on the spot we wanted to because there was a fish house camped out within the radius. We moved 100' farther away from it to maintain the 175' clean radius. At the end of the last dive we pulled the signs right away and the fishermen swarmed in like moths to a flame. Here is a photo of the signs we posted at the perimeter of our dive area. With a dive flag in the center and these around the edges We clearly staked our ground.

[DiverQueen]

Glad to see you "Marked your territory" well!