Memorial Day weekend - Superior

[LKunze]

Hmm...I don't know where to start. Well...actually I do but I don't think I want to talk about it. :-X (Jason knows what I'm talking about...LOL!) Anyway, it started on Friday and we went to the Hesper wreck in Silver Bay. Very rough access. You drive out on the break wall and unload gear and then you have to lug your gear over huge rocks and down the the other side. Very tricky to do and you have to be REAL careful. It's kind of hazzardous. Anyway we got all geared up and entered the water. There were about 2 foot waves coming in. I wasn't prepared for the surge to say the least. We got in the water and as I was being slammed into the rocks I dropped a fin. The surge took it right into the rocks and down about 5 feet into a little cave/rock crevice. Needless to say the fin was gone and I wasn't going to attempt to go down there to retrieve it with the surge coming in. I could have been pushed into the little cave so unfortunately the dive was over. Fortunately I had my old set of fins. I won't get into detail of what I had to do to get my spare fins but you can probably imagine! > : :'(
So onto Saturday. We went to the Madeira site. The buoys were not yet in place but the wreck is easy to find. It was a beautiful day. You could not ask for better dive conditions. NO, I mean absolutely NO wave action at all. The water was near glass on the surface and we had 30+ feet of viz. This was awesome! Also, no other divers out there all day. We had the whole site to ourselves which ruled. We did three dives and dove nitrox for all of the dives which was a huge factor in allowing us to get in three dives more comfortably not to mention safer. The first dive was to 125 feet. This was an amazing dive. Very COLD! Like Jason said 36 degrees. Even in the drysuit and dry gloves it was a bit chilly after about 20 minutes in the water. First dive was about 28 minutes. We took a long surface interval and hit the water again for a second dive. This one to about 75 feet. I had my camera with on this dive and took several pictures and a little mpeg video clip in about the 70 foot depth range. I've attached one of the pics of Jason looking through the pilot house below. I'll post more pics on my Webshots site so feel free to check them out when I get them posted. The link to the site is in my profile. The second dive was for 40 minutes and we were both quite cold by the end of this dive. I should have wore an extra pair of glove liners in my dry gloves because my finger tips were numb from the extreme cold by the end of the dive. We took another surface interval and then entered for our third and final dive of the day. The third dive was to about 55 feet and was about a half hour long. We took another long surface interval before the grueling task of hauling our gear back up the long rugged uphill path to our vehicles. This is the one thing that absolutely sucks about diving the Madeira from shore but it was worth the pain.
Sunday morning, we decided to try the Hesper again. Again absolutely perfect dive conditions and this wreck was not yet buoyed yet either. No waves and smooth glass like surface. We swam out and found the wreck quite easily. We spent a half hour exploring the wreck. This is a very shallow wreck. We didn't get any deeper than 35 feet. On the way back in I stopped at the rocks and searched for my fin for the heck of it. I spotted it but it wasn't reachable. I could have got it if I had a pole with something to hook the spring strap. BUMMER! So if anyone is diving the Hesper and finds a Turtle fin with a spring strap on it in the rocks at the breakwall let me know. I'll most likely be shelling out the cash and buying another pair of Turtles because I really love those fins. All in all an excellent diving weekend. By far my best diving experience to date!