Wazee Dive Report Aug 4-5

[SurfLung]

Wazee Dive Report Aug. 4-5

Me, Ron, and Rich went over to Wazee last week and enjoyed some pretty decent diving. Visibility was 25-30 feet... Sometimes less but for the most part good visibility. Ron had scoped out the best access point to avoid Swimmers and settled on Bluegill Alley. We brought our scooters and covered a lot of territory right and left. I used a folding wagon to haul my 100 lb scooter from the car down to the lake and back... That worked great. We could see well enough to scooter along and slow and medium speeds. Most of the sights were dove at 25-40 ft depths so our air was lasting especially long. Ron and I got two dives out of our twin 38 tanks with plenty of left over air. I made one dive of 51 minutes on a single 38 cf tank and still had about 200 psi left in the reserve. This was a scooter dive down to 60-some feet along the wall and then back and forth at 25-40 feet deep seeing the sights until it was time to pull the reserve and end the dive.

Swimmers continue to take over our dive access points without the park doing anything about it. There are very few divers and literally hundreds of swimmers... Obviously the park is seeing more benefit (income) from swimmers than divers. We drove over to the beach before we left and they had so many swimmers the parking lot was full and cars were parking up and down the sides of the road. Those that have figured out they can avoid the crowd by swimming at the dive sites are attracting more and more by example.

Rich and I did our first home-made Nitrox dives with two single 38 cf tanks I had filled with 30% Nitrox. Pretty good for learning the partial pressure blending process. Of course I'm blending in tanks I have thoroughly cleaned for pure oxygen use. NOw I'm getting some Nitrox tanks together for our upcoming Fortune Pond trip. What I do is start with and empty 80 cf tank. Fill it with pure aviation grade oxygen via cascade to 721 psi. This I top off to 3000 psi with my RIX oil-less compressor.... Which makes a 40% Nitrox cylinder. This I then use to make my 30% Nitrox diving cylinders. Here's how: Cascade fill an empty dive cylinder half full with 40% Nitrox. Then top it off with your compressor to full pressure... The result is 30% Nitrox. I'm trying to get the most mileage from my big oxygen tank by keeping all of my cascade fills on empty cylinders and the using a compressor to bring them up to full pressure.

For example, I usually fill my Twin 38s to 2000 psi with regular air (21% O2). So I filled them by cascade to 1000 psi with the 40% Nitrox. Then I topped them up to 2000 psi with 21% Nitrox (normal air) from my Alkin compressor. They measure 30% Nitrox. Which has a max dive depth of 121 feet.

At Fortune Pond, I figure to use the 30% Nitrox for those dives in the 60-80 ft depth range. And switch to 21% Nitrox (normal air) for the deeper dives.

Well anyway... We had a great time diving at Wazee. Rich and I got in 5 dives. I think Ron may have done 7!