Snagel, it was a pleasure to get to meet you, and dive with you! You've definitely made friends for life here my brother. Next time, we won't have the boat, so I'll make sure there's no more roadside emergencies!
Update on the lost person; they recovered the body this morning. I didn't get any details as of exactly where, how deep, etc., but the park attendant at Long Creek told us as we were leaving this afternoon. It was a sad ordeal.
Now, I have to tell my perspective of our dive. We were reflecting on everything last night at camp, and man would I do a lot of things differently in the future! I was elected the leader, and snagel and my wife stayed behind me. After we descended, I stopped to check things out a bit, and the first thing I noticed was that my computer wasn't working. I screwed with it a bit, but it would not stay powered on for some reason. I turned around, and attempted to show them that it wasn't working, and I looked at my wifes computer to check our depth, etc. That was stressing me a bit, and I SHOULD have called the dive immediately. For whatever reason, I chose to continue the dive. We were on a limited time frame, so I really didn't want to ruin it for snagel or my wife, so I continued. That was stupid thing #1. Next, this was my first dive with my new BP/W, and I had the weighting ALL wrong. I had removed the pony setup for this dive because we were planning to stay fairly shallow, and there was three of us. When I removed the pony, I put my weight in pockets on my top cam bands. In the water, it planted me head first on the bottom. I could not trim out at all without really sculling with my arms and fins, and that alone was stressful and tiring. Again, I should have called the dive, and fixed the problem but I didn't. That was stupid thing #2. I fought to stay neutral, but I was constantly either on the bottom or heading for the surface, and upside down a couple of times. At the bottom, there was so much silt that I kept ruining any decent vis we had. Then towards the end of the dive, I was at the buoy anchor cable, and I decided to turn and follow it toward the dam, then I was going to head back to the entry point from there. Seemed like a great plan to me. All I remember was it starting getting very dark, matter of fact I couldn't even see my compass. I knew we were getting deeper than planned because I had cleared my ears a couple of times, and the ambient light was rapidly disappearing. I decided to stop and check on the others, but when I turned around there was nobody there. I searched for a few seconds, and decided to surface. When I surfaced, I was out near the third buoy, which is normally about 40ft deep. I started swimming toward shore, and then I saw snagel and my wife surface fairly near shore. We all had a little surface swim back, but all was good. Today, I took the boat out to that third buoy, and it was 58ft deep. I believe the deepest snagels computer registered was around 30, so evidentially we had separated by a fairly good distance.
Here's what I learned yesterday:
If my computer, or any other piece of gear isn't working 100%, I'm calling the dive.
If I buy a totally new rig, it's going to the pool first, not a flooded lake with zero vis in spots.
If I'm diving in a threesom, and I'm leading, I'm going to stop more often to check the whereabouts of my buddies.
Last but not least, If I'm going to lose sight of my beloved wife on a dive, I want her to have a buddy like Mr. Nagel by her side. I wasn't worried about her in the least.
Now, I have to commend snagel for being nice, and not calling me an idiot. But I really feel like an idiot. I made some VERY bad decisions, and deserve a good ass whipping!
Other than that, it was fun to get back in the water again, and after I get this BP/W tuned out, it is the most comfortable rig I've tried to date. I really see why you guys love them so much!