Anyone for Lake Rawlings: Wed July 22nd?

[BobbyWombat]

Hi All,

I'm thinking about hitting up Lake Rawlings on a Wednesday this month to take advantage of the half price entry fee and reduced crowds.

Anyone interested in hitting Rawlings on Wednesday the 22nd? I'll be driving down from DC and can pick up anywhere along the way.

-BW

[BobbyWombat]

I'm sure it's only a matter of time before tens and hundreds of you start clamoring to have the opportunity to dive with me and that no one has responded yet is just a strange anomaly and in no way a reflection of your assessment of the relative enjoyment of spending time in my company… but…

Just in case anyone cares: I might be looking at the following Wednesday instead (July 29th) due to a business trip.

-BW

[tmickens7806]

I will let you now by tomorrow if I will be able to come down with you. I also live in the DC metro Area.

[BobbyWombat]

Sweet. The more the merrier!

Right now we have a group of four that are planning on being down there. Let me know.

Just to be clear: The plan is to go down on the 29th. I can't go back and edit the original post to reflect this change in plan.

-BW

[BobbyWombat]

A great day for diving at Lake Rawlings on the 29th. I'd only been there during the weekends when the OW classes tend to get everything kicked up and the vis gets bad in a hurry.

We almost had the whole place to ourselves. Great vis (relatively speaking), maybe 25 - 30 ft. 80 degrees surface water temps, thermocline at about 25', then in the low 60s past the thermocline down to 50 ft. My DC pegged the lowest temp at 60 degrees even.

There were a couple of cars down there that I hadn't seen before. I think they were recent addtions. The plane is also a great addtion from last year. We did a suface swim over the plane and dropped down the buoy line. You could see it pretty clearly from the surface (40' down)....of course it was a giant white thing hard to miss....but still not bad vis for a quarry dive, that's all I'm saying.

There were some Navy guys (I think) out there too, doing some training. They freaked everyone out because they simulated a diver black-out, did a rescue tow, got him on a back-board and put him in a portable recompression chamber (I'm guessing that is what it was) they brought in on a big truck. During the rescue tow someone yelled out "do you want us to call 911?", and they answered back it was just a drill. That put everyone back at ease, but it was definitely a wierd "is this real?" "is this really happening" feeling there for a moment.

Anyway, if you are going to dive Rawlings, do it during the weekday if you can. Much nicer experience than fighting the crowds on a weekend.

-BW