After taking redeye flights the night before, Heather and I arrived in Charlotte for Heather’s sister’s famous holiday party. The crab dip was not to be missed.
This was a Christmas card in Heather’s sister’s house. Amazing!
Diving in Clear Lake and Smith Reservoir
After being disappointed by the visibility at Florence, Heather and I decided to go to Clear Lake and Smith Reservoir for a couple of dives. When we arrived at Clear Lake, we found several inches of snow on the ground and more falling through the clouds.
We decided to enter just south of the resort area and dive in the north end of the southern portion of the lake.
Heather getting pumped up to dive in water that is just above freezing.
The SCUBA Whale!
Trying to stay warm pre-dive.
Getting our gear setup.
Yup, there really is snow on the ground. Not quite as much as when Brent and I did a dive here several years ago though.
Staying warm before we get wet.
Last pre-dive check of gear before we don our BCDs and start the walk to the water.
Post-dive at Clear Lake. Heather got rather cold on the dive. We brought some hot beverages to warm ourselves up with before our second dive.
At the Smith Reservoir boat ramp.
Looking toward the intake structure.
We did an abbreviated dive in Smith Reservoir. After reaching about 90 feet, Heather’s primary regulator started to have a small free-flow from ice buildup. We aborted the dive and ascended safely. We even were able to do an appropriate safety stop. I turned off Heather’s air on our short surface swim back to the boat ramp.
Drysuit Checkout Dive in Woahink Lake
After Heather purchased her new drysuit, we decided to go try it out. A favorite site to test drysuits and get crabs is the Florence Jetty. We arrived at high tide hoping that the visibility wouldn’t be too bad. This is looking just east of the SCUBA access ramp. It was an extremely high tide from the looks of things. Perhaps there was a bit of a storm surge.
This is the ramp into the water. There was a good deal of debris in the water sloshing around.
There were some big waves coming in on the south jetty and big breakers just offshore.
The large logs rolling around in the entry area and the complete lack of visibility didn’t make us very happy. If you can’t even see anything in the entry area, the whole site is usually blown out.
Heather isn’t too impressed with Northwest diving.
Watching this log roll around made us decide to go to our backup dive site at Woahink Lake.
We went to the east boat ramp at Woahink Lake where SCUBA classes often go diving. There isn’t especially much to see in the water but it is a good site for when the west boat ramp is full (it was with a class) and the jetty is blown out. The green tank is one of Heather’s two new aluminum 80 cubic foot tanks. Now we have enough tanks to do two dives each before needing air fills.
Heather getting into her nice new drysuit.
Getting ready to go diving together for the first time! It only took about a year to get here.
Heather in her suit. It is a bit baggy around the hips but once underwater, that bagginess gives an increased range of motion.
Me in my BARE suit. I haven’t met many other people who dive red BARE suits.
In our suits together.
After the dive warming up together in the car. We only did one dive at Woahink because it was rather cold and nasty at the surface and because there really isn’t a reason to do two dives at the same place in Woahink ever.
