Re-visiting the Conestoga
My friend Ken and I went diving yesterday afternoon. It was Ken’s first time in about four years, so we returned to the Conestoga, a wreck I’ve gone diving on twice this year. For a variety of reasons, we didn’t get onsite until quite late in the afternoon. Once onsite, we got our gear on and headed into the water. The water temp was around 68F and the viz was ok. We drifted downstream on the surface and mustered at the boiler that pokes out of the water. From there we descended and swam to the bow, dropped over the side of the wreck and drifted to the stern, popped up over the stern into the wreck and went back to the bow. From there, we basically made our way back to shore and exited the river after a 3-minute safety stop, which is probably redundant as the whole dive is one long safety stop because it’s so shallow (max depth was 21′) and also because we were diving 32% nitrox, rather than straight air. (The 32% nitrox has more oxygen in it than normal air, which is 21% oxygen, meaning you take on less nitrogen loading, reducing the likelihood of getting the bends.)
So, all in all, it was a good weekend. 🙂
AKA Keeper of Maps, I'm a geocacher who lives in Ottawa, Canada.
You need to get a camera for this stuff and post pictures.
A couple of years ago I looked at getting a housing for my old digital camera, but they were quite expensive. I actually have a housing for a specialized one-time use film camera, so I should get a new camera to put inside it. One thing about the conditions in the St. Lawrence is that it’s far from the crystal clear water you see in places like Tobermory or down in the Caribbean, so backscatter is a concern unless you can get a remote strobe so the flash doesn’t get reflected into the lens.