Thank you Mom, Patrick and Gina for the Patron Tequila in the mail.  Per­fect birth­day gift so I’ll put it next to my com­puter at work

I have posted some of the GPS trails that I have ran and enjoy run­ning in my page about run­ning. This year I’m not run­ning many new trails due to some minor injuries I suf­fered last year so I have been stick­ing to some con­ser­v­a­tive, short and soft trails. Hope­fully in the future I will be able to par­tic­i­pate in more run­ning events and run new trails.

Once I get time, I’ll update my page about div­ing with some cool pic­tures, sta­tis­tics, and places I have dived.

This week­end we went to Scottsville, VA to go tub­ing again.  What we learned from the first time we went is that we needed more beer so this time around we had plenty.  If you see the pho­tos, we start very calm and then go pic­ture crazy at “Pere Rock”.  Pere Rock is the rock that Cata­lan empire took over.   Shortly after we passed Pere Rock, Pere nocked off my sun­glasses and they were gone for good.    Din­ner was good, the fire was good, and the night’s sleep was good (at least for me), every­body else was a bit cold.

Today I received my new babies, Flot­sam & Jet­sam (two Wor­thing­ton X8-119 steel tanks).   I do admit I did spent a while try­ing to think up names for them.  These were my other choices:

• Deco & Narc
• gid­dily & gig­gly  — con­fus­ing, but funny
• Cheeky & Chops
• Fish & Chips  — i do hate fish and chips
• Bon­nie & Clyde — too common
• Borat & Bruno — ha ha ha
• Cheech & Chong — too common
• Chaos & Con­trol  — too geeky
• Ron & Jeremy — When I dou­ble them up, I don’t like the idea of hav­ing Ron Jeremy strapped to my back
• Emile  & Gag­nan — too historical
• romus & remulus
• Starsky & Hutch — The name of my pre­vi­ous cats
• Alexan­der & Lody­gin — com­pli­cated and historical
• Ruck­ing & Fetarded — stupid
• don & quijote
• Glenn & Quagmire
• And other names peo­ple would find offen­sive

The specs of each tank (source 1 & source 2):

Ser­vice Pres­sure  3442 psi / 230 bar
Nom­i­nal Capac­ity (met­ric): 14.8 liters
True Capac­ity (impe­r­ial): 123.0 cu ft.
Buoy­ancy FULL (salt water): –10.9 lbs / — 4.9 kg
Buoy­ancy EMPTY (salt water): –2.0 lbs / –0.9 kg
Weight Empty 42 lbs / 19.0 kg
Out­side Diam­e­ter: 8.00 in / 203mm
Cylin­der Lenght: 24.0 in / 60.1 cm

 So, for a while I been div­ing with Faber Low Pres­sure Steel 95s, some 100s, 120s, 65s and Al 80s,  and I think it’s time I got myself my own pair.   I have been look­ing for tanks where their height does not exceed 25 inches and it’s able to hold quite a bit of air at 3000, but can take more if filled higher.   I was con­sid­er­ing get­ting a Faber 95, which is slightly shorter than the 119 by 0.2 inches and weights 4.8 lbs less.  The Faber 95’s ser­vice pres­sure is 2640, but some divers (e.g. cave divers) over pres­sure them so they reach 129.5 cu ft at 3600 psi.   I prob­a­bly won’t be over pres­sur­iz­ing my 119s past the ser­vice pres­sure of 3442, but if I were to over pres­sur­ize them to 3600 then it would hold 128.6 cu ft.  Even though the dimen­sions are almost the same, I felt more com­fort­able with the 119 since it seems it’s a stronger tank with thicker walls even though it holds a lit­tle less air than the Faber 95 at the same pres­sure and also weights more when empty.

Since our sec­ond ocean dive got can­celed due to bad weather, we went to the North Car­olina Aquar­ium at Pine Knoll Shores.  The aquar­ium is really good, they have play­ful otters, tur­tles, frogs, snakes, sharks, etc.  The aquar­ium also has a touch aquar­ium where you can touch skates and rays.  Here I am touch­ing some of these play­ful pups.

In addi­tion, the aquar­ium has a really cool liv­ing ship­wreck.  Here is a excerpt from wikipedia:

Most of the larger crea­tures inhabit the Aquarium’s cen­ter­piece exhibit, the 306,000-gallon Liv­ing Ship­wreck. Along with hun­dreds of school­ing fishes and other ani­mals, they cre­ate a swirl of con­stant motion around a replica of U-352, a Ger­man sub­ma­rine that lost a World War II bat­tle with a Coast Guard cut­ter off the North Car­olina coast.

For the 4th of July, I trav­eled from Rawl­ings, VA to More­head, NC (5 hours) to do some wreck div­ing and watch the great fire­works show.   The fire­works were great and lasted about 30 min­utes, which is one of the longest shows I have seen.  On the drive to More­head, VA from Rawl­ings, VA we passed a lot of tobacco farms (shown on the left) since we had to cut through some farm roads.

We orig­i­nally planned for 4 dives, but the last two were can­celed due to bad weather so it was a shame because the first two were some of the best dives I have done so far.   With the first two dives I broke my deep­est record so far and got to see lots of fish and sand tiger sharks.

First dive: Ger­man WW II U-352 submarine.

My Max Depth: 112 ft / 34 m

My breath­ing gas: 30% oxy­gen nitrox mix

Time: 29 mins

Decom­pres­sion stop: No, 2 min­utes away from a manda­tory decom­pres­sion stop.  Per­formed a 8 minute safety stop at 15 ft / 4.5m for the sake of extra safety.

Vis­i­bil­ity: Very good

Tem­per­a­ture: Upper 70s F / low 20s C

Loca­tion: Click here

Descrip­tion (Wikipedia):

——-

Unter­see­boot 352 or U-352 was a type VIIC Nazi Ger­man U-boat that served in the North Atlantic dur­ing World War II. It was launched on 7 May 1941 under the com­mand of Kapitän­leut­nant Hell­mut Rathke, with a crew of 49.

In Jan­u­ary 1942, U-352 began active patrols in the north­ern Atlantic toward the United States of Amer­ica. Oper­at­ing chiefly out of St. Nazaire and Kiel, U-352 was ordered toward the east­ern coast­line of the United States on 7 April 1942. The United States Coast Guard cut­ter Icarus inter­cepted and sank it on 9 May. Thirty-three crewmem­bers sur­vived, were taken pris­oner, and served the remain­der of the war as pris­on­ers of war.

The U-352 lies in about 100 feet of water off the North Car­olina coast. She sits at a 45-degree list to starboard.

——–

This site was dis­cov­ered in 1974 by Olym­pus owner and Cap­tain, George Puri­foy, and sev­eral friends. The his­tory behind this site has been tele­vised and fea­tured on the His­tory® Chan­nel, and is one of North Carolina’s best known dive sites.

Sec­ond dive: The USCGC Spar (WLB-403) wreck

My Max Depth: 105 ft / 32 m

My breath­ing gas: 30% oxy­gen nitrox mix

Time: 35 mins

Vis­i­bil­ity: Very good

Tem­per­a­ture: Upper 70s F / Low 20s C

Descrip­tion:

The Coast Guard Cut­ter Spar was sunk as a diver friendly wreck, the180ft long and 37ft wide Spar sits upright in 100ft of water and is com­pletely intact. The Spar got its name from the US Coat Guard Motto “Sem­per Para­tus, Always Ready” which was an appro­pri­ate name for the Coast Guard buoy ten­der com­mis­sioned June 1944. Mak­ing port at var­i­ous loca­tions up and down the North­east US, the Spar was one of the most awarded ves­sels in the Coast Guard fleet and served in a vari­ety mis­sions dur­ing its 50 year ser­vice includ­ing sub­ma­rine hunt­ing and oceanog­ra­phy assign­ments. After being decom­mis­sioned in Feb of 1997, the ship was sunk as an arti­fi­cial reef off the coast of More­head City. Now home to Sand Tiger Sharks, the Spar is a very pop­u­lar site since it sits upright and has lots of oppor­tu­ni­ties for penetration.