[oldflounder]

It was a fine day to be on and under the water. The air was warm but not stifling like the previous several days. I don't know what it was like ashore that day but there was no humidity on the water [is that something like an oxymoron?] the surface water must have been in the mid to upper 70's with a thermocline at 28' about 8-10* less. I wore my lavacore 2 piece with thin gloves and 7 mm hood and was warm enough down there.

The viz was nothing to brag about. We had the usual 12-15' but the water was unusually hazy. Maybe the previous spell of hot weather got an algae bloom active or some kind of other organic growth going.

None of us were up for any hard core diving experiences right off the bat so we opted for Harilla's Cove to get wet and check out each other's dive skills. We explored the 3 wrecks and viewed the swarms of fishies at the boathouse. After our 65 minute dive we lounged away a 1/2 SI on the boat and then motored back over to The Lady for our second dive. We had the same unusually hazy viz. The bottom was pleasant with very little stirred up silt to deal with. We spent another good hour exploring the wreck, taking photos and watching the fishies watching us. Never saw the resident eel.

The bunch of us returned to where we had secured to flag to the center of the wreck and, to our surprise, it was missing in action. It had apparently untied itself and gone off looking for a more interesting location. [as all experienced divers well know -- dive flags have a mind of their own -- if they are not constantly trying to wrap themselves around you, they are drifting off somewhere or dragging along the bottom behind you.] That was an interesting experience. Jay chose to be the sacrificial lamb and surfaced into the boat traffic with a safety sausage while the rest of us waited 15' below him expecting to be showered with blood and body parts any minute. Luckily for Jay the dive flag was still relatively near the wreck and had been doing it's duty keeping the boaters at bay.

By now we were starting to get a little chilled as we had spent a good part of an hour in and out of the thermocline zone. We surfaced to hot dogs and grilled kielbasa provided by Jim, our wonderful host. This was a fun experience and it was nice to be able to have a day of pretty much doing what we wanted without being rushed about trying to keep to schedules.

I would definately do it again but Jim might have to get a smaller boat. We had one lady float out to us on her little float raft and tell us we were blocking her view of the lake. She was serious!