Hello my friends,

Today is Monday!!!! It's early in the morning and I'm fully of energy because I've had a nice diving WE and I even had time to get other things done. I did some work on Saturday and went diving on Sunday to Jug Hole. (I did not know that Ginnie had open yet).

We got to Jug hole on Saturday, 10:30PM, slept in the van in front of the gates and drove in as soon as they opened them at 8:00am. Of course our watches were stilling reading 6 am due to the hour change -- summer time!

The water level has come down nearly 3 feet in a week! We did not have to wade through water on the first wood board walk.

The viz was super and the flow was higher than last WE. I went through the bedding plane first. It's a very low restriction, about 60 feet long. With back mounted single it's not too difficult. Anyway, one through I turned around and took a few pictures of my buddy Layson coming through. On the second dive he took some of me. Hopefully we'll have one or 2 good pictures in there. If we do, I'll put them on my web site.

After the bedding plane (60 feet deep) come 2 30 feet high rooms, 50 feet wide. Then the diamond restriction at 90 feet of depth. You need to negotiate this restriction upside down with a single tank on your back. Then comes a bigger tunnel all the way to the end. -- 500 feet + of penetration. There are things on the side, but that will be for another time....

I had a great time, especially because Layson did all the driving and I studied his Dive Repair Technical manual and learnt a lot about Regulators: 1st and 2nd stage and Tank valves. As I was asking him questions I finally understood what was a seat, then how the 3 basic types of reg. work: flow-through (piston), flow-into (piston) and diaphragm. I also understand now how the depth compensation mechanism works, why people need to rinse regs. after a salt dive. I saw just how many less moving parts are used in a piston reg. And I was especially fascinated by the trick that makes a regulator balanced. Next step is to re-build my regs.

Anyway, enough for now. I hope you had a great WE too and that your week will be even better!

Take care.

Herve.