Out and aBoat

Last Saturday I went out with some good buddies to jump Tonka. That's scuba slang for diving Lake Minnetonka. We always find stuff like anchors, old bottles, cars, cast iron stoves, and a lot of fishing gear. Terry found $400 in $20's drifting around the bottom a few years back. John found a really nice Minnkota Trolling motor that he traded for a fist full of cash. I'm still looking for my Cash Reward. Most every lake is a virtual carpet of junk. Just under the silt, which may be feet thick, is a layer of junk from years past. It's easy to find bottles from the 40's and I have one from 1860 or so. We get bored looking around so we start digging in the silt, We call it Bulldozing. More on that in a minute.

Terry and I about to jump the barge. John is in the water.

We try and dive an old wood barge (maybe 30ft x 80ft) but at 45 feet deep it is dark as night and visibility is less then 4 feet with lights. So we swim some but give up and move sites to something shallow where we still have a lot of light to enjoy the good visibility from all the Zebra Muscle. Zebra's have cleaned up a lot of lakes so us divers don't mind them so much but they are invasive and not good for clams and things in the lakes.

 We run over to a small bay, jump in and start looking around. Terry gets right into Bulldozing and I hang with him towing a "DIVER DOWN" flag to keep the boaters from running us over. It isn't more then 20 minutes in when I find a sunken boat.
 

This is common, in total Terry and I found about 10 over the years. This is a dingy about 8 feet long or so. I point it out to my guys and get some photos. We decide it's in good shape and should float so we recover it with my lift bag and bring it to shore. The land owner agrees to take ownership and get it back into service.

That's me with the boat at the surface. The lift bag is in yellow. I always carry a bag for this kind of stuff.

Me in the boat. Camera's always make it greener than it is. This is quite good visibility.

Terry mugging for the lens. Us divers are always doing that. See all the Zebra?

A short talk to the locals and we get back to our dive.

We hang out and swim the rest of the day.