This is three weekends of scuba ending in my accident.
Many many weeks ago we go to dive a lake off a point that is listed as public but when we get there we realize it's a camp of sorts. It use to be a scout camp or bible camp but now it's public and has almost no advertising. We see some locals walking around and after a short time we make friends with them as they could use the company. They tell us a little history about the camps and give us some local intel on the lake.
Right in the middle of camp is a ship's bell and I tried to find anything to indicate it's historical place in time but it's hopeless and the elderly couple didn't know anything about it. We rang it only once, softly. We wouldn't want to bring any bad luck or lost souls up from Davy Jones Locker just before a scuba dive.
We dove the small swimming beach and then across town to a boat ramp. I dive solo and get a little lost. My compass got damaged so I was navigating by feel and missed the turn by a long way. I didn't realize I had swam a huge arc so when I turned around I was actually swimming away from shore. After an hour I surface from less then 6 feet of water to find I'm on an island, about 1,500 feet from the boat ramp. I surface swim for a long, long time. My buddies are laughing most of the time.
A few weeks later we are in Eagan jumping a real chithole. Lake maps say it should be clear and it used to be very popular for swimming so we figure it's a treasure hunt. The ice is thin in the south and open water on the main lake so we dive and find it's custard. Visibility is less that 2 feet and it's butterscotch color is nasty below 30 feet. We give up on scuba and go play on the thin ice.
The ice is maybe 1.5 inches thick so you can break through but it's not easy. We are looking for something to dive on because we can see the bottom.
The wind keeps some holes open so it's running and jumping for the next hour or more.
We are in drysuits and although it's cold water we overheat. The fastest way to cool off is to get on the ice and take a little nap.
This is about an inch of ice.
This is less than an inch.
A few weeks later we are out on Tonka doing about the same thing and this time I get stupid and run across some floating ice, fall and bust a bunch of ribs. I'm laid up for 6 weeks.
This is a good overview of us messing around before I go break myself on the hole I cut.
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