Lake Michigan
We decided to take advantage of the extended Labor Day weekend to do some dives in Lake Michigan. We booked two spots on a dive charter through Aquatic Adventures, a local dive shop in Brookfield. This would allow us to do two dives on Saturday and two dives on Sunday.
We left Madison late Friday afternoon and drove straight to the dive shop, which took about an hour and 15 minutes, to pick up my tanks. I needed four total tanks for both days of diving, and we opted for both steel and Nitrox. This cost us about $40 per tank, whereas an aluminum tank with an air-fill would have cost about $10 per tank. We opted to pay the additional cost for Nitrox to optimize my bottom time. Since Eric would be diving his rebreather, it would most likely be my NDL (No-Decompression Limit) that would limit our dive time. This is the amount of time I could stay at depth before my computer indicated I should ascend to avoid decompression illness. In retrospect, we didn't think it was worth the extra cost for the steel tanks and would just add the Nitrox.
My parents live in a suburb of Milwaukee, so we crashed there Friday night in order to get an early start Saturday morning. We had to arrive at the marina for departure at 8:00 AM. Aquatic Adventures organizes the charter and one of their employees rides along on the boat to assist as divers enter and exit the water.
This wasn't our first time diving in Lake Michigan; however, it was our first time diving it in our dry suits. I'm glad we spent this spring and summer diving in local inland lakes getting more familiar with dry suit diving. It definitely made me feel more comfortable and confident with taking on one of the Great Lakes. Up to this point, all of our dry suit dives were shore entries. This was my first time diving off a boat with my dry suit. Turns out, doing a giant stride off the boat in a dry suit is really no different than in a wet suit. We were nervous about getting seasick putting our dry suits on while on a moving, rocking boat, but ginger and meclizine work wonders! We also put our dry suits on half-way (up to our waist) while still on shore, and so only had to pull it over our heads and zip up once on the boat.
Saturday both dives were on the Milwaukee Car Ferry, which sank in 1929 and was the deepest dive of the weekend with the best visibility (about 30 feet). It was also the largest; while underwater we did not encounter any of the other four divers on the charter boat with us. We saw several railroad cars and even a bathtub covered in zebra mussels. Eric also spotted a burbot hiding deep within the wreck; it looked like an eel and creeped me out.
Sunday we dove Dredge No. 6 for the first dive and the Prins Willem V for the second.
Dredge No. 6 is a large crane barge that sank in 1956 and lays upside down. This was the shallowest dive of the weekend and had the worst visibility (about 15 feet). I think this was in large part due to divers kicking up the sand with their fins, as the visibility progressively got worse the longer we stayed. I tried in vain to locate the Fairy Shrimp hiding in the remains of the wreck. To my great disappointment, I never managed to find any.
The Prins Willem V (nicknamed "the Willey") is one of the more popular wrecks to visit near Milwaukee. It sank in 1954 and lays on its starboard side. The visibility can vary greatly here, and unfortunately for us, it was only about 15 feet on this particular day. I would be interested in diving this wreck again on a different day with better vis, as there is lots to see and explore.