First "colder" water dive today as Haigh Quarry in Kankakee, IL, closed out the season. 55 air temp. Very windy.

Very few people there today. My dive shop was the only one still out with OW students (3, all women), a wreck class, and a dry suit class. I dove with 3 buddies, all local folks. They all wore 7 mm wetsuits. The 2 guys weren't cold, the 4'8" 61 yo woman WAS cold.

60F water temp. I had on Fourth Element Xerotherm top and bottom under my dry suit. I was slightly chilly. Next time I'll layer them with my fleece onesie for these temps. Fourth Element Arctic socks kept my toesies warm, and the Fourth Element wrist warmers really helped with my hands. I will use a fleece liner with my dry gloves next time as the yellow knit liners that came with them were OK, not the greatest.

I christened my new Halcyon BP/W. Halcyon offers 2 sizes of weight pockets, 5 lb and 10 lb. I must have gotten the 5 lb. I carry 8-10 lbs on each side. The pocket would only comfortably accept a 5 lb soft weight and I had to cram the 3 lb in there. Even with my BP, it wasn't enough weight. We spent the entirety of the first dive (45 minutes) on a platform as I wanted to get used to my new rig and work on buoyancy. We were about 20' down. I had to drag myself down, hand over hand on the buoy line. It was a fight to stay down. I started going up multiple times and caught myself on the line, hauling myself back down. Ended up on the surface once and I just called the dive. We were about done anyway.

On the second dive, we just stayed in the shallows in the quarry road bed, to about 16'. One dive buddy had extra weights and suggested I put a 3 lb in each both thigh pockets. That did the trick, sort of. Still had difficulty getting down. Finally buddy picked up a rock from the bottom and handed it to me. That helped.

Viz was crap, about 5 feet. There was hand holding with dive buddies, but only because viz was so bad. One buddy brought his GoPro but didn't even turn it on due to the viz.

The Halcyon rig is very left leaning. Very odd. I'm going to take it back to the shop to see what the issue is. I leaned to the left on the platform once and ended up doing a 180!

LOVED the Quick Cinch harness on the new rig. It allows me to get geared up all by myself. I could never get the straps tightened on my Hollis Elite 2 harness.

All in all, a good day.

Will get in as much pool time as I can over the winter.

You're gonna find as you get more comfortable in the water, you'll 'lose' weight.

This is because you will start exhaling deeper and ridding your lungs of extra air (buoyancy) and eventually start breathing like you do on the surface.

The best way to get comfortable is just be underwater- pool, lake, bathtub, mud puddle, wherever. To get comfortable with low viz, dive in low viz and hold on to an anchor line- just hang out, burn a tank of air and look around. Eventually low viz will be old hat.

Low viz in fresh water is nowhere near as scary as salt water- where fish with lotsa teeth and are big enough to to eat you lurk. Trust me... been there. I learned to dive in IL in 1971 and went on my first ocean dive in 1979-1980... to about kiss a small lemon shark in 10' of vis.

Most plates allow you to bolt weight on just about anywhere to get trim and weight right. I'm not familiar with yours though.

I do NOT want bolt on weights. The 8 lbs from BP and STA are heavy enough to give me issues when sliding it over a cylinder. I sometimes have to pull my weights when getting out of the water, especially on deep water exits. I don't want weight I can't easily remove. Today was the first day I didn't feel like I wanted to die when walking between where I gear up and the water, when fully geared up, including weights.

Yes, I'm a weakling! (working on it).

Never mind

never mind