Diving the SL Dowell in Lake Washington

[Jeff Pack]

Jeff and I dove the SL Dowell yesterday. It was too dangerous to surface scoot to the buoy, and typical idiot boaters were driving with inside the buoy. So we followed the underground pipes out to around 100 and swug left and intersected the line. Viz wasnt bad until we got deeper. By the time we hit the dowell, viz was pretty bad. Even for Lake Washington. My suit was leaking badly at the cuff, Jeffs electric undersuit had gotten disconnected. So we hauled ass out to the Dowell, one lap around and hauled ass back. Stopped by the speedboat. I think we only had around 30m of deco this time, and with a nice thermocline at 40, even with my leaking suit (now wet all up my arm) and jeff no neat, heated suit, it was pretty comfy. Getting out of the water was a challenge, as by then the boats had really stirred up the lake. Jeff was out a couple of minutes before me, and as I'm dragging Meg, and 2 80, got hit from behind by a series of 1.5ft waves crashing into me. I just bent over steadying myself with tanks, and waiting a few minutes for them to subside. That was lots of fun with those big waves crashing into me. After that it was just the typical pouring the water out of my suit and undergarments (they hold a surprisingly large amount of water), followed by Scuba Tetris to fit everything back into my car. So a pretty short dive, just abit over an hour. Usually when we do this dive, its a couple of hours, but hauling ass out there on the line saved us a bunch of deco.