by Dan | Jun 6, 2012 | Preparation Stage
We were impressed all around by Bull Shoals.
Michele and I were fortunate enough to be able to spend a few nights aboard a 60 ft houseboat on Bull Shoals Lake recently. I was quite impressed with both the lodging and the diving. It’s no Caribbean, but it’s way better than anything around us. The houseboat was a four bedroom, 2 bathroom (ok, head) model that was custom designed by the owner of the boat dock. I’ll get to how we met the (super nice) owner later…
The main reason Kyle, Becca, Michele, and I decided to go on the trip was for Kyle, Michele, and I to finish the open water portion of a few scuba certifications… advanced for all three of us as well as rescue for Kyle and I.
Not what I was expecting. (Credit: BSLBD website)
To be honest my expectations were quite low. I’ve seen houseboats on the Illinois River… and, well, they look like houseboats on the Illinois River. Most are barely more than tents or campers precariously perched on a few rusty pontoons. Not so with the houseboats from Bull Shoals Lake Boat Dock. The boats were open, clean, and basically felt like a house inside (I know).
The diving was varied… a recent lack of rain coupled with unseasonably high temperatures has created a large algae bloom, reducing visibility to 5-10 feet in places. Below the thermocline at 26 feet the visibility greatly improved to 50-70 feet. Unfortunately the temperature dropped from 75-80 °F above the thermocline to around 55-60 °F below… too cold for our 4/3 wet suits.
The dives consisted of a few wall dives, some sunken machinery, and a ton of fish. My favorite dive, however, was our advanced class “deep” dive. Deep in quotations because we’ve already gone deeper in the Caribbean. Don’t tell PADI. When the Bull Shoals dam was built a huge swath of land was flooded, creating Bull Shoals Lake. The houses were dismantled prior to flooding but the trees were not. On our deep dive we were able to swim through an underwater forest of decades old trees… it was unreal.
Bull Shoals Lake
While preparing to descend for our night dive Michele was injured by Kyle accidentally jumping in on top of her. One of the instructors was bringing us over closer to the boat’s lights so he could explain the dive plan more easily. In the time between Kyle checking the water and announcing he was about to roll in, we entered his drop zone. We should have been aware divers were still entering the water. The instructor with us (who was facing the boat) should have been aware divers were still entering the water. It was dark. Kyle followed the proper procedures for entering the water… accidents just happen, however.
The owner of the boat dock was simply awesome. He instantly picked Michele and I up in his speed boat and brought us to a waiting ambulance at the dock. He then was kind enough to pick us up from the hospital at 3 in the morning after Michele was discharged. If you are ever in the area, I would highly suggest renting a boat from Rick at the Bull Shoals Lake Boat Dock. I am confident Rick will take great care of you.
Fortunately the three of us were able to complete our additional scuba certifications despite the accident. Kyle and I are now ready to begin divemaster training! The road to our dream won’t always be easy, but it is a path that is worth taking. It felt great to live on the water, if only for a few days. We can’t wait until it becomes full time.
Follow your dreams. Follow the Horizon.
by Dan | Jun 4, 2012 | Preparation Stage
We had a busy weekend… a trip to the ER, a visit with parents, the cat brought a rabbit downstairs, and we still found time to go sailing! Michele was having some bad symptoms from her recent concussion, but everything is on the mend.
Family sailing - Carter didn't enjoy it as much... he's tired.
Michele, Kyle, Carter, and I had a great sail yesterday. The wind was a little too light, but hey… we’re learning! We were able to get both sails up for the first time, what a difference. The boat is significantly more controllable with the jib, properly trimmed (how do we know it was properly trimmed? We took NauticEd’s free sail trim class!), assisting the main.
Thanks to our new friend the jib (more weathered sailors need to keep the laughs at a minimum… you’ll wake the baby) we were able to sail a respectable 3.6 miles. Beginning at our new home port Detweiller Marina we turned South West and had the wind perpendicular to our course. The new marina helped immensely by reducing the time we spent between the marina and the channel. Detweiller is around 200 feet from the channel… Spindler is over a quarter mile. We had a beautiful sail past the downtown skyline.
Let me make a quick digression… there is a no wake zone between the two large bridges flanking each side of downtown where cabin cruisers (and wannabe cabin cruisers) like to raft up. To each his own, but it seems like a gigantic waste to buy a beautiful, expensive boat and never actually go anywhere in it. If you can’t afford the gas in your boat get a different boat… preferably one with sails.
Our Course
Upon our final turn into the marina, we were greeted by a cluster of drunkards sitting smack dab in the middle of the marina. I am under trolling motor power at this point, not winning any races here. One group of drunken people saw us coming in and decided it would be a good idea to power over, cross our bow, and park immediately in our line of travel about 50 feet away. After (as nicely as I could given the situation) asking them to move their drunken selves out of the way of traffic we were able to tie off at the launch ramp. Truly a wonderful sail! Michele and I begin our official sailing lessons tonight… we are used to just winging things, but our first few adventures told us to seek professional help.
Follow your dreams. Follow the Horizon.
by Michele | May 30, 2012 | Preparation Stage
Six staples later and still smiling!
…so I volunteered. As you will note from our last post, we all were in Bull Shoals, Arkansas this last weekend for a fantastic scuba diving trip. It was super fun, and we’ll probably have a post on it very soon. This post, however, is about my first (and hopefully last) dive accident which happened Sunday night. The story goes something like this: Dan and Kyle couldn’t finish their rescue diver certifications without completing a real rescue… so they needed someone to sustain an injury in the water to be able to fix. So I volunteered, and Kyle hit me over the head with his scuba tank so we would get some nice blood and potential spinal cord injury to practice on. Okay, not really.
So this is what actually happened: Dan, Kyle, and I were completing our advanced scuba certifications through PADI this weekend on our trip. Sunday night was my last dive, which was going to be our night dive. You basically do some underwater navigation and swim around with a flashlight when it’s dark. It was around 9:00 when Dan and I got in the water with one of the instructors on the trip and he started explaining to us what we needed to cover. We started swimming on the surface and suddenly I was shoved under water and had an intense pain on the crown of my head. I knew almost instantly that someone had jumped in on top of me and hit me in the head with their tank. Note to audience: getting hit in the head with 250 lbs of weight is not pleasant, please do not try this at home. I learned later that it was Kyle who had jumped in on me. He *claims* he couldn’t see me as it was pitch dark outside, but my theory is he was trying to kill me. Totally just kidding. He would never, ever do something like that on purpose.
It was at this point where the fact that there were four newly certified rescue divers on our trip, including Dan and Kyle who were in the water with me, became a really great factor. I shot up out of the water- luckily I hadn’t lost consciousness and my BCD (scuba vest) was full of air- and started screaming bloody murder. Dan and Kyle were both extremely calm, but focused, and literally had my gear off and me out of the water in probably 10 seconds flat. Another of the newly trained rescue divers was there stabilizing my head and neck against further potential damage to my spinal cord. Someone had already called 911 as well as the boat dock to get a rescue boat out to me. It was truly well done and I am very grateful to everyone on the boat that helped me so professionally and quickly.
The rest of my evening was spent waiting on various medical professionals in the emergency room of Baxter Regional Medical Center. To their credit, they did get to me fairly fast to do a preliminary assessment of my spinal cord, etc. After the doctor determined that I just had a big cut in my head, however, I pretty much got reassigned to the bottom of the list. I really believe that it was a miracle that I didn’t sustain more damage after such a heavy impact. I could have had a serious spinal injury, cracked skull, concussion, etc. but I didn’t. I did need 6 staples in my head, but I didn’t even get a headache!
Truthfully, there’s nothing like a serious accident to remind you of your priorities. Things like this happen to people every day, and yet so many of us waste our dreams by telling ourselves we’ll get to them later. What if there isn’t a later? Don’t be complacent with your time. You don’t know how much you have to work with, so make the most of it while you can.
Follow your Dreams. Follow the Horizon.
by Dan | May 23, 2012 | Preparation Stage
As you might know, I am in the process of becoming a PADI divemaster. I have finished the class portion of PADI Rescue Diver in addition to being certified as an Emergency First Responder. I had completely overlooked the EFR class and didn’t know what to expect. SCUBA classes make sense, the things you are supposed to do or not do are intuitive. The methods we learned for rescuing someone underwater are challenging… but I feel that they are a valuable tool for both SCUBA and sailing.
The lessons on the EFR class were completely new to me. CPR? Emergency Response? I am a non-medical staff member at a medical practice… that stuff has always been for the “medical” people. The skills learned in the EFR class are not taught from a SCUBA perspective but from a general “emergency” perspective (think car crash). Nonetheless, the lessons are extremely valuable. There will be times when Michele, Carter, and I will be far into a crossing and it is definitely a comfort to know that I have the skills to at least stabilize an emergency situation.
We will be at Bull Shoals, AR this weekend diving off of a 60 foot houseboat with Kyle and Becca. If all goes well I’ll pass my Rescue Diver certification! Next class: Divemaster.
by Dan | May 16, 2012 | Preparation Stage
It turns out Kyle is as crazy as we are.
I’ve talked about my brother Kyle previously when discussing various sailing adventures as well as my SCUBA progress… What I haven’t talked about are his and Becca’s (his wife) plans and dreams. I’m not going to try and articulate their dreams… no one could except them. Suffice it to say that they are planning on joining us in casting off and following our cruising dream. On their own boat, of course.
Kyle was the first person other than Michele that I discussed my crazy idea with. We were extremely excited about our newly hatched plans… almost giddy. Each time we researched cruising we became more convinced. We needed an outside opinion (We’ve since met with our friends Scott and Brittany from Windtraveler for one). Before approaching Kyle, I expected to meet resistance and a multitude of reasons why following my dream was impossible. Amazingly, I found nothing but support. Well… support and mutual interest. He began to express many of the same sentiments that Michele and I have about materialism, time freedom, and life in general.
I am not going to talk about the whys, the hows, whens, etc of Kyle and Becca’s plans… their story is their own. They have become part of Michele and I’s story in some ways, however. It is a huge comfort to know that we will be sailing with people we can implicitly, and without hesitation, trust. Not only will we have double the amount of spare parts, dinghies, tools, etc but we will have partners to experience the wonders of cruising with. I am sure there will be times when we wonder “What are we doing here?” Thankfully, we will have Kyle and Becca nearby for support. One of the things I am most looking forward to is meeting new people and new cruising buddies while we are on our adventures, but I am extremely lucky to have a brother that shares the passion and dream of cruising.
We are normal (well ok, not so normal) people that have a dream to see the world and live life as it was meant to be. We both have successful careers in the healthcare industry, even in this terrible economy. We want to break free of the current cycle of trading time for dollars and dollars for more and more things we don't need. So, we have decided to forego the fruits of our economic success and "retire" well before we are 30 and set out to see what is over the Horizon.