Bottom Time E-Mail News Archives
May 30, 2015

We have had a few divers call and set up their checkout dives.  Please call and get them set up so you can get them done while the water is clear and the weeds at not so high.  You need to complete your dives before July 31 st to avoid additional fees.  Our first Advanced Diver classroom is set for this coming Friday at 6:30 here at the dive center.  Please call to sign up for the class.  I still have some openings for the open water class starting June 2 nd in Detroit Lakes.

On Memorial Day four Tri-State Diving crew consisting of; Ryan Tangan, Ryan Sandvig, Chris Winter and Seal spent the day recovering a Polaris Ranger that was setting on the bottom of Rose Lake at 120 plus feet of depth. It rained the whole day so we did not have any sunlight so we figured we would not have very good visibility at depth.  We spent about two hours with the down scan locating and pinpoint the exact location.  Because of the depth we were concerned on how close we were getting to be directly above it.  We dropped an anchor and kept moving it as we got a better hit. Our goal was to stage lift the Ranger because of the depth I only had about 14 minutes of bottom time without decompression.  Step one was to drop down and locate the Ranger and find a secure place to attach the line.  Ryan Sandvig made one final pass over the spot with his boat while I was getting set up and he stated it looked like it was about 6 to 10 feet north of the buoy.  The wind was out of the north and when I followed the line down to the bottom I was surprised that I had about 3 to 4 feet of visibility with my headlamp on.  At the bottom I grabbed the line and followed it to the anchor and traveled north about 5 feet held the line tight and made a left hand turn and almost ran into the Ranger.  The Ranger was upside down so I located the axle and put the line around the shock and axle and clipped the carabineer back onto the line.   I then followed the line up to the safety stop at 20 feet and stayed there for three minutes. Once on the surface we removed the jug and tied the line to the boat.   Ryan Tangan took a 2000# lift bag down and attached it to the loop which was placed in the rope about 60 feet from the bottom before the dive.  Chris was on the surface with a scuba cylinder with a hose that was attached to the lift bag and when Ryan got to the safety stop Chis started filling the bag.  When the bag popped to the surface we moved the boat up to the lift bag and reattached it to the line.   Ryan and Ryan then took the second lift bag down to the Ranger which was now floating at about 85 feet below the surface.  They hooked it up and came back up to the safety stop and while they were doing their safety stop Ryan Sandvig started filling the lift bag.   Once the Ranger floated to the surface we attached the first lift bag to it so we could tow it to the access.  Here are some pictures of it being pulled out of the water at the access.

Hooking up to pull it out of the water                                                                        disconnecting the lift bags

View from the back

Here is a link to watch an informative video on the Kapitol Reef snorkel.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWTSaAR6ztA&feature=youtu.be

Sea You on the Bottom
Tri-State Diving    Making Diving Safe and Adventurous