Door County Shore Diving

[fishchaser]

Me and a few coworkers enjoyed a long weekend camping at Peninsula state park, and doing a few shore dives.

Oh, Dinasaur Divers dive shop, the people who run the Shoreline Resort and dive charter in Gills Rock, no longer really has a "dive shop".  They essentially have no gear anymore, but they still do fills.  ($6 LP, $7 3000 PSI, $8 HP)

As for the dives:

Fleetwing:  Dove this one first.  Visibility was fair, at about 25' at the wreck.  This wreck is very, very shallow.  As most of you know, not much left of this wreck, but it was better than looking at the sand.  Several gobys and smallmouth bass here.  Decided to swim out to some deeper water, but not much to see out there, and visibility went down to about 15'.  Me and my buddy got separated from the other 2 people, so we surfaced.  Ended up having about a 500 yard surface swim back.  That was painful, especially since my bladder was completely full (drysuit).  As much as I dislike the idea of a P-valve, I may have to reconsider.

Gills Rock.  Ask the dive shop owners to dive and watch out for the ferry.  This was a pretty cool dive with a rocky bottom down to 50-60' in a very short swim.  After the steep slope down to 60', the bottom turned to sand.  Reminded me of Devil's Lake East shore.  Vis was a little lower here, about 20'.  Tons of smallmouth bass.  Probably the best dive of the 4.

Egg Harbor.  Took some back roads (hwy G) to a little subdivision area, parked at the water's edge on a dead end road, and did a NIGHT dive.  It was very cool (being a night dive), but not much to see.  Fairly shallow (<25') and vis was probably about 15', so lots of scatter effect on the lights.

Visited Cave Point, but East winds and 3-4 foot swells smashing on the bluffs was too dangerous to attempt this dive, so we enjoyed the view from dry land.

Sister Bay (just North of the famous Al Johnson's)  After finishing the awesome lingenberry swedish pancakes, was going to dive this spot before packing up the camper and heading home, but I lost a clip on my fin and had to sit this one out.  Two others did the dive, but it was again, fairly shallow, low vis, and generally just more of the same to see (or not to see).

Next year?  Got to haul up the boat and check out some of the wrecks like the Frank O'Connor.

[Dewit2it]

I stopped in August last year on the Fleetwing to get my nephew on his first wreck.  He'll be getting certified next year.   ;D  We'll be doing a lot of snorkeling this year yet.