Dive at the Meersburg ferry boat

Together with Michael from ScubaDo I’ve been for the first time at the Meersburg ferry boat.

Important: This place is not for beginners.  Read more below.

meersburg-image002 meersburg-image001

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was extremely interesting… Due to the high level of water in the lake , there was no shore anymore, as you can see on Google Maps above (and check the link).

Basically, it was just 1 M of land and then water… Deep water…

We used a cord to mark our descent because there were three levels of vertical walls:

  • first level was at 20 m
  • second level was at 24m
  • the bottom where we stopped at 25.8 m

Michael told me that it goes even deeper down, but it was not our goal.

The reason why we used the cord was the ferry. We didn’t want to go too close to them and with the cord we knew where to get out of water. It was a permanent noise from the ferries which could be heard even at 25m. Speaking of noise pollution.

Here is the diving profile:

meersburg-faere

 

 

 

 

 

Challenge 1

Find a parking place… 🙁

It was just a small street and absolutely full. And we had to pass this crowded street about 10 times each of us to carry the equipment on the side with the lake.

 

Challenge 2

The visibility was about 3-4m. After 15m there was almost no light, so we had to use our torches.

The peisage at the depths from 15m was out of this world! Alien…

You see the rock levels and at some point you can even go below the rocks. So, you look up and you see … rock. You look down and you see darkness.

Combine that with semi-darkness, noise from the ferry and low visibility (you can barely see your hand).

Wow, what a feeling. You need to have nerves of steel to not go crazy and panic. It seems I do have the nerves. :)))

But I was stressed because of the Challenge 3 and I looked every 20s to the air consumption. 🙂

I have to say that I was glad when we started to ascend.

 

Challenge 3

I got a new air tank with 15L air (usually it is 12L). Obviously the weight changed… not too much… just with 1-2 Kg. But this mattered, since I didn’t change the weight of the lead I had (2x 5Kg). Because I didn’t compensate this in the proper way by removing some lead, I had to struggle with this extra weight while on the bottom and had to pump about 50 bar air to keep my floating.

This created useless stress and reduced our dive time…

I usually dive for 40-45 min at similar depths.

Now I went out with 70 bar after 31 minutes. I could have stayed longer, at least 10 minutes more at a shallow depth. But the point was to see the deeper part.

Because of that I missed a lot of the view.

 

Challenge 4

I need a more powerful torch 🙂

 

Conclusion

Because of the challenges above, this place is not for beginners. And I am one… but I do like to push my limits. 😉

Never dive there alone! Always dive with a more experienced diver, dive master should be the absolute minimum.

Be properly prepared:

  • proper weighted
  • have a lot of air 🙂
  • powerful light
  • have a cord
  • mark the diving place properly

 

Next step

Go back there properly prepared!

Enjoy the view.

 

For a version in German click here: http://www.truesche.com/tauchplaetze/tauchplaetze.htm


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