Weathered Out— The Stormy Soul of Diving

Mackinaw City, MI. Our home for three days of diving in the Straits of Mackinac. Mackinac, Mackinaw… different spellings but they have the same pronunciation. You probably have to be from Michigan to know that. It is a mix of the French and Native Ojibwe word to describe the Island and the modernized phonetic spelling to describe the tourist city where we were staying. 

Day one was beautiful. The weather was great, wind was light, and we had seas good for the ride over to the Eber Ward over on the Lake Michigan side of the 5 mile long Mackinac Bridge. A 213 foot long, wooden freighter sitting in 140 ft of water. Short of a little rebreather problem with me that needed fixing, everything was perfect. Dive two was on the square-sterned wooden schooner Maitland in 80 feet of water, and I was back in business... ready to dive. 

We topped-off gas later that day and readied ourselves for the next morning. A full day on the Cedarville—an historic Great Lakes wreck sitting silently in deep, dark, cold water just below 100 feet. A massive steel freighter over 600 feet long. The forecast however looked questionable, it was a definite maybe. But the Great Lakes are unpredictable. That’s part of their charm—and their danger.

The next morning, the winds were up, the skies were dark, storms were a-brewing… Captain Brian said we had a small window to get out and give her a try. But as we approached the mooring, we found ourselves in an explosion of light that was shooting out of the nearly black skies. We were sitting ducks for the lightning storm and needed to get back to the harbor fast. 

No diving today. 

No diver likes to hear that. But the ones who have been around know: Doing It Right sometimes means not doing it at all.

So we left what gear we could on the boat, headed back to the hotel , brushed off the disappointment, and decided to walk through the rain and meet at the pub for Bloody Mary’s and conversation—our dreams deferred, but not defeated. Same dive teams, different dive site.

And that’s when the magic started.

Spicy Bloody Mary’s and cold beers were passed around. Someone started scrolling through dive photos. One picture turned into a story. That story sparked another. One table turned into two as more divers showed up. And soon, the tables were a living, breathing archive of Great Lakes diving—years of experience, laughter, hard-earned lessons, and shared memories.

You hear me talk a lot about trim, and balance, and buoyancy— it’s often what people think about when they hear DIR, but there is more. It’s about team. It’s about respect. It’s about shared responsibility and shared adventure—on the boat, in the water, and sometimes, in the bar when the weather says, “No diving today.”

At that table, we dissected wrecks, recalled perfect dives and imperfect ones. We talked about training— the struggles and the triumphs in our journey to become better divers. We didn’t dive today, but we still dived deep—into stories, philosophy, the heart of why we do this in the first place.

That bar was filled with the same things you find in a good team dive: trust, humility, knowledge, and the kind of friendship that only gets stronger when tested.

Because this is the real secret:
We dive for the adventure, yes.
We dive for the history, the mystery, the beauty of the underwater world— of course.
But mostly—we dive for each other.

So when the lake says “not today,” we listen. We reroute. We gather. We share.
And in those moments—over beers and picture and videos—we remember:
The best parts of diving aren’t always underwater.

The next morning the seas had settled. Flat calm. One of those mornings when the lake which was so furious the day before, was now flat as glass. A magical mirror of surface water reflecting the sky and the sun in a way that seems to say, “Come on in, the water is fine.”

And we dived the Cedarville. 

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Have you been weathered out lately? Share some of your stormy dive stories with me. Email or comment on my blog or face book page and tell me. Tell all of us. 

Because even when the waves keep us on shore, we still have a lot of diving to do.