[Winnipesaukee Divers]

I’m Thorp and my wife, Linda (high school sweethearts) and I stay long weekends most of the year on our 38’ sailboat “Valkyrie” at WCYC in Wolfeboro. I have been boating all my life as I grew up on an island in Lake Champlain and I deliver boats up and down the NE coast for fun. I’m a commercial SCUBA diver as well as recreational diver scouring the lake bottom for artifacts. My wife, daughters and granddaughters also dive with me along with a long list of dive buddies.

Because of the demands of my home and high stress job (self-employed) in Exeter, NH I have no desires to own and maintain any more property. I use our time on boat and a weekend full of diving as the incentive to get through the week and be as productive as I can be. Actually, I have no plans to retire and move to the lake or anywhere else, I guess I’m one of the very few that actually like my job, love my house and love to spend quality time perusing my sports. My father once said to me: “Never make you hobby your profession or your vacation spot your home, because you’ll soon louse the value of them”. As I get older and watch others make these transitions and I see wisdom of his words.

A typical weekend will find us heading to Alton bay or another port of call on the lake on Friday nights for dinner and fun, come the next day we tether our kayaks behind our boat (we call them "the ducks") and sail of to a different spot on the lake and get up close and personal. There is just something about cursing effortlessly in a few inches of water checking out the sights and scenes. After I’ve endured as much of that as I can (usually not more than an hour) I’m ready to explore the bottom and see what new adventure awaits me. Most days, end with dinner BBQ on the deck and a leisurely evening/night sail back to the club… it doesn’t get any better than that.

Diving is truly high adventure; it demands your full attention and dedication, since your survival depends on your concentration, it is all consuming. Once you come back from a dive you go from a euphoric state to complete exhaustion what a rush. The average dive; 45 feet for 45 minutes in 65 degree water consumes 3000 calories and that’s the equivalent of running five miles. I don’t dive for that so called “runners high”, I dive for the treasures. Since there has been over 300 years of civilization on the lake, the first 250 years it was the dump… Haul your trash on the ice and come spring out of sight out of mind. Fast forward in time all the trash is now rendered down to some pristine artifacts just waiting to be found. And have I found the treasures… most every dive in the lake yields some sort of find. Although as I get older I have become more discriminating in what I’ll bring back to the surface. Don’t forget there is tomorrow’s diver and what satisfaction he will have when he finds that piece of history, so I leave a lot of the treasures where they are, I’ve got more than my share. However, if it’s something that I already don’t have or it’s an anchor (man… am I a sucker for a shiny anchor) or a piece of rope then I got to have it.

So, what’s in the name? When our dive group first started going on annual dive trips to Mexico 20 years ago they called us “Winnipesaukee Divers”. They looked at us as being crazy to every want to dive in that cold, dark, murky waters, where the monsters live. But you know, “there is no place like home”.