I had planned this dive for quite some time. Since I knew my advanced course was finishing, I wanted to have a celebratory dive to commemorate that. It was also Lyenne's birthday soon, so I asked her to come along and gave the trip as a birthday present. It was also supposed to be the test-dive for Lyenne's new underwater camera housing. Unfortunately, it wasn't together in time, so she had to use her smaller Sea and Sea camera. Next time!
The day didn't start off great, since the sound was quite rough. The marine forecast had called for strong gales the night before, but it reported that it would be calm that day. Kevin the skipper was concerned for safety, and delayed our departure until 10am. So Lyenne and I hung out at a coffee shop and went over dive logs that needed to be done. There was another problem in that the inflator hose of the BCD for her was leaking, and in the attempt to fix it, Kyle snapped off a part. Fortunately, the boat had a spare BCD. Unfortunately, it looked like it had been last used on the Titanic! It was a credit to Lyenne's strong dive skills that she was able to dive and still take pictures even with not the most ideal equipment. It's also a good reminder to me about complacency. I had picked up the dive gear, but had been using my own for so long that I forgot the cardinal rule about rental equipment: always check it. It's a valuable lesson that I hope I'll never forget again. I felt extremely awful about the whole incident.
It was a full boat that day, with 12 divers total, so it was crowded when we got under way. The first dive site we visited had to be scrubbed because the current was too strong. The second one was near the north end of Bowen island along a rock wall. The boat was going to drop us off and stay mobile to pick us up on the other side. We got geared up, and jumped in. On descending, Lyenne couldn't get down properly and we had to grab more weight from the boat. It looked like the replacement BCD was a lot more positively buoyant than the other one. We got down OK after that. The dive was pretty nice as it ended up being a drift dive. We didn't have much work to do kicking at all, and just floated by the wall. The downside was that there really wasn't a lot to see along the wall. Lyenne lost her one fin, but got it back on fine. More problems! Once we got past the end of the wall, the visibility turned to complete crap. Before that, we did see two cool things. One was a giant pacific chiton, and the other was an extremely ugly but cute sculpin. I think it was a Sharpnose Sculpin. I thought later that it was a Cabezon, but a biologist on the boat pointed out that Cabezons are quite large. The thing we saw was only a few inches. Oh, and there was a dungeness crab hanging out on one of the rocks, too.
Popping up to the surface after our safety stop, we had a bit of a swim to the boat. The other dive groups were having a devil of a time getting down, and the boat kept having to come around to pick them up so they could adjust weight. As you can tell, this was a day of problems!
On the boat, Lyenne was very cold, especially her feet. Later we'd realize that her boots were too small for all the layers she had on. I'm sure things would improve next time with some larger boots. Anyway, we did our best to get her warmed up, and succeeded somewhat.
However, the next dive was soon upon us, and that would be a problem for the coldness. We had moved to South Bowyer (the Canyons). There were two wolf-eels living there that I made up my mind to find. I got instructions from Kyle and Jan, which were to head North from the mooring line and hug the wall to the right all the way. Unfortunately, I didn't quite hug it all the time, and ended up missing the place completely and heading further north. There were a lot of anemones as usual, but not a tremendous amount of active life apparent though. It could be that I was fixated on the wolf-eels so I missed most of the stuff. I also was moving quite quickly, and should have slowed down more. I must remember next time that diving is not a race! Also, with someone along taking pictures, you really have to be mindful of your buddy.
On the way back after not finding the eels, we passed over top of another dive group of three. It was pretty cool to sail over top of them. At our safety stop, Lyenne tried to get me to do something for a video, but I mistook the camera rolling motion she was making to mean do a barrel roll. I guess it worked out though, since I did one roll finally. Communicating underwater can be really difficult!
Back on board, Lyenne wasn't in good shape. She was even colder than before, and was shivering quite a lot. I really think she ended up with a mild case of hypothermia. We got her as warm as possible, and getting her out of the too-tight boots seemed to help. Add to it some sinus problems and motion sickness from the boat, as well as a strenuous second dive keeping up to me, and it was pretty rough for her. I also need to check with the shop to see if we can borrow a proper undergarment for her to try and see if that makes a difference too.
Kyle was kind enough to bring our gear up from the dock after we tied off and got the car down to the parking lot. So we said our goodbyes and headed out.
All in all, not the best boat dive ever! But I learned some valuable things. Always check your gear, don't underestimate the cold, more layers do not always mean warmer, don't go too fast, and ankle weights are no fun!
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