These two dives were the conclusion to my Advanced Open Water Certificate! A deep dive and a navigation dive. With those done, I could officially dive to 30 metres, putting more dive site options into my range. Specifically I wanted to dive the Nakaya wreck at Porteau Cove.
The Saturday weather was excellent: clear and sunny. When I arrived, the parking lot was mostly empty. I didn't see the IDC van either. I parked near the burger stand, and walked up to the washroom. There was the van! Libby had her dad's two schnauzers with her and they became the dive-dogs for the day. Shawn was there too, and they said that they had to come up there because the Langley dive shop had stolen their parking spot. That meant that for our deep dive we'd be doing the Cut! That was awesome, because I had just done the Cut the previous weekend and I liked it. It was also a much quicker entry than having to swim out into the main bay.
Some of the other folks were a bit late, but it wasn't too bad. There was Kent and his girlfriend, Sylvia, Peter, and three others whose names escape me right now. Emily was there as part of her Dive Master training too. Libby had me, Emily and Kent and his girlfriend in our group so it was a nice size.
We geared up and had a quick dive briefing. It was funny because I had more information about the dive site than Shawn did! But in his defence, he had not dove the cut in many years. It was nice to contribute something, and feel useful however. Being an active diver is nice. When I was hanging out in the shop the previous day, a customer mistook me for staff, too!
The plan was to head left and descend to 25m or so, and return at 1500psi. A pretty simple plan. We hit the water and all made it past the rocks and logs. The tide was not too high, so it was a fairly nice entry. Kent had a problem with a free-flowing regulator so he lost a lot of gas. This would ultimately cut the dive short. While that was being sorted, Emily and I hung out hovering on the wall looking at stuff. I tried to take the opportunity to practice some buoyancy skills. Libby would tell us later that she saw two seals on the entry. I missed them, blah. Also, she found an octopus under a rock, but I couldn't see past her nor could I figure out what captivated her attention. I checked under a different rock and saw a small gobbie, so I figured that's what she saw, too. Oh well! Later at the shop, Libby would compliment me on my buoyancy and general dive skills. She said it was great not to have a student running into her all the time, hah.
In the end we hit 23.8m so we didn't crack 25. It was a bit of a let down, because I was hoping to experience a bit of the nitrogen narcosis. I'll have to do my own deep dive later to see about that. On the up-side, I only used half my cylinder (so did Emily) so we decided not to change them out and save an air fill. Not too bad. The dive was only 25 minutes long. I also realized I had bit through my regulator mouthpiece! I couldn't understand when I could have done that. Since I was without a spare, Shawn and I ended up cannibalizing a mouthpiece off a spare regulator to fix the problem. I'd not changed one of those yet, so it was good to see how it was done.
Libby's amazing sense of direction got us right back to the Cut and we hiked back up and geared down and had some lunch in the sun. Peter from the other group did report that he got “narced” and that it was pretty weird. Everyone moved over to the other parking lot to prep for the navigation dive. I had to give up my really great parking spot!
For the navigation dive, we spent some time running squares on land with our compasses. I must work on my math, because adding 90 to my headings got a bit hard! But ultimately the land part wasn't too bad. We had done similar stuff in the Open Water course, but just used straight lines and reciprocals. We spent a good deal of time hanging around because it was such a nice day. There was some pleasant conversation, and I ended up with my foot in my mouth on one story. The result made for quite a laugh (it was about the name for the new KFC sandwich). I'm not going to repeat it here!
Finally Shawn took the initiative and started to gear up, so we all followed suit. Hitting the water, we quickly found that the visibility was very bad. Libby ended up running her spool and line as part of the square which made things a lot easier. Emily and I ran a square to the left, then one to the right. Both of them were successful, but I knew I'd need to do more compass work because I ended up guessing a few times instead of actually calculating properly.
With all that done, it was time to go. Back at the shop, I hung out and chatted with Alan and Kyle and Libby for a few hours. I also put together a save a dive kit (with a spare mouthpiece!) after all the problems that I'd had recently. Libby's schnauzers captivated the attention of the shop customers, too.
The next day was another boat dive in Howe Sound. I was excited!
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