Monday, November 23, 2009

Tuwanek, Sunshine Coast 22/11/2009

The IDC dive shop had put together a day trip to go diving at a place called Tuwanek. It had a very funny name to me, but I signed up anyway. You had to take the ferry across to Gibsons, and then drive to Sechelt, then 10 minutes north of that. Apparently it was supposed to be a nice shore dive. Here is a Google map link to the site (make sure to use Satellite View, if it's not already on). You can see the little point of land, and the two islands that are just off the shore to the west. That's where we started the dive.

http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=tuwanek,+BC&sll=49.891235,-97.15369&sspn=25.027097,55.283203&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Tuwanek,+Sechelt,+Sunshine+Coast+Regional+District,+British+Columbia&ll=49.54618,-123.765138&spn=0.001535,0.003374&t=

The day started off pretty early, as we planned to catch the 8:30 ferry. We also had the potential hassle of declaring our scuba cylinders, which did turn into a bit of a hassle actually. Kyle from the IDC was driving the IDC van, and it had 12 cylinders in it. The limit apparently is only 8, so we had to move some of them into the other cars. Good thing we had some extra room! The BC ferries web site had said that there was a limit of 8 enriched air cylinders. Well, these 12 were not all enriched air, so Kyle thought it was ok. Anyway, good to remember if we have to transport a large number of cylinders in the future.

The ferry ride was uneventful, and pretty quick, so we were driving up the Sunshine Coast in no time. It wasn't living up to its name, since it was cloudy and rainy the whole trip. There was one small point where the sun peaked through, but that was it. The air temperature was pretty cold too, down near 10 degrees or so.

Tuwanek turned out to have a very nice little hotel on the bay. It was very pretty looking, and would be a great place to stay overnight and maybe do a few days of diving, since the dive site is a short walk away. When we arrived, another group of divers that we were supposed to meet were already there. A woman named Terri whom I had met briefly at Kelvin Grove not long ago, was part of that group. She knew a lot about the dive site, and passed on as much information as she could. There were some wolf eels on the small island to the north of the entry point, and some giant pacific octopus on the island to the south. For the wolf eels, you had to swim out to the southern point of the north island, descend to about 80 feet and swim along the wall for about 20 minutes. Then there was supposed to be a vertical crack in the wall where the wolf eels lived.

For the first dive, we decided to all stay as one big group. That was a total of 9 divers. It was a big group! I knew Nigel from a previous boat dive, Sylvia from my advanced open water course, and Vince from various IDC things. We had a pretty mixed bag of beginner and intermediate/advanced divers. It certainly was a long swim! My 151 Dives book said “don't give up”, and they were right. Once we got out and organized, we started down. It wasn't as relaxing a dive as it could have been because there were so many of us, and I kept trying to keep track of everyone. Kyle was leading, and successfully found the crack with the eels in it. Good for him, because I was too distracted to see where I was going. The crack was pretty small, and the wolf eels were really far back, but there were two, and they were there. Quite a bit of sediment was stirred up by all the traffic, so that made seeing them a bit tough. But I hung back and got a better look once everyone cleared out. On the way back, Sylvia had a problem with her drysuit not venting properly, so half the group got separated. I ended up helping with the problem, and keeping that half together. We ended up surfacing after about half and hour, and we were pretty far off the original starting point. So it was a long surface swim back, and most of the group was very cold. One fellow from Germany was in a wet suit, and he was the worst off. But, everyone got back ok and we were happy to see the wolf eel.

The dog from the local hotel was apparently a standard fixture at the dive site because he was there the whole time trying to mooch food. He was a golden retriever kind of dog, and pretty friendly. Although, not too friendly with the dog that Nigel and his Mom brought. They kept getting into fights and had to be separated.

Terri and her three dive companions had quite the feast for themselves. I had not seen a dive group with a plate of nachos and dip before! I guess they treat it a lot more like a picnic/outing, which is not a bad idea, considering it does take some time to get there. You might as well enjoy yourselves while not diving! It wasn't raining too much, but I ended up keeping my drysuit on the whole time. It made a difference in comfort level that's for sure. Most of the people who came in the IDC van passed on the second dive because they were too cold. Jason, Vince and myself decided to go as our own group this time, and Kyle took two others as a second group.

We decided to check out the second island, since Terri and her companions said that there were big octopii out there. The directions were kind of vague, but apparently if you descended down the dirty marker buoy, and headed south to the wall, there was supposed to be one right there amidst a large amount of broken crab shells. We found the crab shells, but no octopus. In the end, we carried on around the island, keeping the wall on our left and just checking things out. I saw one of the biggest feathery nudibrachs I've ever seen. I don't know what its name is, but I'll have to look it up. Also, I saw a painted greenling, or convict fish as they are sometimes known.

During the second dive, I just felt generally off in terms of skill and buoyancy. I'm not sure what was going on. It was an alright dive, but something wasn't clicking. My light was giving me problems in that it wasn't focusing properly and I was messing with that a lot, but that couldn't be the only thing. It didn't make a bad dive, but it made it kind of medium.

Packing everything up went pretty quickly because we were motivated to catch the next ferry in time. It helped in that most of the other divers were already ready to go. They looked warmer at least! On the trip back, we heard from Terri who was already in the ferry line that we'd probably not make that one. So we decided to stop for dinner and some drinks in Gibsons and catch the next one. It was a nice end to the day, but we were all pretty tired and glad to get back to Vancouver that night.

Tuwanek was a nice place to dive, but as a day trip with a lot of people it was a bit much. I think I'd prefer going out with a dive buddy on a day trip whom I knew would be fast and efficient in doing the dives and getting back to an early ferry. That would go a long way to making it more enjoyable I think. That or maybe staying over night in the hotel there, and getting a few more dives in the next day. The only problem with that is that air fills would need to be done in Sechelt which isn't far, but would add some extra logistical complexities.

My next dive should be the night dive that I was supposed to have the week before on Thursday. Mihai and I are going to try again. The last one we tried had to be scrubbed because the weather was just too stormy that evening. Here's hoping!

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