Whytecliff Night Dive 25/02/2010

After aborting a Thursday evening night dive last week due to the Olympics, I figured it was high time to get out for one. Also, it was getting closer to my next set of dive training, and trying to get in as much diving as possible was a good thing.

The original location was supposed to be Porteau Cove. Mihai had not dove that at night yet, so we decided on that. Unfortunately, Olympic traffic changes made it so that we thought the park was closed. We drove all that way, only to give up and go to Whytecliff. The traffic cones appeared to be blocking the road completely. Later checking showed that it was supposed to be open. Blah. Checking before we left would have been a good idea, but who knew. At least I knew that my planned Nakaya dive for this coming Sunday would be a go. We missed the turn off to Whytecliff as well, and had to turn around and come back. It was just not going well!

The night was quite nice at Whytecliff. It was partly cloudy and the half-moon was out so it was pretty bright. It was also not raining and the parking lot was nice and dry. Gearing up took a bit longer because Mihai was checking out the fit on some new fins. The night was wearing on! I knew it was going to be a late one.

The tide was extremely low, which was a bit problematic. The water level was way down past the sandy part of the beach and we had to cross the exposed slippery rocks. Also, visibility was extremely poor. There was a tonne of particulate matter in the water. I figure you could at best see 10 feet. Finally, even though we should have been diving on slack tide, there was some kind of crazy currents going on.

We decided to head along the right hand rock wall out to the day marker because visibility was so bad. Keeping track of the rock wall in the dark and the poor conditions was a big challenge. The dive itself wasn't too bad. We made it out to the day marker and poked around in the rocks and crevices. The highlight was a large rhinoceros/golfball crab. There were a lot of young ling cod and kelp greenlings too. I ended up turning the dive early because I was worried about the current. On the way back, my primary light failed on me and I had to deploy my backup light. It was a nice bit of practice, but I was pretty annoyed. In the end, I believe it was just the battery. I had not charged it since the boat dive on Sunday, so it had been on at least 2 or 3 hours which was getting close to its maximum burn time.

After the light failed, I lost track of the rock wall and we ended up out on the sandy bottom with no reference. I had a compass heading and was following that, but Mihai thought it was a different direction and we had a bit of a discussion underwater on who was right. I was the dive leader, and all I could do was trust my compass, so I kept us heading my way. We did run into the rock wall, so at least I wasn't completely off. We were getting very shallow again and I lost control of my buoyancy in the last 2 meters and ended up surfacing. At that point, I just called the dive. Too many problems, and I was not feeling very comfortable any longer. It was still a 40 minute dive, so that was good. However, my air consumption rate turned out to be better than normal, so that was a good thing.

I tried out my light on shore and it came on but went out again twice. That's when I started suspecting the battery. Another small problem was the smell. Our dive gear smelled awful. There was certainly something in the water! Rinsing it down in the tub didn't help much either. It will fade, but just another niggling issue to a whole slew of problems.