Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Porteau Cove Scooter Dive 11/11/2010

It was high time for a scooter dive, and Alan Johnson and I decided to scooter Porteau Cove on Remembrance Day.

Heading out was pretty miserable. It was only 5pm, but the time change made it very dark. Plus it was pouring rain. We had to gear up in the change room at Porteau it was so bad. Doing that made it almost pleasant so it was a good call! The rain wasn't so bad once we were in our suits. It was surprisingly warm too. I was sweating after putting everything together.

I was running the dive, which would be good practice. Our bottom time would be 1 hour, based on an average depth of 70 feet. The plan was to scooter around the dock pilings, then follow the firehose north east, scooter around the jungle gym and the Grant Hall for 20 minutes, then head north east at the 70 foot contour to the Nakaya, spend 20 minutes there, then scooter back and in to shore.

All in all I hit all the points, and ran the dive right on time. I got turned around at the Grant Hall going to the Nakaya and did a big circle running back into the Grant Hall again. That was embarrassing. But I got back on track and hit the Nakaya almost right on.

There was a huge shining school of pipefish on the bow of the Grant Hall. Alan sucked a perch through his prop and had some fish chunks resulting. Poor fish! Lots of decorator crabs and perch. No octopus that we saw, but scootering fast make a hard time to stop and look in cracks.

We went through and around the jungle gym a few times which was fun. No crashes! The Nakaya was the best. Very spooky at night. A real ghostly looking ship. We stowed the scooters and swam the wreck. There were columns of air bubbles coming out of the deck planks which was odd. Not quit sure what was causing that.

Coming back in to shore was uneventful. I intended to scooter through the sites on the way back but went too far to the east and missed everything except for a lot of sand.

Still it was a very fun scooter dive! Clear skies and a crescent moon greeted us on the surface. The rain had stopped and it was a nice night.

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