Everyone met at the Harbourside Marina parking lot. It was a nice surprise to see Francois Keen again; I wasn't expecting him on the trip. I met his friend from New Zealand, Kathryn, and his partner Bridget. Liz and Dennis were completing a wreck diver course for Jeff. It was great to see her again too since it had been quite some time. The previous day had rough conditions, but we had a much calmer day. The weather even cooperated (mostly) with some sun mixed with showers.
Liz got a partial shot of the group (missing are Francois and Bridget).
We dove the Cape Breton first. Our dive plan was to descend through the skylight and poke around the lower decks. Greg was running the reel, and his initial choice of path did not get us far. I was in the number two position, and saw him try to squeeze between a railing and a pipe. It just wasn't to be, so we backed out and went down a different passage. It was a fun dive! We managed to get to 40 meters max depth, which was deeper than the sea floor! When the ship sank, the weight of it pushed it down into the bottom. Our average depth worked out to only 32 meters, so we didn't have a lot of deco to do. I had spent less time inside the wrecks than Jim and Greg, and it was great to get inside more. The final room we ended up in was large and spacious, with a lot of interesting rust formations. Back out and up for our deco, we came across the other dive groups heading up the line as well. Francois was taking pictures, and here is one of them. Myself, Jim and Greg are the group of three on the line at the top of the picture. Foreground is Bridget and Kathryn.
It was fun watching the bubbles coming up from below. They looked like big silvery blobs. I made a game of poking as many as I could. Greg motioned me twice during the dive to check behind him. I was baffled as to why until back on the boat. I had forgotten about the rubber chicken clipping prank, and apparently there was a new game of clipping off a little crappy dive light to your butt d-ring. I had to remember to watch my back with these Island diver types! The aquatic life on the Breton was impressive as always, with the huge plumose anemones and cloud sponges encrusted everything.
During the surface interval, we luxuriated on the upper boat deck in the sun (and a bit of rain!). It was great fun talking chatting. Francoise had moved to the Island, so we talked at great length about all the good diving on the Island. He had some great pictures of the sea lions at Race Rocks.
The second dive was on the Saskatchewan, and we planned for a shallower shorter dive. Jim led the penetration, and I did the deco. The first entry we went into didn't get us to the central corridor, and we had to back-track. On the second try, we hit Burma road and explored it until we hit our turn pressure. I distinctly remember being just behind Greg in a cramped passage, with Jim ahead in a nice big open area. Why couldn't we have turned just a little bit later in that big room I cursed to myself! Still, it was fun and good practice turning in such a tight area. In reality, there was loads of room, but it seemed smaller at the time. The side compartments were neat to peer in as you passed by. It was a short penetration, but lots of fun. We had only a small amount of deco to do, as our average depth was only 30 meters and our dive was only 20 minutes. But since we had done a previous technical dive, we made sure to wash out on Oxygen at 6 meters and do 1 meter stops to the surface.
After each dive today, there were excited exclamations of how great they were. Kathryn could not get over the giant plumose anemones and how much they looked like something from Doctor Seuss. They didn't have such things in New Zealand. It sure was easy to take for granted the amazing marvels we have in the BC waters!
On getting back to the dock, the weather turned positively balmy. The sun was out and it was definitely short sleeve weather again. Liz and Dennis couldn't join us, but the rest of us went to Serious Coffee for some food and conversation. It was good to be back in the old Nanaimo neighborhood again! We had a great time talking about Vancouver Island cave diving, watching some of the videos of octopus encounters that I had had, as well as the Hornby Island sea lion video.
It really was a perfect way to end a great day of diving, talking about more diving!
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