Saturday, May 14, 2016

Porteau Cove 08/05/2016

Heather and I went out to Porteau Cove to try out her new drysuit. We had a great dive, even though the visibility wasn't the best. Sadly no octopus were found, but Heather did find a mask and snorkel lost on the bottom. She reunited them with their owners in the parking lot. Nice!

Seymour Bay 07/05/2016

Evan Soukas invited me out with his relatives on a boat dive at Seymour Bay. They had lost a crab trap at about 120 feet, so he wanted to do a tech recovery dive.

We had a great time out on the water, and the recovery dive went flawlessly. We actually found the trap 3 minutes into the dive, at about 60 feet. After that we did a real tech dive nearby. There was not much to see deep at Seymour Bay, and we saw a lot more on our deco stop.

I got some great photos of the day here.

https://goo.gl/photos/df4LtEvVyekmqH2u7

And some video here. https://vimeo.com/165820788


Kelvin Grove 10/04/2016

Sam Clavelle and I decided to check out Kelvin Grove. I had not been in a long time, and he had never been. The entry was a bit dicey as there were a whole pile of logs. This is a photo sphere of the entry. I didn't turn off my cylinders, and when I got back down to the bench, my second stage had started to free flow and ice had actually formed on my regs. Time to put them in for service, and I would make sure to turn my cylinders off the next time they were far out of my site.


But the dive itself was great. Vis was good too. We saw a tiger rockfish, some juvenile yellow eyes, and a curious seal checked us out. Here was some video.


Whytecliff Park 08/04/2016

I took the day off to join Heather, Wendy and Max for a dive at Whytecliff. The visibility wasn't the best but it was still a fun dive. We checked out the octopus den just past the metal boxes, but it wasn't home. Diving was a great reason to take the day off!

HMCS Annapolis13/03/2016

A bunch of us went out to dive the Annapolis. Jim Dixon and Guy Shockey came over from the Island, and it was a rare treat to have them over on our side of the pond.

On the first dive, I teamed up with Roz, Maeve and Salo whom I had met last year on the Thanksgiving Egmont trip. It was good to see them out. Our goal was to take readings at the Project Baseline stations. Visibility wasn't the best, so we didn't find the station at 30 meters, but we did get readings at the deck station.

On the second dive, I joined Jim and Guy for a penetration of the area near the engine room. On the entry, we all did barrel rolls into the water. I don't think mine was very graceful! It was hard to do a flip with double 130s. I led the dive, and it went well. On the way out, my reel got fouled and I had a good experience dealing with that.

In the end, it was a great day of diving. I got a bit of video here.


Whytecliff 12/03/2016

Dave Williams and I went out for some skills practice at Whytecliff. It was a pretty fun day of diving. We went to 30 meters, deployed a surface marker, ran a line, and did gas switches and valve drills. Then we practiced ascents. Here is Dave doing some practice.

https://vimeo.com/158767588