Whytecliff – The Cut 12/05/2010

Jason Kolba and I decided to go on a night dive to take advantage of the longer evenings. By the time we were done, it was still light enough to see! It was pretty nice not to have to gear up in the dark.

We did have some problems on the dive. Prior to hitting the water, I found that I had put on the wing for my BCD backwards. It was easily fixed, and noticed in our pre-dive checks. I won't be doing that again! Jason had his UK light die on him, too. We were going to do some skills at the end of the dive, but with a dead light decided against it. He had his backup light, though.

The dive itself was pretty nice. Visibility was pretty good, although dark. I figure maybe 40 feet or so. I forgot how many cool big cloud sponges there are at the Cut. We went right along the wall for 20 minutes at 80 feet, and then turned the dive and came back around 50 or 60 feet. It ended up being the planned total length of 40 minutes which was good. We turned back earlier due to a significant rise in current, but it didn't cut the dive too short. I missed the exit to the Cut and ended up halfway out to the day marker. I still hadn't gotten the hang of finding the exit point here. This time I was too deep and missed the signs of where to come up. It wasn't a big deal though.

A nice dive!

HMCS Cape Breton and HMCS Saskatchewan 08/05/2010

I had tried to dive these two wrecks twice before, and both times weather conspired to cancel the trip. This time, I lucked into going along with Guy Shockey, a GUE instructor on Vancouver Island. Guy put out a call to the local GUE community, and I was quick to say yes. Evan Soukas also decided to come along, and we would form a team together. The trip was planned using Ken and Diver's Choice.

I wanted to use my new double cylinder setup for these dives, as the wrecks were about 100 feet deep. The extra gas supply from my double steel 130s would go a long way to making a safe and enjoyable dive. However, since I had not had a lot of practice with the new setup, I had to get in as much time on them as I could. Evan and I went to the pool one evening with IDC and did skills for about an hour. Then I had them out on my recent Tuwanek dive. It would have been nice to have another dive in between, but it just wasn't logistically possible. I was quite comfortable on the Tuwanek dive, so I figured it would be good.

The day was incredible; sunny and warm. Evan and I had a great time talking on the ferry over. We took the 8:30, and arrived a bit late. Guy had wanted to meet at 10. We didn't arrive until 10:30, but there was another dive team on the ferry, so we weren't the only ones they were waiting on.

We met Ken in the marina parking lot, and his helper Aaron was manning the skiff. We loaded our gear on the skiff, and motored around to the boat. Guy and his team were already on board. The skiff wasn't necessary, but it did make it easier instead of carrying gear all the way down the dock.

Meeting Guy was great. I had heard a lot about him from Alan and dive trip articles he'd written. He was a very friendly and laid back fellow.

It didn't take long to get to the wrecks, and we geared up along the way. We dove the HMCS Cape Breton first. The visibility was around 50 feet or so. It was a great dive! We did 40 minutes at an average depth of 80 feet. We missed seeing a wolf eel on deck by being over the railing. Note to self to check the deck always next time! Guy and his folks brought scooters along and it was neat to see them zipping around.

The HMCS Saskatchewan was even better. The big deck guns were very impressive. Of course I had to look down the barrels, like I'm sure everyone does.

Evan got some pretty good video. I put it up here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4U77MhCHmg

Anyone you see in the video will be me. It's a lot of repetitive footage, but it's not too bad.

This is pretty short, but I just couldn't find the time to go into as much detail as I have in the past!

10 Mile Point and Willis Point – 25/04/2010

I was very excited about this dive. Teri Norfolk and David Ryan asked me to come along to do some diving in the Victoria area. I borrowed my friend's Pathfinder and we loaded everything up and got over on the 7am ferry. It was a very early morning! But worth it, because the day was amazing; clear and sunny.

We needed to get to 10 Mile Point quickly, as it could have some very strong current and we wanted to be there as close to slack tide as possible. Here is a Google Map link:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Whiterock+St.,+Victoria,+BC&sll=48.454716,-123.265985&sspn=0.001715,0.005284&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Whiterock+St,+Saanich,+Capital+Regional+District,+British+Columbia,+Canada&ll=48.455428,-123.265545&

We met Scott there, whom we had dove Tyee Beach with not long ago. He gave us a good run down of 10 Mile Point. The small bay would get current flow from the north along the shore and would result in eddies. Staying in the area just below the parking lot at a depth of 70-90 feet had a wall that had a lot to see. Getting down to the water was rough. There was no path, and you had to walk down a large expanse of rough rock. Following the rock down to the left of the parking lot to where there was a kelp bed was not a bad area to enter. If you felt brave, you could follow the wall out to the end of the point and do a drift dive along the shore to the south. Scott's tip if doing this was to make sure that when the white plumose anemones ran out, to make sure and head up and over the rock wall. Otherwise, you would end up far out in the channel away from shore. One exit point was to look for a huge mound of white shells as there had been a shellfish processing plant on the point a number of years ago.

We got into the water pretty quickly as we had most of our gear set up already. We knew we wouldn't have much time before slack tide was over. David had forgotten his undergarment at home which was not good. He layered up with some spare clothing, but expected to be very cold. And was!

Our dive plan was to stay at 70 feet for 20 minutes, then do 50 feet for 20 minutes. After that, we'd see how much gas I had left as I was diving a single steel 100 and Teri and David were on doubles. 10 Mile Point lived up to its reputation as a great dive. The water was clear and blue, with visibility of about 30 feet or so. The wall was spectacular, covered in high-flow life and punctuated by many crevices. Teri found a huge hairy-spined crab in a crevice, much like the ones I saw in Port Hardy. There were some really great opalescent nudibranchs too. The wall below the parking area certainly had enough to see keep your occupied for a long dive!

David got too cold and decided to end the dive. Teri and I stayed, and decided to do the drift part of the dive. When we got out to the end of the point, the current picked up and off we went! It was a bit scary at first because it was pretty fast, but it didn't take long to get the feel for it. We cruised along over a bed of kelp bent over 90 degrees at about 60 feet for quite a few minutes. It felt a lot like flying, and indeed we looked at each other a few times and put our arms out like birds. Lots of fun! We ran out of anemones and headed up and over the rock wall as Scott had said. At that point we were very shallow and the current would disappear periodically due to sheltered areas. In one of these breaks, we came across a massive cloud of tiny shrimp. It was like a cloud of dust, so thick that you couldn't see the rock behind them. I'd never seen something like that before. We followed the shore up through the kelp beds and looked for the exit. We finally came across the pile of white shells, and came up. Getting out of the water was a bit tricky with all the rocks and wave action. Once on the rocks, we had to figure out how to get back to the road. Scott had said that there was access to the road from any point, but all we could see were people's houses and back yards. In the end, we cut through a back yard feeling kind of bad, but there didn't look to be any alternative. We were as quiet and polite as possible! Apparently the people living in the area were used to this.

We decided to go to another dive site because the current at 10 Mile was pretty strong. After a coffee and some lunch and a bit of driving, we arrived at Willis Point. That should be a Google Map link. It's hard to see where the dive site is, but it's there. There is a dirt parking area, and a long dirt path down through the woods to the water.

Willis Point turned out to be awesome, even better than 10 Mile because the visibility was better. The entry into the water was a bit hard over some jagged rocks, but it wasn't as bad as 10 Mile. There was a marker buoy not far off shore, and that's what we headed to. Not far past that was a really great wall. On the descent down there were quite a few moon jellyfish floating in the water. With the sun brightening the water, they looked great. It was fairly clear and blue, with visibility around 35 feet. There were a lot of big chunks of organic matter in the water, so it wasn't completely clear, but it was very nice. We came across a bathtub on the way down, which was pretty funny. Teri found an underwater compass which was a great bit of treasure. The wall was hard to describe. Suffice to say it was very interesting and I'd certainly go back. On the way up and in, it was the best part of the dive. The sun was streaming down, the kelp was waving in the water and it just felt generally tropical. Several spots had evidence of octopus, but we didn't find one.

There is some video footage of Willis Point here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKxMNbZCzL0

All in all, diving in the Victoria area was great. I couldn't wait to go back!

Porteau Cove – 24/04/2010

Not the nicest day for a dive due to rain and wind, but I was itching to try out my new 400 weight thinsulate undergarment. It had been quite a saga to get the thing. I ordered the original back in October. However due to slow shipping, size problems and finally having it lost in the mail I gave up on that one after over 5 months of waiting and bought a DUI XM450. They just came out with tall sizing, and I fit it quite well.

Mihai and I decided on Porteau for the ease of the dive. The plan was also to do some skills, and I wanted to check my weighting with the new undergarment. We swam out to the yellow marker buoy on the right, which would put us near the artificial reef. We then planned to swim west to the Grant Hall wreck, then circle around the sailboat. We'd be not even getting to 60 feet for the duration of the dive, so we had plenty of no decompression time. We figured it would be a 45-50 minute dive. At the end, we'd swim in to shore and do skills at about 25 feet.

Visibility wasn't great but it wasn't horrible either; maybe 20 feet. We poked around on the artificial reef first, and I'm glad we did for we found an octopus in one of the crevices at 36 feet. One of its arms was waving out of the hole in the water which was pretty neat. It wasn't doing much, so we watched it for a few minutes then continued on. There were two huge ling cod, too. One was on the deck of the Grant Hall and it swam off leisurely into the darkness of one of the deck hatches.

While following the Grant Hall's hull down the starboard side, something weird happened near the stern at 45 feet. The was a distinct layer of very brown water from that point on down where the visibility was only a few feet. Above it, it was better. So we stayed out of that and went up to deck level and around that way. The remainder of the dive had nothing much of note other than a few decorator crabs. We headed along the bottom back towards shore, and stopped at 25 feet to do an S-drill then an SMB deployment and ascent drill. All of that went alright. There were rough edges that needed polishing but we did keep our position. The ascent drill was a bit slow too, but overall I was pleased.

The second dive was shorter, since I wanted to get back to the Shop to pick up cylinders for the next day. We entered at the boat ramp and explored around under the dock pilings. Again, not a tremendous amount of things that jumped out at me. There was a school of shiner perch that was neat. Also an old crab trap surrounded by hundreds of brittle stars. There were a bunch of dungeness crabs running around, too. The bottom under the dock was pretty sand and mostly featureless apart from the life that congregated around the pilings. We ended the dive after about 40 minutes, and an average depth of about 30 feet. We followed the rocks along shore back around to the boat ramp and that was interesting. When we got close to the exit, a distinct halocline happened. A layer of fresh water over top of the salt. Putting your head up through it resulted in a wavy surreal view.

The next time I go out to Porteau, I have to remember to find the firehose. If you swim to the first white marker buoy and descend there, not far to the west is a firehose that marks a path all the way to the sailboat. Apparently it's a very nice way to avoid a long surface swim!

Kelvin Grove and Copper Cove – 17-18/04/2010

I ended up diving two sites this weekend. Originally I had thought to do a crab dive on Saturday, but decided to put that off for another day.

Saturday found me teamed up with David Ryan, whom had invited me out that day. We planned to dive the Cut at Whytecliff Park, but Allan Wong texted us and advised that the visibility at Whytecliff was very poor. So we decided to dive Kelvin Grove instead.

It was quite a rainy Saturday which was unfortunate. We got to Kelvin Grove about noon, and there was another group of divers there packing up. We asked them how things were and they said it was not good. They didn't look happy! Still, they may have been too shallow, and we banked on the visibility being better deeper. I had my double cylinders set up and ready, but couldn't use them yet. I was waiting to schedule a check-out dive with Alan Johnson, but his drysuit was out for repair. That left me diving my single steel 100s. Not ideal from a gas-matching point of view, since David was on double 130s. My air consumption was a lot better now, so we planned the dive accordingly. I'd be the limiting factor, and I estimated that I could get a 40 minute dive averaging around 60 or 70 feet. Our plan was to do 20 minutes at 80 feet, then 20 minutes at 60 or so, turning at half my gas.

Hitting the water, things didn't look good. It was very very murky, with a lot of particulate matter in the water. We descended following the sandy bottom and could hardly see each other two feet away. I was leading, and we headed out to the right-hand rock wall. It took a bit of time to find it, or it could have just been an illusion since you couldn't seen anything. Once we descended past 50 feet, things cleared up thankfully.

I forgot how nice the wall at Kelvin was. There were a huge number of boot/chimney sponges, and most of them were very big. At least the size of a big dog. Many had something living inside, usually a fish or a crab. We came across a pretty big puget sound king crab, too. We checked all the cracks and crevices we could, but nothing of note was home. There was a particularly large ling cod that swam off into the gloom beneath us. It was 4 or 5 feet long.

Both dives were very dark due to the cloudy skies and layers of soupy water. Really they were much like night dives. There was little to no current which was pretty nice. We didn't have to expend much effort at all. I worked on my frog and back kicks, and felt good about them.

The next day Mihai and I dove Copper Cove. I had been meaning to explore it a bit, since the other two times I'd been there, I had just been helping Jason do his underwater map.

The day was a big change from Saturday: clear, sunny and warm. Too bad the visibility ended up being even worse! The tidal exchange that day was very large, and we were diving on the low tide side. Our first plan was to find the rocky reefs in the middle of the bay. We descended on the left hand point, and went north to 70 feet. Then we turned east and followed that depth to hopefully find the reefs. The problem was that the water was so murky. It took a long time to swim out down to 70 feet, as the sandy bottom was very shallow for a long ways. We spent a lot of time in soup, which wasn't so fun. After getting deeper, it did clear up, but the trip along the 70 foot contour was very dull. More sand and nothing to see. We did spot a big tanner crab on the way, but that was it. Finally we ran into the reef. It was kind of worrying, since it was so dark you could not see very far ahead. I was about to turn us around when we finally came across some rocks. The reef we found was fairly interesting, as well as big. There were a number of ledges and big boulders and crevices. We spent the rest of the dive exploring all that we could, since I figured we'd not find anything else interesting if we left. Mihai found a decorated warbonnet under a large boulder which was a cool find. There was also a boulder fully covered with zoanthids. It was like something out of Doctor Seuss. Large plumose anemones decorated everything. No octopus for us, though. There had been several folks who had told me that this reef could have lots of them. We swam back to shore following the bottom south. Again, it was a huge long stretch of sandy nothing. We did come across a prawn trap, which was the most exciting thing on the way, really. There were also a surprising amount of bottles everywhere. If you liked bottle collecting, you'd find a lot.

The saving grace to the sub-optimal dives was the nice day. It was like summer!

On the second dive, we had planned to check out the rocks to the east side of the bay. This fell through, though. We swam out a ways, then descended and were supposed to follow the bottom east until we hit the rocks. That didn't happen and we ended up on the same rock reef that we were on before. In hind-sight, we should have went out to the point on the left, descended and followed those rocks down to the wall that was supposed to be there. Too bad! I would have to remember that wall, since it would have been a lot more interesting than doing the same rock reef. Again, we had a long swim back to shore over sandy nothing. During the dive, the current made it like a little drift dive over the reef. That was kind of nice.

In the end, Copper Cove just wasn't that interesting!

Dodd Narrows, Gabriola Bluffs, Tyee Beach - Nanaimo – 10-11/04/2010

After a great weekend diving out of Port Hardy, it was another packed weekend of diving again. Terri Norfolk invited me along on this trip back around March, and I had heard a lot about Diver's Choice and Dodd Narrows. I couldn't wait to experience it first hand.

I've got a few above-water pictures of the trip here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/AntonNorth/ScubaDoddNarrowsApril2010#

There were a lot of travel logistics involved. We had 5 divers coming across from Vancouver, and the plan was to stay over night in Nanimo to do some shore diving on Sunday. Terri Norfolk, David Ryan, Allan Wong, Cedric Galere and me rounded out that crew. Allan was doing a tech dive with his buddies Greg and Richard, along with recreational dives after. On Saturday, we would be out with Ken from Diver's Choice, and Sunday would be just from shore. We had toyed with the idea of doing the wrecks near Nanaimo with Ken, but ultimately the poor visibility killed that idea.

Most of the logistics involved vehicles and splitting people and equipment up most logically. We ended up taking two cars, with Allan picking me and Cedric up, and Terri and Dave taking their own car. It was an early start on Saturday! The weather was awesome though, clear and sunny. We made the 8 o'clock ferry fine, and got over to Nanaimo in good order.

We basically hopped right onto the Diver's Choice boat when we got there. Ken met us with his newly built skiff which made getting gear from the parking lot to the boat easier. The skiff was a bit light and moved a lot, so you had to watch yourself especially when carrying heavy gear. Aaron was the fellow helping out Ken on the boat, and he was a good resource to help with stuff.

We met Richard and Greg, the two tech divers who would dive with Allan. Richard had participated in the recent SREU project in Indian Arm. We did a group picture, but Greg wasn't in it because he was changing at the time.

The first dive site was Gabriola Bluffs. Allan, Richard and Greg splashed first as they were on a longer tech dive with a decompression obligation planned. The bluff was a long, shear rock wall stretching up a good 200 feet or so. We did a live boat entry and descended. Cedric and I were diving together, and Terri and David made up the other team. Our original plan was to stay together, but that soon fell apart as we found out just how poor the visibility was that day. I'm sure it was no more than 10 or 15 feet at best, and it was very dark. Too bad! The dive plan was to spend 20 minutes at 90 feet, 20 at 70 feet, and 20 at 50 feet then do our controlled ascent to the surface. That all worked out pretty well, but the two dive teams got separated fairly quickly.

It's too bad the visibility was so bad on this dive, as I could really see the potential for this wall dive. There was a particularly huge rock overhang that would have been awesome to see in its entirety. I remember swimming along and noticed how dark it got all of a sudden. Looking up with my light illuminated the huge overhang in the gloom. The topography of the wall would have been great to see in larger detail, but oh well. In terms of life, it was pretty standard. A lot of giant white plumose anemones. There was one section of overhang that had a lot of them growing straight downward, and they had elongated to ridiculous lengths.

At the end of the dive, Cedric and I were quite far from the boat so I inflated my giant surface marker buoy for fun. David's mask broke on him after this dive which was a bad problem. It was a prescription mask, so any backup masks would mean fuzzy dives for him for the rest of the trip. He fixed it temporarily, but then it broke again on Sunday! We relaxed in the sun on the boat deck, had a nice lunch and then prepared for Dodd Narrows.

The Narrows could only be done safely on a slack tide, and even then there could be problems with boat traffic, especially log booms. Fortunately none of that happened today. The current in Dodd Narrows was what made it so special. It meant that it could be a very fast drift dive, and the amount of life in the channel was incredible. It was only about 200 feet wide, and 100 feet deep. There were several stories about people getting caught in upwellings and downwellings, in eddies on the surface and things like that. The general rule was to keep your regulator in your mouth until you got back on the boat. Cedric and I missed the Narrows unfortunately as we went the opposite direction. We missed part of the dive briefing and just assumed the current direction would be easily noticeable. We still had a nice dive, but ended up on the opposite side of the Narrows. Good thing I had my giant 6 foot surface marker buoy. You could see that big thing from miles away. I also found a working UK100 underwater light. Quite the treasure find. There were a lot of rock formations to swim around, and also a lot to look at. There were a few interesting nudibranchs and green anemones, but nothing big that jumps out in my mind. The other groups had a good dive too. The visibility was quite a bit better, but not stellar.

We got back into the harbour and unloaded everything. The plan was to stay at Ken's place, as he was set up to allow a lot of divers to stay. His house was big and comfy. There was room to sleep at least 10 or more. We met his little dog Niko, and his two goats. The goats were a bit of a surprise! That evening we unwound at the Longwood Pub. A good place with good beer and reasonable prices. We discussed the next day's plan, too.

We got up and left Ken's place at 8am and went for breakfast at the Granary. A pretty good home-style breakfast place. Our plan was to dive Tyee Beach at about 10, and we were meeting some other divers there, too. We found the place fairly easily and met Scott. He was a professional underwater photographer, and gave a pretty detailed description of Tyee Beach as a dive site. His website was http://www.8arm.com/.

The best place to dive on Tyee was to the right after you entered the water. Going to the left was shallow, full of eel grass and relatively dull according to Scott. To the right was a lot of rocks and a pretty long wall around 70 feet deep. There did seem to be sections deeper, too. The rock formations were like a layer cake, but with layers missing. This left hard rock plates separated by nothing, which made lots of crevices. The visibility wasn't the best, but it was better than at Gabriola Bluffs. We had maybe 20 feet of visibility I'd say.

On the first dive, Cedric and I teamed up again. We saw a few interesting nudibranchs and a lot of baby copper rockfish. Even though we looked in every crack we could, we didn't find much other than gobbies staring back with their black eyes. There was one neat hairy crab, though. We found you didn't want to keep going past where the wall ran out, as it turned into an uninteresting sandy slope.

There was another dive site very close by at Porpoise Beach, but we decided to stay where we were. The second dive was much like the first, but we spent more time on the wall itself, and shallower. There was a huge boot sponge all alone on one part of the wall. Coming up in the shallows there was a lot of waving kelp and algae. The light was pretty good, so it gave it a very bright and tropical look. Not tropical temperature-wise though. Terri sat this dive out due to being chilly. Cedric mentioned the same quite often too. I didn't feel too bad myself, but my hands were cold at the end of each dive I must admit.

Allan and David shot a bit of video on the dives, but with the visibility not great, most of it didn't turn out. I wasn't sure how many good pictures Scott got, I'd have to ask him later. He seemed pretty enthusiastic about getting out diving all over the place, trying to make a living taking pictures. I would think it was pretty tough to do that! He had a lot of good stories about some of his picture escapades. He'd even got pictures of the rare six-gill sharks in the BC waters.

If you have facebook access, Allan had two videos here:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=381272143045

http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=381188593045

Depending on his security settings, I'm not sure if you'll be able to view them or not. Don't bother trying to find me in the videos. Even though I'm tagged as being in them, I'm not!

We got back for the ferry, and had a few drinks out in the sun at the pub near the ferry terminal to kill some time. Out of the wind, it was an awesome warm day.

I have to get back diving around Nanaimo and try out Madrona Point, and do Dodd Narrows for real, too. Scott talked a lot about the dive sites around Victoria, which were supposed to be even better. Another place to check out soon!

Port Hardy – Browning Pass Hideaway, Easter 2010

I had been looking forward to this trip for quite some time. A combination birthday present and reward for finishing the GUE Fundamentals course, along with some decompression time in the wilderness away from technology. I had been to the Hideaway in November, and seriously couldn't wait to go back. John deBoeck was an amazing guide to the dives of the area that Jaques Coustea said were his second favorite in the world.

Originally I had planned to dive double cylinders but that fell through with my injured fingers. Instead, I split my cylinders in half and was able to dive a single steel 130. The other I lent to my dive buddy Jason so that we'd have identical amounts of gas. 130's also allowed us to have some pretty long dives, and not be limited by our air consumption which was a real issue for me and such nice dives. I wanted to be limited by my no decompression limits or how cold I was, not by my gas!

The trip started on Friday very very early. I got up at 3:30am in order to make the meeting time of 5am at the shop. The night before I had brought over my gear and cylinders so that was taken care of. I got a bit nervous when I found out that 9 people were going in the van. I was very concerned that we'd not all fit! It turned out to be a non-issue, but it did lead to some stress that morning.

The van was cramped but it wasn't too bad. On board were Kyle, Genessa, Erika, Scott, Joe, Jason, Vince, Greg and me. It was a rainy and miserable morning when we made it to the ferry terminal. It was a good thing we took the early ferry as the winds were gusting a great deal and the waves were very high. The crossing to Nanaimo was rougher than I'd even seen it with the ferry rocking to and fro alarmingly. It was difficult to walk and to stand, and at one point a big wave caused a large amount of dishes to crash in the kitchen. The seas were so bad that the other ferries for that day were cancelled. That's why we were lucky to get on this one!

In Nanaimo there were numerous power lines down as well as trees. It was quite the storm, but we were very glad to have made it when we did.

The rest of the drive was relatively uneventful. Just a lot of rain and wind and difficult winding road driving. Kyle drove the van but wasn't able to change drivers because it was the Shop van. We did our best to keep him awake even though many of the folks slept on the trip. There was one close call while passing a slow vehicle. There turned out to be an oncoming car a lot closer than Kyle realized. We made it, but it was a bit scary! We did grill him for quite a while after that. Erika nearly had a heart attack.

We made it in to Port Hardy on time around 1pm, but John and his boat were not there. It turned out that he was stuck weathering out the high seas that were going on at that time. So, we had some lunch at the Quarterdeck Inn and just tried to unwind after the long drive. We had a good time getting to know each other, too. Allison and her son Nigel met us there, so our full complement was ready to go.

John made it through a break in the weather, and his previous guests unloaded and got underway. Then it was our turn. We got things loaded pretty quickly, but ended up waiting again since he had to go grocery shopping. I didn't complain because I wanted to eat while I was out there!

Around 5 or so we were on the boat, got fuel, picked up the skiff and the handy man Paul, and were finally on our way. Poor Allison was prone to seasickness, so she had to sit outside the whole trip in the rain. It was a rough ride. Not as rough as it was, but still bumpy and windy. John seemed kind of subdued, but I suspected it was due to the stress of the previous trip and probably lack of sleep.

We made it in to the Hideaway around 7 and the plan was to get in a dive then have dinner. We geared up quickly and headed out to Hideaway Island. However, there were gear issues that would plague us for the rest of the trip. Not me, but Kyle's neck seal was too small, Joe's glove leaked, Jason's gloves leaked, Kyle's computer crapped out, Erika had to replace an O-ring, Scott's drysuit dump valve stuck open amongst other things.

The dive site was not far away, and I hadn't dove the site before. Well, it turned out that I had after I went back and looked at my logs (so many dives close together really blur in my memory)! It was a fairly challenging due to the surging seas. Even at 15 to 20m depth, the water would push you forward then suck you back. In between surges, you could propel yourself where you needed to go, but you had to be pretty careful with your buoyancy otherwise you'd crash into the bottom or other things. I don't recall too much about this dive other than the surge, but it certainly was interesting. I'd never been in conditions like it before.

We had a hearty dinner made by the cook Debbie, and turned in for the evening. The plan was to get up very early and try to make up some dive time. Unfortunately, due to compressor problems and the gear issues, we'd only get four dives done that day. We started out in the Nursery where we had more fun with surge. It wasn't too far from the entrance to Clam Cove and the Hideaway. There were a lot of interesting rock formations here, covered with kelp fronds. There was something of a wall when we first descended, but we had to stay on the inside of the island due to current so we didn't have a chance to explore that on the outside. The white sand was piled up very steeply next to this wall so we didn't spend much time deep. The rest of the dive was spent around 10m puttering around the rocks and kelp. The sun was streaming down from above so that made it very bright and pretty.

The Rock of Life was next and Jason was particularly awed by it. There was just so much life to see. We saw two opalescent nudibranchs on that dive, along with a lot of basket stars and a huge puget sound king crab who had two big brown box crabs as neighbours. After lunch, Eagle Rock was next. Vince ended up somehow going so far that he ended up at the Snowfall dive site. He also appeared to get stuck in the thick kelp, and Kyle went in to rescue him. In reality, he was ok, but better safe than sorry. Rounding off the day was the famous Browning Wall dive. It was awesome, but very challenging with all the surge and current. I found you'd get pushed into the wall very easily and it was difficult to push away without harming any of the life encrusting it. A good back kick was very useful. Unfortunately I didn't have a good one yet! But the practice was nice. When I did need to push off, I'd use one finger and carefully pick a small exposed bit of rock.

With the issues and weather during the day, we decided to call it a day, get some sleep and get up early again. I took the opportunity to have a nice hot shower and a shave. Erika logged all the species she saw every dive for the Reef project. She was up late every night doing that because there was just so much to see. Paul the handy man battled with toilets and plumbing all day. He also did a great roast on the barbecue. The Easter Bunny came that evening, with chocolate eggs waiting inside for people, and eggs hidden outside as well. With the blowing wind that night, I was afraid he'd have some problems, but the eggs stayed in place.

The next morning found us on Browning Wall again, and it was equally as challenging as the previous day. There was what looked to be a puget sound king crab in a crack, but it turned out to be a hairy-spined crab. Its claws looked very similar, but the crack was too flat for the big tank-like puget sound king crab. We also saw a cool grunt sculpin. Three of us squeezed in a short dive after that before lunch inside Hideaway Island. It was a very nice sheltered bay, with a flat sandy bottom and a small rock wall. We saw a huge red irish lord, a big orange-peel nudibranch, and a smoothhead sculpin. The sculpin was lying on top of a pile of black muscle shells, and it was so well camouflaged that at first I could only see a disembodied fish head. Upon surfacing, Scott spotted an otter/mink looking thing scampering on the rocks above us, and looking curious. John figured it was a mink when we asked about it.

After that, we did Seven Tree Island. As we left, Vince forgot his hood so we had a delay while we went back. A good reminder to always keep one's gear on the boat! On that dive, everyone but Erika and Joe missed the giant pacific octopus hiding under the kelp at the beginning of the dive. I lost a double-ended bolt snap, but Genessa found it shining on the sand. The end of that dive was like being in the tropics with a vast stretch of white sand.

We got in another fast dive inside Hideaway Island after that. John got his anchor snagged, so Vince went down to free it. When he started to take too long, I went in to assist too. We got the anchor back up and it was pretty fun. Later I'd count this as a dive, because according to Paul, in the WRSTC (World Recreational Scuba Training Council) a dive with a purpose doesn't have to have any set length. We did the Rock of Life again to round out the, which made Jason happy. We skipped the night dive because it was just a bit too late and not a lot of folks were interested. It didn't seem worth it to bust our backs getting fills done and popping out for such a short time. Showering and sleeping turned out to be a better choice.

On the final day, we got up early yet again to do Browning Wall one last time before packing up. This time my back kick was a lot better and I never pushed off the wall once. However, there were some problems on the dive. Scott lost his mask, and Nigel went down too quickly to get it. This resulted in a mask squeeze and him getting a pretty bad bloody nose. Scott also lost his camera and went down with Erika to find it. Unfortunately they got separated and Scott went a lot deeper than he should have. Erika had found the camera almost immediately. A good lesson in keeping close to your buddy. There was also an issue in that he came close to exceeding the maximum operating depth of the nitrox he was breathing. However, everything ended alright thankfully and some lessons were learned.

It was a fabulous sunny day and we got packed up and underway without much incident. On many of the dives, the bull kelp provided convenient ascent and descent reference points. Also, old growth kelp with its short strong stalk helped us keep position on shallow safety stops in strong wave action near rocks. It was funny that there were no jelly fish at all, though. I think John said that they were between seasons. I also remember seeing a smooth velvet snail just after seeing it in the marine life book. It was pretty lucky, otherwise I would have had no idea what it was.

Once back on the road, there were no other problems. The drive back was a bit better than the drive up, but there were still some bad rainy spots and wind. We made the 6 o'clock ferry, and everyone was back in Vancouver by 8pm! I couldn't wait to go back...

Here is a list of the species I remember seeing:

old growth kelp

bull kelp

blue branching seaweed

cloud sponge

glove sponge

giant plumose anemone

white-spotted rose anemone

green surf anemone

strawberry anemone

orange zoanthid

tan cup coral

red soft coral

orange sea pen

pink gorgonian

whie hydroid

giant pacific chiton

smooth pink scallop

giant rock scallop

leafy hornmouth

smooth velvet snail

noble sea lemon

monterey sea lemon

white nudibranch

heath's dorid

yellow-rimmed nudibranch

white-rimmed nudibranch

Hudson's dorid

Cooper's dorid

diamondback nudibranch

orange-peel nudibranch

frosted nudibranch

opalescent nudibranch

opalescent squid

graceful kelp crab

helmet crab

graceful decorator crab

longhorn decorator crab

hairy-spined crab

rhinoceros crab

heart crab

puget sound king crab

brown box crab

giant acorn barnacle

basket star

red sea cucumber

giant sea cucumber

broadbase tunicate

pacific sea peach

blackeye goby

mosshead warbonnet

decorated warbonnet

china rockfish

blue rockfish

black rockfish

kelp greenling

painted greenling

smoothhead sculpin

red irish lord

grunt sculpin

Next weekend would be Dodd Narrows, a very fast and extreme drift dive! I should have some photos and video from the folks who had underwater cameras soon too. You can check here as I continue to upload that. Right now, it's just a few pictures from my own camera.

http://picasaweb.google.com/AntonNorth/ScubaPortHardyEaster2010#

Copper Cove and Kelvin Grove 27-28/03/2010

With the GUE Fundamentals done, the Instructor Dan Mackay told us to go out and do some fun diving. Copper Cove wasn't necessarily “fun” because it was a working dive to map the bottom, but Klevin Grove was a fun dive for sure.

Jason had been working on his PADI Dive Master course, and we had started the underwater mapping project a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get the deep 24m depth contour done on the previous dives. So, with Port Hardy taking up next weekend, this was the only time to get it finished.

We got out to Copper Cove very early. There was a lot of ferry traffic that was stirring up the bottom, so it wasn't very easy to see much during the dive. It was basically like a night dive it was so dark. Jason's light got very dim on him, so it was tough to write down the data as we measured things out. I didn't have a problem because I wasn't writing anything, just measuring depth and distance. It was a real working dive, and we used up our air pretty quickly. There was not a lot that I remember seeing, but there were some nice anemones and sea pens, along with a buffalo sculpin camouflaged against the rocks. Swimming back along the bottom to shore was pretty dull too. The bottom of Copper Cove is pretty sandy and plain. I think I remember seeing a few crabs along the way.

At the end of the dive, the water near shore was full of debris and junk. It was pretty yucky. We heard later that the visibility was so bad that they cancelled the Open Water course that was supposed to be training in the ocean at Whytecliff. I took the opportunity to work on my backkick at the surface though. I think I got moving backwards a bit which was encouraging. We opted out of a second dive since Jason's light was basically dead. I think we should have stuck it out in hindsight since the day turned very sunny and bright, but oh well.

The next day, I went back to Kelvin Grove with another DIR diver David Ryan. He would be coming along to Dodd Narrows with me on April 10, so it was a good opportunity to have a fun dive and to get to know each other. We had met at Kelvin Grove actually.

I got a lot of sleep the night before, but I had woken up a few times to hear very heavy rain. I was a bit worried that we'd be in for a wet day, but it turned out not too bad. It did rain briefly in the afternoon, but that was it. There was a group of 5 other divers there when we arrived. They were doing a single dive, then were off for a tour of the hyperbaric chamber that Vancouver General Hospital. They invited us along, but there wouldn't be time for us to finish our planned two dives and get back to town. I'd have to remember to check back on that tour sometime, it sounded interesting.

On our first dive, David led. Our plan was to do 20 minutes at 30m, then 20 minutes at 24m, but we ended up between 24 and 15m mostly for that. Then the last 20 minutes would be following the bottom back up to the surface. Kelvin Grove has a very nice wall to the right. I had forgotten how nice it was. There were interesting overhangs of rock, big cracks and crevices, and lots of things to see.

The beginning of the dive wasn't so great. We could hardly see a thing there was so much crap in the water. I lost sight of David if he got 5 feet away. But, once we got down past 15m, it was nice. Dark, but nice. It was basically like a night dive. It was also a bit dicey in that David's primary light didn't switch on properly at the beginning of the dive. We did get it going, but that would have been bad.

During the dive itself, there was a lot to see. The cloud sponges and boot sponges were really neat. David found an octopus deep within a crevice. There were quite a few big ling cods, and still a lot of long cod egg masses as well. There were nudibranchs everywhere, and I'd never seen a chiton standing on its end before. Normally they were glued to the rock. At the end of the dive, David went through a valve drill, and I practiced my backkick some more.

We spent an hour on the surface eating some lunch and talking about dive locations. Cozumel, Mexico was one place David said was good and cheap.

I led the next dive, and the plan was to stay shallower. We'd do 20 minutes at 24m then 20 minutes at 18m with a gradual ascent to the surface after that. Again there was bad visibility until below 15m, but it was a pleasant dive after that. I saw some kind of pink eel-like thing in a crevice which I couldn't identify. I'm not sure if it was just a fish of some kind, or a juvenile of something. I'd have to look it up later. Again at the end of the dive I did some backfinning practice, and I think it went ok.

We packed up and got rained on briefly, but it didn't last. The creek beside the dive site gave a handy location to rinse some of our gear too.

I had forgotten how nice Kelvin Grove was to dive. I'm glad I went again!

GUE Fundamentals 21-24/03/2010

I had been looking forward to this course for some time. Quite a whirl-wind four days of training, which I ended up passing.

I`m not sure if I shall try to do a write up of everything that occurred. If I do, it might take a while!

Indian Arm Boat Adventure 14/03/2010

Weather stopped the planned dive of the HMCS Saskatchewan once again. We assembled early at Shaun's boat, but the gale and hurricane warnings north of Nanaimo were too worrying. We ended up going with our backup plan of Indian Arm. No one but me had dove there, so it was a good compromise. We headed for Crocker Island and the fishbowl that I had done before because I figured it was the best dive I knew up there.

It was a long boat ride from False Creek. Aboard were me, Patrick, Jason, Vince and Shaun. The weather was grey, but the sun came out periodically so it was pretty nice. We had a nice time chatting on the way up. At the fishbowl on the southern tip of Crocker Island, things didn't look so good! There was a lot of brown murky water in sharp contrast to the crystal clear visibility I had before. Jason, Vince and I decided to dive first and check it out. The brown layer was very short-lived, and the water cleared up nicely below 10 or 20 feet. This made for a very nice dive. We checked out the fishbowl, then went around the rock wall on the east side. The drop-off was impressive. Not much to see on the wall again, but there was an interesting colony of decorator crabs all in one spot. The rocks themselves were the most interesting. Very nice formations. At the end of the dive we messed around in a flatter area with boulders and anemones.

Shaun and Patrick dove next, as someone needed to stay on the boat. The sun came out again and illuminated the snow and tree covered peaks all around us. It was very pretty. At the end, everyone was impressed by the fishbowl. Some scenery pictures of the trip are here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/AntonNorth/ScubaIndianArmBoatTripScemeryMar2010#

We decided to try Racoon Island next, but not the west wall that I did before. We explored the north point instead. Vince and Shaun (Shaun was worried about the boat) decided to sit the dive out, and it was me and Jason and Patrick. It wasn't a bad dive. It was quite shallow, maybe 10-15 meters, and the brown water made visibility a bit poor. We also spent too much time in a large sandy area with no topography. There were a lot of rocky reefs, so it was certainly an interesting place if you stuck to those. There was also a spot with a lot of bottles scattered around. I wondered if someone's groceries had fallen over board. We also checked out a drop off that sloped off rapidly to nothing. It seemed like those were common in Indian Arm.

Back on the boat, it was raining so we packed up quickly and got under way. Again, a long ride back to False Creek, but we talked more and had a good time.

At the dock, I slipped and hurt my hand a bit. Completely an accident, but I figured I would be out of diving for a few days. That's why this isn't very long, I was typing with one hand!

Oh, and I did do four dives on the Saturday before this. I helped Jason out mapping a place called Copper Cove for his Dive Master course. Patrick was along too. Copper Cove was nice. Just had to make sure to stay around 16 to 20 meters, and keep around the point on the left. The middle of the bay is flat uninteresting sand! We spent a lot of time there though mapping the depths. It was one of the hardest working dives I'd been on as you had to count kick cycles for 10 meters, and do 20 of those, so 200 meters of swimming at a time. We ended up doing 3 depths, so that was 600 meters. I much preferred regular take-your-time diving!

Strathcona (White Rock) 08/03/2010

The end to three days straight of diving, dive number 88! I was closing in on 100. My plan was to have enough dives so that I'd hit 100 on my trip to Port Hardy on April 1^st. I was thinking I might have to stop some of my diving, otherwise I'd have too many! I had at least 6 more planned, along with the open water dives for my GUE Fundamentals training course. I suppose I could not count the training dives in a pinch.

Anyway, I had tried to go on a night dive with Alan and Evan a few weeks ago. The plan was to go to Strathcona (White Rock) near Deep Cove to pick up some dungeness crabs. Unfortunately, that dive was cancelled when Alan smashed his head into the truck tail gate by accident. So, we planned it again, and it worked out. Evan couldn't make it, though.

It was an awesome night for a dive. Completely clear sky, and a spectacular view of Orion's Belt. It was cold though. I had to wear my toque and gloves while we were getting ready. Strathcona, also known as White Rock, was not to be confused with White Rock the community south of Vancouver. Strathcona was the road name, and White Rock was the small island just off shore. At least I think it was! There were about 3 or 4 parking spaces available. No bathrooms that I could see though, and a lot of residential houses around. Gearing up on the asphalt was nice and clean, but there were no tables to help you get into your gear. Alan had double 130s, and I was using my single 130. Pretty soon I'd be in double 130s as well, but not yet.

The tide was out, so the water level was very low. We joked that we were just going to wade out to catch the crabs. There were a lot of private docks nearby, so you really needed to pay attention where you might come up. You did not want to come up under someone's boat or dock. Still, it was pretty easy to steer clear of them if you used your compass, and paid attention to the underwater signs. It would get brown and gross when you were under a dock apparently. The island was south east of the entry point, and if you swam to it and headed around it to the left, you'd come across a nice wall. You would not want to go around to the right of the island, because that was extremely shallow and dull. Also, watching for boats was a good thing, although at night boat traffic was non-existent.

For our dive, we stayed between shore and the island. At low tide, the bottom was only 4 meters deep. But the number of crabs was astounding! I'd never seen so many, and big ones, too. It only took 8 minutes to fill Alan's crab bag. By the time he got one in the bag, there was another big one right there. There was quite the halocline going, too, which made the whole experience wavy and surreal. There must have been freshwater runoff nearby. At one point, Alan opened the crab bag, and one of the ones inside made a break for it and literally jumped right out! I had to grab the first one while Alan wrangled the escapee back in, then got the next one in too. I almost laughed underwater several times. Once the bag was full, we messed around chasing a few of the other crabs around. We also spotted some kind of centipede-looking thing on a blade of eelgrass. I guessed it might be some kind of isopod, but I'd need to check it out later. With crabbing done so fast, we decided to practice some skills. We went through a full gas-sharing drill, Alan did a valve drill, I tried to reach my own cylinder valve (with limited success, but got close), and I tried some more backfinning. The backfinning didn't go very well, but I was still confident that with the upcoming training that I'd learn it. Alan thought the same. It just came down to practice, and not doing it at night, in the dark!

So, we packed up the seafood haul, and called it a successful evening. No one had an accident, either!

Buntzen Lake 07/03/2010

My first fresh-water dive! I had wanted to do a fresh-water dive for a long time, and had heard about Buntzen Lake from a few people. They filmed a few episodes of the X-Files there, and a couple of movies. Buntzen Lake was a man-made lake used to feed a power generating station. I think the station was just used for an emergency backup now though.

Buntzen Lake was in Belcarra Regional Park, and was a very nice area. Very much the BC wilderness, and was very relaxing. The tree-lined drive up to the park, and the tree-covered slopes rising up from the lake waters were very nice.

When we arrived, we had to drive down to the boat launch area and drop off our gear. There was no parking near the beach, but there certainly was a lot of parking available. Once we got that sorted, we picked a picnic table close to the docks and checked out the water. The bathrooms were located as far away as you could get from us, unfortunately. There were two sets, but the closer ones were closed for the winter season. The open set was at the other end of the beach, near the enclosed dog run. An entire section of the beach was fenced off for dogs to use. That was pretty nice for dog owners, that's for sure. We were accompanied by some of Mihai's friends, and they had two dogs so that worked well. A small note, dogs were not allowed on the other areas of the beach, and a park official actually visited us and warned us of that fact. Just something to keep in mind!

The waters of Buntzen Lake were very dark and brown. It reminded me a lot of the lake waters in Ontario, brown with tannins. Signs were posted everywhere warning about a steep drop off. They weren't kidding! A few feet into the water, and it appeared to drop off to nothing.

We geared up and adjusted our weighting removing about 4-5 pounds to account for the lower density of fresh water. Our plan was to run through some skills on the first part of the dive, then explore down to about 30 meters. The water was about 5 degrees Celcius and it felt pretty cold on the face! Dropping down to about 10 meters, we did our skills. Everything went pretty well, but during my mask removal I breathed in too much and ended up ascending quite far. I got things sorted, and re-did it and it went better. Mihai had some problems with his horizontal trim, and was kicking the bottom a lot. But other than that, we got things done ok.

After that, we descended further down to 30 meters. The steep drop off ended about 25 meters or so and it gradually descended fairly flat from there. It was so dark down at 30 meters that it was like a night dive. There wasn't much to see, just an endless muddy bottom punctuated every so often by discarded beer cans. We did find three small bottom dwelling fish that looked a lot like small sculpins. I salvaged a lot of old stuff on all the dives, too. I found two pairs of sunglasses, a dog toy, a stubby beer bottle, two golf balls, and a kids scuba mask. Nothing valuable, but there must be a lot that got lost in such a popular lake! On the way up, we also came across the dead trees that people had told us about. They were very spooky looking in the dim, brown waters. Very skeletal like. One had been decorated by divers with bottles, cans, scuba masks and other junk. It was like a junk Christmas tree. There were also at least three sets of kayak paddles shoved blade up in the mud at various locations.

Surfacing, we found that the rain had really started. Poor Christina was pretty wet. Our surface interval was damp and cold, alas. So much for the nice weather! I gave the recovered dog toy to their dog friends.

On the second dive, we started at the boat dock and then swam to the east along the drop off at about 15 meters. This seemed to be where the most interesting stuff was, most notably the dead trees. Near the dock was one big dead tree that was covered with fishing line and lures from people getting snagged. I didn't recover any of these, though, and left them alone. After heading a ways east parallel to the beach, all the interesting stuff disappeared. All that was left was a slope of sand and mud. We turned back then, and found some of the dead trees to look at. There was one section of the slope that was covered in red rust-like deposits. That was about as interesting as it got! In one of the trees, we found some rainbow trout minnows. There were quite a few of them, all bunched up in the cracks in the wood. They were maybe 2 inches long, and glistened and gleamed quite nicely. Finally, we ascended back to the shallow ledge. There were a lot of underwater grasses there.

Buntzen Lake wasn't the most exciting dive location ever, but it was alright. The lack of current would make it a good place to try out new gear. Still, it's a long way to travel, and there are certainly better, more interesting dive sites in the ocean which outweighs the benefits of not having to rinse your dive gear!

Porteau Cove 06/03/2010

This was the start of a three day stretch of diving. I had heard from Landon that he was taking a small class out and I decided to tag along. It worked out even better, since they actually went to Porteau Cove instead of Whytecliff, and Genessa and Shaun were doing an advanced open water course. So I tagged along with them and their group for two decent dives, rather than just hovering watching people do skills! Oh and even more good news, the outdoor shower was on again after being off for the winter. One other reason making diving at Porteau Cove extremely convenient.

It started out being not the best morning for a dive. There was a significant amount of wave action, and it was cold and windy. It was high tide, so the surface swim was not only rough, but longer too. One person got so sea-sick they had to cancel their dive just from the swim. The class had 6 people in it. I stuck with the group that Shaun was doing. There wasn't much of a current so the swim, while rough, wasn't hard. We all made it out to the buoy and descended. The plan was to do some buoyancy skills, then head out for a short dive. I just hung around the group mostly watching. I fiddled a bit with my buoyancy, but didn't practice many skills myself other than to act as a reference and good role model. I tried to stay as horizontal and trim as possible, all the time. Genessa said later that I did a good job. Everyone in the class was dressed the same, all in black. I was the only one who stood out with the red accents on my drysuit, and powerful light. The visibility wasn't very good, so it was a good thing that I had my light along. I'm sure it helped people keep track of where the main group was. There was of course a lot of silting, but that's to be expected. All the divers came from warm-water backgrounds and were still learning drysuit and cold water diving. A lot of fins were hitting the bottom!

There wasn't much to see because of the poor visibility, and the fact that we weren't moving around much. But there were a few nudibranchs and ling cod, as usual.

The day really brightened up, and the waves petered out so the second dive was just great. It was almost like being out in summer. On the swim out for the second dive, I had my first encounter with a real panicked diver. Landon was handling it, but I went over to assist in calming them down just in case. One of his students had problems with doing a mask clearing skill, and tried to bolt to the surface. Landon brought him up safely, but it was quite an experience to see something that I only practiced for in the Rescue Diver course.

The second dive was around the Grant Hall, and it was nice. Shorter, but nice. I saw a nice sized buffalo sculpin camouflaged on the hull, and a really big ling cod. We didn't go by the octopus den, which was too bad. But we did swim around the pipe reef which was fun. Shaun dropped his underwater signaling shaker, which I saw and picked up and gave back to him later. So I helped out! I didn't feel like keeping an underwater shaker thing, anyway, hah.

Hanging out after the dive, Shaun mentioned he and his boat were free for diving the coming weekend. So plans were set in motion to see if that could be made a reality. Tentatively, we discussed going to Nanaimo and diving the HMCS Saskatechewan. I hope it would work out!

Nakaya Wreck Dive 02/28/2010

Ever since diving the VT-100, I wanted to dive the Nakaya, the same Yard Mine Sweeper class of vessel but sunk at Porteau Cove marine park. It was designated YMS-420 before being sold to Harbour Ferries in 1970 and renamed Harbour Queen No. 1, then renamed Nakaya in 1980, and finally sunk in 1992.

Firstly, to find the Nakaya was dead easy. A lot easier than what my research uncovered. The material I found was fairly vague, and had compass bearings and no travel times.

Directions to the Nakaya, starting from the stairs down to the water:

Swim to the very last and very far white surface buoy on the extreme right (closest to shore).

It is a long swim, about 320m using the ruler tool in Google Earth.

Descend along the line from the buoy all the way to the bottom (depth about 25m).

If you face a compass bearing of 30 degrees, and then turn 90 degrees to your left and start swimming, you'll run right into the Nakaya.

The Nakaya is not far from the line. Maybe 20 or 30 feet. If you miss it for some reason, return to the line and try again.

I had been planning this dive for a week or two, with several divers included but in the end only Jason could make it. To be fair, it was the Olympic closing ceremony day, and the big Canada vs. USA gold medal hockey game was on. It was an awesome sunny day for a dive, and I was able to participate in the celebrations after getting back, so I think I got the best of both worlds.

Gearing up for the dive was not as pleasant, since it was drizzling at the time. This cleared up though and it got very sunny. We didn't have too much trouble getting into the park, but there were traffic cones set up to prevent you turning left due to the Olympics. Once in the water, we started the long swim out. It was right around low tide, and the water was pretty slack so there was not much current. Once we got to the white buoy, we did what I thought needed to be done to find the wreck. We first swam on the surface along 30 degrees looking down trying to see the removed marker buoy. We had no luck doing this, so returned to the white buoy. We decided to descend there, and head along 30 degrees on the bottom to try and run into the bottom of the supposed line. We did that, but swam a long way without finding anything. Every minute I thought I saw something in the gloom, but it was always just my eyes playing tricks on me.

Eventually the bottom started turning into sharp rocks and looked like it was going up to shore. So I turned us around and we headed back along the bottom at 30m. This was the other way of finding the Nakaya, since we should in theory run right into it if we stayed near its depth. Luckily, it worked, and the bow of the ship loomed out of the gloom. It was tall! The ship was 40m long, so it was a big one. The bow was in great shape, not crumbling or anything. As we followed the hull along the starboard side, it started to show more signs of deterioration. There were holes in the hull near the deck level, and they gave it the appearance of a railing on a spooky ghost ship. On the other side, schools of shiner perch darted around in our lights. Half way down the hull, I looked to the east and saw a line. I figured that was the “missing” line that we had been looking for. Little did I know it was the same line we came down on! We had descended right beside the wreck, only to swim off and totally missed it until we came back.

We checked out the stern section which was really crumbling, and headed up to the deck level for a bit. There was no deck left really, just big holes into the hold. There was a lot of sediment accumulated in there too. Not a lot of life down in the holds. But the hull and the remnants of the deck had quite a bit. There were a few really big ling cod guarding their egg masses. There was also a lot of decorator crabs and coonstripe shrimps, along with a hairy crab and some squat lobsters. The highlight of the dives was a giant dendronotid, a red flabellina and a leopard dorid. We looked and looked for octopus, but there were none.

The second dive was much the same as the first, but we were able to spend more time on the wreck now that we knew how to find it. It really was a lot of fun to explore, and was a lot more interesting than the VT-100. This is the kind of dive where Nitrox comes in very handy to extend your bottom time, since it is quite deep. I was also very pleased that my air consumption rate had gotten a lot better too. It had been pretty high for a long time, and it was nice to see it improving. Less air consumption equals longer dives, something that I'm all for!