Whytecliff - The Cut 02/05/2012

Jim Dixon and I went out to do a tech dive at the Cut. It was the very first tech dive I had done since completing my GUE Tech 1 course, and I was pretty excited! We met there after work. We didn't plan a very complicated dive, and just wanted to see if we could find the fabled wolf eel that apparently lived near the Cut. Visibility was pretty good, and the dive was quite nice. It was great to be able to see while we geared down since the days had gotten so much longer. Alas, no wolf eel was found. However, we did see the nice big cloud sponges. Maybe we'd find it next time!

Howe Sound Boat Dive - Topline 29/04/2012

Jason Kolba and I decided to go out on the Topline for some fun relaxing single-tank diving. The day was perfect, calm and sunny. Kevin and Jan were their usual great hosts on the boat. It was always a pleasure to dive with them! The first site we visited was Halket Wall, and you can see it on a Google map here:

https://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&ll=49.446561,-123.318658&spn=0.012709,0.019033&hnear=Vancouver,+Greater+Vancouver+Regional+District,+British+Columbia&t=h&z=16

 It was a very pleasant drift dive. In the dive briefing, Jan explained there was a wolf eel to see but Jason and I completely missed it. Too bad! It was very close the start of the dive, and we were just a little too far over. Still, the dive on the wall was great. Not a lot of life to see, but the visibility was about 60' so that in itself was worth it. The next dive site we visited was the Dragon's Den off Anvil Island. A Google map reference is here:

https://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&ll=49.516763,-123.315461&spn=0.003173,0.004758&hnear=Vancouver,+Greater+Vancouver+Regional+District,+British+Columbia&t=h&z=18

I'd heard a lot about the Dragon's Den before. It was a rock wall with several large indentations and overhangs. You couldn't really call them caves, because they only went in about 5 or 10 feet, but they were still pretty cool. Again, the great visibility really made it a spectacular dive. Jason and I came across a really nice octopus in one of the dens. It was sitting right on the back wall, and was so camouflaged we almost missed it! It was also out in the open which always seemed pretty rare. Those octopus really like to stay in the cracks and crevices during the day. All in all, it was a perfect day of diving. On the way back, we were treated to a whole group of seals sunbathing on Pam Rocks as well. They were very cute! Here is a short bunch of video clips put together of the diving that day.

Porteau Cove 15/04/2012

Heather and I decided to go out to Porteau Cove to get a few more dives in before her rescheduled rescue course date. The day was again fantastic, sunny and relatively warm. The water temperature was still not that warm though! We had a great dive checking out the wrecks and the artificial reefs. We didn't see anything too spectacular, but there were a lot of little things to see.

Woodlands 08/04/2012

We got Heather's wrist seals trimmed and fixed up, so we decided to do a practice dive at Woodlands. It was a perfect day to be out for a dive, sunny and warm. I always like Woodlands because it feels like you are in the wilderness. An easy entry and some nice topography made it even better. It was pretty crowded though, as there was already a group of divers there! There was not a lot of room at Woodlands to park, and they took the closer parking spot, so it was a long walk. We had a short dive, due to the poor visibility that Indian Arm was susceptible to. Still, it was a lot of fun. And the wrist seals seemed to be a lot better. I had my video camera along, but didn't get any good footage. The vis was just too bad.

Whytecliff 24/03/2012

Heather was finishing her rescue course with OceanQuest and I came along to be a rescue dummy, something I figured I could do pretty well! This was the first open water day for the course, and it was a very nice day: cold but sunny. Ryan was the instructor, and we started to run though the various scenarios. We yelled "pizza" a lot when we needed to simulate a panicked or stressed diver. Most people know that training goes on at Whytecliff, but it was better safe than sorry to yell this instead of "help!". You never know who might mis-interpret what was going on. The rescue courses were always a s drain on the participants, and this one was no exception. By the end of the day, everyone was tired having towed people to shore, hauled people up the beach, performed practice rescue breathing etc. Unfortunately, Heather's dry suit wrist seals were too tight and really did a number on her by the end of the day, so she had to reschedule the rest of the rescue course til a later date.

Whytecliff The Cut 03/03/2012

Jim Dixon and I decided to go out to Whytecliff Park for our first tech dive after the Tech 1 course. We had heard about the huge cloud sponges at 140 feet, and wanted to see them for ourselves.

I went by IDC to pick up my doubles and deco bottle that morning, and we met at 11:30. It was a very relaxing morning start! Our dive plan was quite simple. 140 feet for half an hour, and a corresponding 25 minutes of decompression on 50% oxygen. The day was a bit cloudy, and the IDC van was out at the park. Genessa was teaching a course that day. Jim had talked them them before I got there, and got a bit of a visibility report. Apparently it was very good! Dave Williams was out in the bay practicing for his upcoming Fundamentals class too.

Jim and I geared up and headed down to the water. We had planned it so that we'd be in the water for high tide. The dive went very well. It took us longer to get to depth than it should have, so that was something we still had to work on. It was quite hard to get down deep quickly after being so used to just taking our time. But when you are paying for helium, you don't want to be wasting it at anything below 100 feet!

The dive was good. We didn't see any cloud sponges as big as cars, but we joked that probably people would say that they were just deeper, and to take Tech 2. We did see a really big tanner crab though. One had a dead red rock crab in its clutches. Jim wanted to try and rescue it, but didn't after we realized that it was just its lunch. Didn't want to steal anyone's lunch!

On our decompression stop at 20 feet, we had a pretty good time since we had a lot of stuff to look at. We were in the shallows out front of the Cut and had starfish and little critters to look at during our time there. It was a bit better than staring at each other in open water for 20 minutes! We started to appreciate how dull deco could be.

Here is a short video clip.

Til next time!

Mill Bay Tech 1 Finish 11-12/02/2012

Finally the day arrived. The weekend where Jim and I would finish our Tech 1 course!

It got off to a somewhat rocky start because I wasn't quite sure where the dock was to meet the boat. But we all hooked up ok. Guy Shockey was finishing our course with us. We were taking a boat from Rockfish Divers out. Guy had done a lot of diving with them lately, and Elly was our boat captain. She went out of her way to help us with equipment and everything.

To finish the course, we did 2 dives over 2 days. A checkout dive, then a practice tech 1 dive, then 2 experience dives the next day. Jim and I learned a lot over those two days, and did pretty well.

In the end, we passed! Finally! It was interesting to get perspective from two different GUE instructors. What I really wanted to do now was to do some relaxing dives with no skills involved :-)

Nanaimo 21-22/01/2012

Jim and I scheduled the last part of our Tech 1 course for the second week in February. In order to get in enough practice, we decided to take one weekend and dive around the Nanaimo area and focus on skills.

We met at Tyee Beach on the Saturday. There was quite a group of open-water divers there doing training. Parking on the road was a bit of a problem, but we managed.

The dives at Tyee were quite fun. We went to the right on the first dive, then left on the second. During both dives there were some sea lions swimming about. One came in and checked out Jim on the second dive, which was very cool. We had planned to do 3 dives, but ended up doing 2, and then practicing one ascent to take the place of the third. We wanted to practice our ascents the most, as that was what we had problems with during the course. Our ascents went very well we thought. Tyee Beach was a nice dive site as always. There was one bit where I came across a rock covered with hermit crabs. When the saw me, they all began to scurry off the edge like lemmings. It was kind of funny.

After spending the night at Jim's place, and reviewing the video from the day, we went out to Madronna. However, a wind warning in the area was going on, and Madronna was just too rough.

We went to the Jibb instead, which I had never dove before. It was a great sheltered area, and we got three dives in that we wanted to. The day was raining constantly and windy. It was not fun out of the water. There was even wet snow! The best was the sea lions that came to check us out on every dive. I got a bit of video, too.



Jim and I thought we got enough practice, and hoped that we would be able to complete the Tech 1 course on the second weekend of February.

Howe Sound Sponge Reef 08/01/2012

Prior to starting Tech 1, the plan had been to dive a new glass sponge reef in Howe Sound. This had been found recently and had gotten some publicity because a new species of sponge had been found.

http://www.lionsbay.net/index.php/20100327912/the-deep-bioherms-of-howe-sound.html

Because these sponges were quite deep, the idea was they'd be ideal for a technical dive. However, since Jim and I hadn't finished yet, we went along, but did a regular recreational dive.

We went out with the Topline. It was a rainy, miserable day. But as always, what mattered was under water. The sponge reef was quite nice, but we didn't see anything too different than we'd normally see.

The second dive of the day was on Halkett Wall, and it was a very nice relaxing drift dive.

On the trip, I talked to a fellow who had been lucky enough to see a six-gill shark at Ansel Place. Lucky! You never knew what you might see.

Jim and I agreed we'd be back to do this dive properly once we were done with Tech 1.

GUE Tech 1 04-08/12/2011

I had wanted to do Tech 1 for a long time. I had put it off several times, and finally lined it up with Jim Dixon to complete it. We had Dan Mackay come out from Ontario, and Alan Johnson did video and assisted.

At the start of the course, it seemed pretty straightforward. The swim test (400 yards in under 14 minutes) and the breath hold (20 yards) worried me most. I had spent a day every week for 2 months practicing, and it was a good thing. Otherwise I don't think I would have passed! We did the swim test at the Burrard pool. This was done on the first day. We also did a lot of preliminary paper work and lecturing on the first day too.

Diving started the next day, and continued every day until the end. A lot of our time was spent on failure scenarios, and ascents from 70 feet. Jim and I had problems on the ascents. We chalked it up to performance anxiety because we had nailed the ascents on practice. Also, Jim had his gauge in feet, and had only just switched over to meters. Anyway, it was pretty much just an excuse. The ascents would be our problem until the end of the course, because we just ran out of time.

Fortunately, Dan set us up to finish off the course after some additional practice. The plan was to get together with Guy Shockey on the Island, in February. It was disappointing that we didn't finish when we wanted to, but heartening that we'd finish!

The best bit was a small young seal who came to play with me at the end of one of the dives:

Porteau Cove 27/11/2011

With the Tech 1 course date set (finally!), Jim and I needed to get out practicing as much as possible. We headed out to Porteau Cove with Dave Williams and Alber (I think!) for some skills.

There was a bit of current so we tried to hang out in the lee of the tug boat. It didn't work the greatest, and we had to reset back several times. We ran through air-sharing drills, valve drills, and also ran through the basic 5 set of skills.

After this we went looking for octopus, and found one hiding under the cement blocks.

On the whole, it was a successful day. Jim and I practiced our ascents and stops to the surface, too. Funnily, this would be the sticking point in the upcoming tech 1 class. We thought we had it down pretty well. We had a rude awakening coming!

Whytecliff 06/11/2011

It had been a long time in planning, but Jason and myself finally got out with Alan Johnson to do a line workshop. After being involved with the UASBC, we were doing more and more with line under water, and it was important to get some good instruction on how to handle it. Line under water has a mind of its own!

Some of the things we went over were, holding a reel, or spool, primary, and secondary tie offs, laying line, placements and stations, and retrieving line. We also did some navigation in zero visibility training, and ran a dive with no masks and just following the line.

It was a great day of learning. The masks-off dive was quite interesting. It wasn't as hard as I would have thought. Finding things to tie off to at Whytecliff was more of a challenge. There was also a ton of information. I think I retained maybe 25%. It was going to take a lot of work and practice to become good at that's for sure.

A lot of time was spent running line in the nearby park. It was a good thing too, as underwater it was quite a challenge. I remember the reel getting jammed on one dive. You wouldn't think that it was that hard to just spool out some line, but when gravity isn't helping any more, line floats and can get everywhere.

On the whole a very good day, but it just showed me how much more there was to learn and practice.

Porteau Cove 23/10/2011

Heather and I went back to Porteau Cove for some more gear checkout. This time Mihai came along too, and we checked out the wrecks.

On the first dive we followed the firehose out. There was a big open water class there that day, and the visibility suffered for it. We spent a good deal of time on the deck of the Grant Hall as there were some very nice schools of fish and other critters hanging out there. There was also a little seal who zoomed through past us when we were around the tug boat. I was the only one who saw it unfortunately.

We spent the second dive under the dock again because it was so cool down there the other week. It didn't disappoint, the huge schools of shiner perch were there again, and the visibility was great.

Here is a little bit of video.

Porteau Cove 16/10/2011

Heather and I went out to Porteau Cove to do a relaxing fun dive. She wanted to try out her new dry suit and equipment.

We spent most of our time under the dock, and saw a spectacular school of shiner perch. There were more than I'd ever seen before. It was magical. A great dive!

Here is a bit of video of the experience! Heather did a great job with the camera...

Untitled from Anton North on Vimeo.