Topline 08/03/2014

For my birthday, I could not think of anything better than going for a dive with Heather and Sea Dragon Charters! There was a rain warning, but that was much better than the snow warnings we had been getting lately.

Kevin and relatively new skipper Chris were captaining the boat, and Mike was dive master. On board were Aquarium personnel who were doing the annual ling cod egg mass survey. There was also a BCIT journalism student who was doing an audio story on the event. The Sea Dragon had a deal that if you participated in the survey you could get one fill for free! Not a bad trade to help science.

The first dive we did was at Dorman Bay near Bowen Island. We got a dive briefing from the Aquarium staff about what to look for to help the survey. You had to just mark down the depth, the size, and the security of the egg mass, and whether a male was present. Ahmed had told us a story of him getting accosted by a ling cod recently. I knew they could be aggressive when they were guarding their eggs, but I had not heard of one actually bumping into a diver before. During the first dive, we found two ling cod egg masses. We also saw two really nice tanner crabs that were holding females (lots of things were mating obviously). We found a fantastic giant nudibranch, and were treated to its unique hunting behaviour. When it found a tube-dwelling anemone, it would rear up and dive down at it. It was a fantastic and lucky treat. I found an oar from a rubber dingy and pretended to row underwater a bit as well. Check out the video that Heather took!



We got some still photos as well. There was a great nudibranch, a Golden Dirona.

There were some fantastic plumose anemones.

The best shot, was some kind of sponge or tunicate that we'd never seen before. It was small, so maybe we'd just missed them.

For the second dive, we did Halkett Wall. Ahmed and I both thought that we are on a completely different island. We thought we were on Hutt Island. Whoops! The dive was a lot of fun, but we didn't see one ling cod.

After the diving, we all met for some food and drinks. Here, we had a great opportunity to chat with Chris about the Cayman Islands, and Patricia and Andre, whom we had met that day. It was a great time!

Whytecliff 04/02/2014

Unfortunately, all my dive plans since the sea lions were cancelled due to snow. The weather in Vancouver had been very abnormal. While it was not a lot of snow, it was enough for me to not want risking slippery rocks, or more importantly, slippery roads. I had not bothered to put winter tires on my trucks, and wouldn't you know, we ended up with more snow this year than ever before!

Vlad, Dave Williams and myself headed out to Whytecliff for the relaxing technical dive that we had cancelled 3 times due to weather. During the day, I saw some snow flakes, and I really thought we would be cancelling again! Thankfully, the snow was short lived and it was just rain for most of the day. It was wet and miserable gearing up, but when we got out of the water, the rain had stopped. It turned into a very nice evening. Jim Dixon had planned to join us, but forgot his apartment keys so had to go back to the Island. Too bad!

The dive itself was one that we had done many times before. We spent 10 minutes going right from the Cut at 45 meters, then turned around and came back at 39 meters for the remaining 20 minutes. This placed us right at the Day marker, where we started our decompression and moved into the bay.

During the dive, we saw a lewis moon snail, which was very unique. I had only ever seen these on Vancouver Island. This specimen was much smaller than the ones that I had seen before, and we almost missed it. It was about two inches in diameter. We saw some some very cool gunnels, probably saddleback gunnels, and some pretty interesting sculpins. The varitey of sculpins never ceased to amaze me. The cloud sponges were great to look at as usual. Vlad scarred a kelp crab that took a leap off of a rock overhang and he dropped off into the abyss. I hope he was ok! There were a ton of nudibranchs as well: a Giant White Dorid (it was huge, at least 8 inches), a Cooper's Dorid, a Yellow Margin Nudibranch, a Heath's Dorid, or possibly a San Diego Dorid. I found this page for all these nudibranchs, because it was too dark to take photos or video:

http://emeralddiving.com/id_nudibranchs.html

Visibility was not bad, maybe 20 or 30 feet. We ran into some strong current near the end of the dive, and I was worried that we'd not make it to the day marker in our planned dive time. But we came across a plaque that marked the location right when we hit the end of our dive. The water temperature was quite cold. All of us commented on that at the end of the dive. Dave dropped his mask and didn't realize it on our exit at the beach. He went back and found it in the water, saving it from getting washed away. Along with that, at the beginning of the dive, we had staged our deco bottles on the beach and they almost got washed away as well. The tide came up much faster than we had realized! Fortunately we were able to rescue them and put them up farther out of the water's reach. A good lesson to remember, make sure your gear was far enough away from waves or tides!

On the whole, it was a great dive. Can't wait for the next one!

Hornby Island Sea Lions 01/02/2014

I was very excited about this! Jim Dixon arranged via GUE-BC a trip to visit the Hornby Island sea lions, with Sean of UB Diving. Neither Heather or myself had done this dive before, and had heard a lot about it. We had seen sea lions occasionally, most notably at Egmont last October, where Francois took some great photos. However, these sea lion encounters were pretty far away, and you would be very lucky to get even a little close to them. For this trip, we just squeaked on. There was one slot left, but Jim talked to Sean and was able to squeeze both of us on. Whew!

Prior to the trip, we viewed some video of what to expect, and talked to those who had done it before. When we were talking after the trip, we agreed that neither of us were truly prepared for the experience. It was amazing, but a bit overwhelming! The shear number of sea lions and how interactive they were was a lot to take in. You really needed to be relaxed, and in control of yourself. We enjoyed ourselves immensely however, and Sean was a great Captain, with a great boat. We would definitely go out with him again.

Without further ado, the video!



Along with the video, there was a good collection of photos as well:

https://plus.google.com/photos/103220399355688115810/albums/5976086935921412113

We stayed overnight at the Tigh-Na-Mara resort in Parksville, so we were quite close to the meeting place, which was near the Fanny Bay ferry. Dennis and Alison came over on the ferry, so they had to get up much earlier. I'm glad it wasn't us! When we arrived, this was a view of the dock:

The people who came along were Jim, Alison, Dennis, Mark, Anton, Ksenia, Diane, myself and Heather, and a non-diver, Logan (Jim's son). It took me until part-way through the day to make the connection that Logan was the son that Jim had told me about before. Oops, sorry Logan and Jim!

When we arrived at the dock, we were greeted by a cacophony of sea lion barking. It was almost deafening. We joked that we could just do the sea lion dive at the dock. Our first look at the sea lions was a bit sobering. They sure were big!

It didn't take long to get the boat loaded and underway. I had not met Sean before, and he was a great skipper. He had planned to dive with us, but realized he had forgotten his undergarment so he was relegated to captain only on this trip. Too bad!

On the ride out, Sean explained how the channel narrowed and amplified the swells. He wasn't kidding. Many of us had our teeth rattled and spines compressed, even though he was going extremely slow. Sean also talked a bit about the geoduck farming he did sometimes. Later, on the way back, he told us about a dive site nearby that he would do in bad weather called Wolf Eel Alley. There was a particularly friendly wolf eel that lived there that Sean had helped nurse back to health, going out and feeding him periodically after it suffered an injury. This lighthouse was a cool landmark on the way, situated on Chrome Island.

The sea lion dive wasn't actually on Hornby Island, it was on Norris Rock that was very near by, and not far past the lighthouse. When we arrived, there was already a dive boat there, and Sean cruised past to give everyone a good view of the colony on the way to our anchor point. There were so many sea lions! You could get an idea just how many from the start of the video above and from the pictures. The smell was quite something as well!

When we were cruising by, hordes of sea lions jumped into the water immediately and started following us. Clearly they were very excited! I started to get a feeling for just what we were in for at that point. Sean had a tough time getting a good anchor point as the current and wind were not cooperating. We did finally get into a good position, and he gave a dive briefing.

The dive itself was very simple, and very shallow. Our average depth didn't go much more than 30 feet. Sean gave us one tip if we were mobbed by the sea lions, to pick up a rock and bash it on the bottom. It sounded like a good idea, but I'd soon find out that it only worked once, and for not very long!

It was dive time, and the sea lions were waiting. We did a back-roll entry off the boat which was always fun! Heather took this photo of me on the descent.

Then very quickly this was the next picture.

Followed by a view something like this!

It was incredible just how quickly you got dog-piled by the excited sea lions. For much of the dive, your view was something like this:

Like I had mentioned, nothing could really prepare you for just how interactive, curious, and down-right pushy the sea lions were. They would indeed bite you, but it was more like the way a child would explore things with their mouth. Lacking hands, that's all they had! While it didn't really hurt (much), it definitely could be uncomfortable. The worst was when they would bite your head. I had that happen to me several times, as did Heather. Even with dry suit hoods, it hurt! There was a particularly large male sea lion that Jim named "Cut-throat". You could identify him by his large size, lighter coloration and large scar around his neck. He must have been trapped in a piece of fishing net or line or plastic at one time. The Vancouver Aquarium had a video of the constant battle they had freeing these poor creatures from human carelessness. Cut-throat was a bit of a bully, and when he bit you, you felt it! He was particularly fond of your calf. Back to what I had mentioned about banging the rocks. I tried it once at the beginning of the dive, and yes, the sea lions scattered. But they were back seconds later, and from then on just ignored it. Not much help! Better to just keep calm and get near the bottom.

Even though we did our best to make sure that all our gear was secured properly, the sea lions still managed to undo Heather's waist buckle, as well as untie one of her drysuit boots. They certainly were mischievous! Here is one trying his best to undo some tank buckles.

Even though we were there for sea lions, eventually they did leave us alone and we got a chance to see some other critters too. Heather got some great photos, some of which are here.

A baby puget sound king crab:

A bigger, adult puget sound king crab. We thought to pick him up and put him somewhere more photogenic, but decided against it with all the sea lions around. I didn't think sea lions ate crabs, but better to be safe!

Some kind of limpet, which looked like a miniature ufo landed:

A leopard nudibranch.

An interesting picture of a red sea urchin (they were everywhere):

And finally a "green" nudibranch! Well, no, not a green nudibranch, but an anemone closed up. On the boat, Alison told a story about how she had seen a green nudibranch. Unfortunately, I was pretty sure this is what she saw instead, because I had never seen such a thing in the marine identification books. Sorry Alison!

There were too many good pictures from the trip, but here are a few of my favorites. Check out the album that has them all at the top of the page. Despite this being only her second dive with her new underwater camera, Heather got some great ones.

My newest dive-buddy!

Nom nom nom!

This was a great group shot of the sea lions.

All in all, it was one of the best dive experiences I've been on in a long time. I would highly recommend diving with sea lions to anyone. Just make sure you don't have anything dangling, are relaxed, and are ready to let the sea lions be in charge! Going out again with Sean and UB Diving was definitely in the cards as well.

One thing I forgot to mention. When we arrived back at the dock, and were taking stuff off the boat, Jim's hood fell overboard. Not a big deal because it would float, but then I noticed his mask was inside it. That definitely did not float and I watched it sink into the depths. Fortunately, we were divers! Since I had my drysuit on still, I slipped into my gear and did a quick recovery dive. Problem solved! The mask was sitting right on the bottom just under the boat.

Britannia Beach 26/01/2014

This turned out to be a very special day of diving! GUE-BC had embarked on a GUE Project Baseline for Britania Beach, amongst the other Project Baselines going on. The goal of Project Baseline was to provide "a baseline in which starting conditions such as water quality, water clarity, fish counts, living reef coverage, etc are compared to evolving conditions". Britania Beach provided an excellent location for this, due to the extensive mining operations that had been in the area. I found some information on the environmental impact of the mine site in this report: The Former Britannia Mine, Mount Sheer/Britannia Beach, British Columbia. You can see by this picture the quality of the water flowing into the ocean in 1995.

Josh Gardner started the project, and my first look at the site was through this video.

Britannia Beach Overview - CCGS Ready from Dirk De keersmaecker on Vimeo.

Today it showed just how much support the project had gotten in the GUE-BC community in Vancouver. On Vancouver Island, there had been much more activity, and it was great to see a similar thing happening on our side. There were at least 6 GUE divers participating directly in the project on Sunday, along with our 2 teams of 2. A full list of participants was Josh Gardner, John Campbell, Daniel Wei, Dave Williams, Nick Bowman (fabricator specialist!) Dennis Diamond, Rob Rob, Jim Dixon, Alison Clucas, myself and Heather. I am sure Josh will do a more complete write up of the work, but from what I saw the goal was to deploy permanent stations at specific locations where a visibility card was located. Then you could reliably quantify water visibility periodically. Luckily, Heather and I were there for a purely fun dive, so we didn't have to do any work at all! Jim was also along for a fun dive with our mutual friend Alison. We had not dove with Alison since Tuwanek 17/02/2013!

Even though Jim was on a fun dive, he was still roped into work! Here is Jim attaching the visibility cards to the stainless steel plaques.

A close-up of the visibility gauge that was put on the bottom:

You could not ask for a better day to go diving!

We all met at the Galileo cafe parking lot, and got a run down on the dive site. There were two entries, both requiring a trek across the train tracks. It was an interesting sight to see divers crossing the highway and the train tracks! The entry directly across from the cafe was pretty steep. The project teams entered from there, as it was closer. We opted to drive up the highway a bit toward Vancouver where there was a wide shoulder beside a billboard. There was a small trail under the billboard that led through the bush to a secluded "park". There was a tree house, a fire pit and it looked like it was regularly used. The entry here was quite a bit better, but there was more of a surface swim back to where the wrecks were.

After gearing up, we made our way into the water and on to the wrecks. The site was quite easy to find. All we did was surface swim along shore back towards Britannia Beach. At the first dock piling, we dropped down and followed the bottom contour at about 20 feet or 6 meters. We ran right into the wrecks easily. Along the way, we also found a huge amount of golf balls and a golf club! It appeared that this was a popular spot to practice your golf drive, although the person who lost their club in the ocean obviously needed some more practice!

You can find the video compilation I put together below. Most of the divers featured are Jim (in double 80s) and Alison (single 100 with yellow octo), but we met up with some of the other project teams as well. I think the best bits were the moon jelly we found, along with some of the schools of fish. The visibility was amazing! In the video, there was a great little three-man "conference" captured. John was using his wet-notes to tell people that there was a big octopus under the wreck were he was. We also heard a funny story from John later about deploying the stations. They used a small boat to take the stations out, which were made up of concrete blocks and stainless steel rods. John took one from the boat, and promptly rocketed to the bottom despite his wing. Those stations were heavy!

Heather took some great photos, which can be found in this album. Pretty good for her first attempt at underwater photography! There were some great nudibranchs (Cooper's Dorid I believe), as well as just awesome pictures of the wrecks themselves. There is one picture of a pipe fish, but you have to look very carefully. A few samples follow the link.

https://plus.google.com/photos/103220399355688115810/albums/5973433795456894657

All in all, the day was a fantastic success. It showed how much the GUE-BC community had grown in Vancouver, and also showed how divers of all skill-levels could participate, and above all, have fun! Britannia Beach was a great dive site. I wish I had dove it sooner!

Topline 25/01/2014

Vlad and I decided to go out for another dive with Sea Dragon Charters.We were planning on doing two technical dives, which meant a lot of gear! It was a pleasure to have the spacious Topline as our dive platform. Kevin and his crew were always excellent, and this time was no exception.

Here is the video compilation that I put together from the day. I hopped into the water to get some surface shots, and you can see just how great the visibility was! Vlad and I happened on a stubby squid, and a very photogenic moon jelly.



Arriving in the marina, the visibility from the dock looked stunning. We were tempted just to dive right there! Once on board, we headed to the north side of Bowyer Island for our first dive. I didn't get any video, but it was a very good dive. We came across some very large cloud sponges off the east side of the pinnacle. It showed that in Howe Sound, deeper than 100 feet, the cloud sponges continued to flourish. These specimens were about the size of an armchair.

Back on board, we had some nice soup and conversation. As we were doing two technical dives, Vlad and I requested a 2 hour surface interval. During that time, we had ample time to soak in the scenery.

The second dive was the best dive of the day, and the video above is all from the second dive. We came across a stubby squid, a moon jelly, many giant dendronotid nudibranchs, golden nudibranchs, and some great decorator crabs. The other dive teams reported octopus, and puget sound king crabs. I jumped in the water before the dive to film the other dive team leaping in, and that was a lot of fun. Without weights, a dry suit sure was buoyant!

A big thanks to Kevin and his crew for a wonderful day of diving!

Porteau Cove 14/01/2014

Vlad and I decided to go do a scooter dive at Porteau Cove. The tides again were not the best, but since we had the scooters, that wasn't such a big issue. It was quite a low tide, and it was still going out.

It was a very nice evening, however, no rain and a big full moon. We started the dive by scootering out to the first marker buoy and descending there. On the bottom, I picked up the firehose and we followed that, then went on towards the Nakaya. With the low tide, I adjusted the depth that we scootered to the Nakaya shallower. Unfortunately, I made it a bit too shallow and we missed it. We ended up at the rockpile near the highway. Realizing that, I turned us around and went a bit deeper on the way back. The Nakaya soon loomed in front of us, and we scootered around it a few times.

We headed back and scootered around the rest of Porteau a bit. There was not a great deal to note, other than a lot of big ling cod and decorator crabs. We got back onto the firehose, and headed back. At the end of the dive, Vlad did some bottle rotation practice, and I watched. I would have done a few skills too, but I had gotten quite cold on the dive. I had forgotten how much heat you lose while scootering, and had worn a thinner undergarment. Whoops! While Vlad was doing his practice, I did see a cute little baby octopus scuttling along the bottom. He was too quick though, so I couldn't show Vlad.

I was pretty happy with my navigation during the dive. I got us to all the points we wanted to see, and ended the dive right back where we started. Not bad for being frozen!

Whytecliff Park 07/01/2014

Happy New Year! Back to diving after a wonderful holiday season!

My first dive of the year was good old Whytecliff Park. Vlad wanted to do some bottle rotation practice, and a bunch of us came along. There was Jim Dixon, myself, Vlad, and John. I paired up with John, and the tides were not quite with us this time. It was quite a low tide, and still on the way out. Jim and Vlad had extra bottles, so the current was a bit of a factor during the dive. I took our groups out to the day marker, and once we rounded the corner the current really picked up. I turned us around in short order, and we headed back. We spent most of the dive after that doing the bottle practice. I switched gas a few times with John, and we kept an eye on Vlad and Jim. I had Jim pass me a bottle, and that went quite well.

I had a great deal of fun on this dive, even though we didn't see a lot. I felt quite confident and was looking forward to another year of fun diving!

P.S. I did take some video, but my GoPro doesn't work well in the dark. However, it did turn out like a UFOs landing though!

Topline 21/12/2013

Heather and I went out with the Topline for one more dive before the New Year. It was cold again, but not as cold as the last time we were out. The hose to fill the camera bucket wasn't frozen this time! Kevin and Jan were their usual excellent hosts.

We did two dives, one on Hutt Wall, and the other on Worlcombe Island. The Hutt Wall dive was filled with the usual suspects of nudibranchs, ling cod and various crabs. We missed the rock with the octopus den at the start of the dive, but there was plenty of other things to see.

The Worlcombe Island dive was equally as good. Heather decided to stay on board, due to getting a bit more chilled than she would have liked, and I dove with Ahmed. We had met him on a previous Topline excursion, and he was a very enthusiastic and active diver. It was his 100th dive, so I was honored to pair up with him. On the dive we were able to locate a nice big octopus as a reward for his 100th dive!

Back on board, someone even brought along some sparkling wine to celebrate the occasion. Kevin and Jan handed out Sea Dragon calenders to all on board as a Christmas gift. Many thanks to them for that!

Kelvin Gove - 11/12/2013

After a week of snow and cold weather, it was nice to see the weather change for the warmer. I hadn't been out diving with Jim Dixon for a while, and he, myself, Dennis and John Campbell headed out to Kelvin Grove. Unfortunately, John had a leaky regulator and had to cancel his dive. Jim, Dennis and me had a nice dive. I think I might have found a northern clingfish on a kelp strand, as well as a bunch of plainfin midshipmen. Hanging out in the shallows there were a lot of cool little nudibranchs, what I think was a decorated war bonnet, and a lot of very interesting shrimp. During the dive, there was an incredible amount of decorator crabs. At the beginning of our ascent it was a bit rocky, but it tightened up. Going to need a few skills dive coming up!

Topline 07/12/2013

Heather and I took the opportunity to use the Dragon Pack that we had gotten to go out with the Topline. The last few days had been incredibly cold, and this Saturday was no exception. The day might have been cold, but it was nice and clear. The Topline only had four divers on board, so it was very nice and roomy. Kevin and Jan were their regular excellent hosts. The ride out into Howe Sound was quite rough thought. There was a lot of wind coming down from Squamish and the water was very choppy. We almost turned around to wait things out. Kevin got us over to Bowen Island, and we dove Seymour Bay. I had never done Seymour Bay before, and it turned out to be a nice little dive site. We found several rocks covered in barnacle-eating nudibranchs. There were many hooded nudibranchs as well, a nice swimming nudibranch, and a puget sound king crab.



One funny incident on the boat was on the ride out, the small camp stove got a bit out of hand. Nothing dangerous, but there was an impressive amount of flame coming from it until it was turned off. You don't want to hear the exclamation "Fire" on a boat very often!

Whytecliff 03/12/2013

Dave, Dennis and myself planned to do a tech dive at Whytecliff again. It was an amazingly clear and cold night. When we made it down into the water at the Cut, poor Dave's suit developed a leak and he had to cancel. Dennis and I had a very nice dive. We didn't see a lot of new things, but it was an enjoyable dive! The cloud sponges were amazing as always. We did see a very interesting worm, and Dennis exclaimed later that he was a bit worried that it might somehow leap into his regulator. I had to laugh!

Whytecliff 16/11/2013

Heather and I went for a fun dive at Whytecliff. There were some very interesting things to see!

First off, there were a few sea stars that were affected by the sea star wasting syndrome that had been happening. I saw two, and sent in the data of this sighting to the Vancouver Aquarium. We found a very nice opalescent nudibranch, and several frosted nudibranchs. We went out to the Day Marker, and then back. On the way back, we came across a huge giant pacific octopus in a crack. We also saw a kelp greenling eating a small flounder.

We got some video, and it turned out not bad. The nudibranchs are very hard to see unfortunately.

Wreck Fest 09-10/11/2013

Jim Dixon had been planning this for a while. The idea was to do some "cross-pollination" of GUE divers between BC and Seattle. For a long time, the GUE Seattle community was much stronger than that of BC. In the last year or so, this has started to change due to a lot of hard work by people like Jim, Guy Shockey, Alan Johnson, and Greg Nuttal to name a few. More GUE divers were getting trained, and the community was growing quite well. What was once a dream was becoming reality.

Wreck Fest was the inaugural kick off of GUE BC, and hopefully would become a yearly thing. Before I go much further, here are some pictures and video (so you can stop reading here, if that's all you want to see!).

First off, a group shot of (I think), everyone who was on the trip. There were two boats needed to take everyone, hosted by Sea Dragon Charters. There sure were a lot of us!!! I'm in the back right corner.

There was also a very good underwater picture taken by Vlad to commemorate the kick-off.

This is a link to some video of all of us hanging out during our decompression stops was take by Jay. It's pretty impressive the number of divers in the water, and an equally impressive amount of bubbles! You don't see that very often up here.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=728410797188163

I got some of my ownv video, and it really high-lights how good the visibility was. This was all on the HMCS Saskatchewan.



Now, on to the rest of the story!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had finished the class portion of Tech 1+ on the day prior to Wreck Fest. The rest of the experience dives would take place over the next two days of diving. Day one dawned brightly. The weather forecast had said it would be rainy, but the it turned out to be quite the opposite. I was lucky enough to stay at Jim's house, and I highly recommend Chez Jim if you get the chance! His and Tori's hospitality was great, as always. Alex and Will were staying at the Marinaside hotel (the hotel partner with Seadragon Charters). They were right beside the boat, which was very convenient. All the other GUE Seattle folks were staying there too. I had seen the units before, and they were very modern and quite nice. Being so close to the boat meant that you could leave gear in the shed, or on the boat adding to the convenience.

We all met up at the Marinaside, and began putting gear together and getting it down onto the boats. Both the Sea Dragon and the Topline were at the dock to accommodate all the divers. It was an impressive group, that's for sure. I had a lot of new names to remember! As a quick list there was myself, Jim, Greg, Shawn, Vlad, Guy, John, Drew, Liz and Ryan from BC, and Alex, Will, Bex, Jay, Greg, Keese, Koos, Mike, and Ryland from Seattle (if I missed anyone, apologies!).

I was on the Topline with Guy, Alex and Will, along with most of the Seattle folks. Kevin and Jan were our gracious hosts, and Christine and Glen were crewing the Sea Dragon. There was a lot of meeting and greeting going on, but we got the boats filled and loaded quickly and were all soon off to the wrecks. The amount of gear coming along was impressive. Everyone was diving doubles, and most had at least one stage as well. Kevin commented that he had never seen the Topline so low in the water before!

The Cape Breton was the first wreck of the trip, and both dives were fabulous. The visibility was excellent, and the current was low. It was very cool to see so many divers on the wreck at once. I remember laughing at the number of cameras being pointed around. It seemed like everywhere you looked, someone was snapping photos or shooting video. There were some very nice large cabezon on the decks, as well as the usual plethora of plumose anemones, copper rockfish and ling cod. It was also impressive on the decompression stops to see so many divers in one place, all in trim and holding perfectly level. The amount of bubbles was also staggering, and quite pretty. Here is where I was introduced (unwittingly) to the game that the Seattle folks played of clipping a toy to another diver without them knowing. There was a chicken, an octopus, and a princess doll, of which I seemed to end up with quite often! You really had to watch your back with those Seattle folks, haha.

That evening, Jim and Tori hosted everyone at their home in Ladysmith. It was a great evening, giving a chance for everyone to meet and talk more with each other. Liz provided beer courtesy of Lighthouse Brewing. Guy Shockey did a short talk on the GUE-BC Project Baseline and announced that next year there would be a large GUE get-together in Victoria. Similar events have happened before, and now that the GUE BC community was large enough, it would also form a nexus where these kind of events would periodically take place. It would be a fantastic opportunity to meet some of the folks we had only heard about. Keep an eye out for the official announcement of dates!

Koos also did a talk on the GUE Seattle Project Baseline. The amount of work that had been done there was very impressive. I highly recommend you read through that page, if you haven't. I hope that GUE-BC will get to that level soon. Guy also gave away some GUE swag, including some tank bands. Will was the big winner that evening, carrying away the tank bands. The icing on the cake was that he actually needed them! Speaking of cake, the cake came out after the draw complete with ship decoration in commemoration of Wreck Fest. Like all good things though, the evening wound down and people started to head home. There was still a big day of diving yet to go.

We met earlier the next day because Kevin wanted to take the Topline back to Vancouver in the daylight. With winter here and daylight savings time on it was getting quite dark quite early. The early start worked out well, since that allowed many of us to catch earlier ferries. Once the boats were sorted out, off we went. The last day was two dives on the HMCS Saskatchewan. Like the dives on the previous day, these were just awesome. The visibility seemed to be even better I thought. I got nailed by the octopus again on a deco stop, and ended up taking it home with me with the promise of continuing the tradition in BC. I also awarded myself the swan dive award, as an errant wave turned my giant stride into a face-plant. All was good though, and I don't think many people saw, haha.

Unfortunately, all the great diving soon came to an end and it was time to say good-byes. Based on all the smiles, I would say the event was a huge success. Several new certifications were finished as well, with Jay Olsen, Mike Bearda and Rebekah Marshall finishing Rec 3 and Alex Adolfi, Will Baxter and myself completing Tech 1+. Not to mention the many new friends that were made. I'm sure that everyone was looking forward to the next event! A big thanks goes out to Jim Dixon who was the main  master-mind behind the event, as well as Guy Shockey for helping with fill logistics, and finally Tori for making such great food and providing the cake!

Finally, I think these crazy pictures sum up the spirit of fun and camaraderie that this trip had.

 

Tech 1+ Upgrade 08/11/2013

I had been looking forward to this course for some time. Jim Dixon had turned me on to it originally, as well as had Guy Shockey. The Tech 1+ Upgrade was one of the best bangs for your buck in terms of immediate value. Tech 1 limited you to only a bottom stage or a decompression bottle. That meant you had to often bring two sets of doubles with you if you wanted to do two dives. Two dives could easily be done, but they were often shorter, and the second dive could often be shortened so significantly as to not really be worth doing. With Tech 1+, you could supplement your gas with a bottom stage, as well as carrying a deco gas as well. Suddenly you could get onto a boat with a set of doubles and two aluminum 80s and get a good solid two dives in. Guy mentioned that you would quickly recover the cost of the course in helium savings, because the potential to dump residual gas was almost non-existent.

Over the few months leading up to the course I had tried to get in as much review and practice as I could. I decided not to dive with additional cylinders, and left that skill to be addressed in the course. I remember Dan MacKay saying that for one thing, you didn't want to dive outside of your certification, and also you shouldn't be expected to know everything before taking a GUE course. I was feeling pretty good when course day arrived.

I got up very early to catch the first ferry over to Nanaimo. I could have slept in a little bit, but I had missed getting a ferry reservation for the 8 o'clock one. Rather than tempt fate, I went for the early one, and slept on the ferry. It also meant that once I arrived in Nanaimo, I had a lot of time to relax and get down to Maple Bay to meet Guy.

Prior to the course start, I had met my fellow class-mates in email discussions started by Guy. Alex and Will were from Seattle, and were coming up to participate in the Wreck Fest that Jim Dixon had organized for the remainder of the weekend. We met in person finally at Guy's house, and we started the lecture portion of the class, after getting a tour of the impressive fill station that Guy had assembled at his house.

The class portion was quick, but very interesting. Guy went over the benefits of Tech 1+, and we reviewed the new procedures, as well as reviewing valve failures and some real-world examples of where you could apply Tech 1+. We found a mistake in the student notes, as compared to the latest Standard Operating Procedures, which did spark some searching to make sure which was correct.

Once all that was done, it was down to Maple Bay to do the critical skills! Jim Dixon joined us for this portion. All of these skills were done at about 30 feet, using 32%. For the first set of skills, we clipped on our two stage bottles, dropped down and shot a surface marker buoy, then ascended to 20 feet and did valve and s-drills. On that first descent, I miscalculated the extra negative weight of those stage bottles, and almost crashed into the bottom! Those extra pounds make a difference.

We had a brief discussion on the surface, and then went back down and ran a line from our SMB. During that, various failures happened. In all honesty, the failures went pretty good. guy commented later that my trim needed some work. I wasn't quite sure what happened, normally it is very good. I think it came down to laziness. Something to work on!

At the end, we dropped back down and went for a little fun dive, retrieved the SMB, and headed for the surface. Guy did another debrief, and then it was off for dinner! Will had gotten pretty cold during the dives, and we were all quite hungry. We met at the "Bad Habit" just in Maple Bay for some pretty amazing food.

All that was left was the experience dives, which we would cover during the Wreck Fest weekend that had already been planned. Quite a few GUE Seattle folks were coming up, as well as a bunch of GUE BC people, all of which had been organized by Jim. I couldn't wait!