Sunday, September 6, 2009

Howe Sound Boat Dive 9/5/2009

What an amazing opportunity this dive was. I had signed up for theSea Dragon boat dive through IDC, but found out a few days before that they were opening a second afternoon slot. I jumped at the chance to go on two trips in one day. Four boat dives in a row were too good to pass up!

Even better, I got a lift with Steve in the IDC van. Parking hassle eliminated! I had to get up at 5am and bus it over to the shop (not the easiest with at least 50 plus pounds of gear!). When I arrived, I noticed the light from a flashlight shining around inside the shop. I thought it might be a robber since it looked to be some bald criminal-looking type and I've watched too many movies. Then I realized it was just Steve :-) I waved to him, and I swear he made the circular OK signal with his light so I thought he saw me. I ended up hanging around outside the garage door for about 20 minutes wondering what was keeping him. I figured he was just getting stuff ready. When the door finally opened he was surprised to see me. It turns out that he had no idea I was there, and had just been testing out a new light he had gotten, and it was just coincidence that he made what looked to be an OK signal. It was pretty funny!

The morning weather was pretty bad. It was drizzling and there was a marine wind warning on for Howe Sound. But, I figured I'd just stay in my drysuit. There is a definite advantage to them in terms of rain protection! A couple from Calgary got a lift in the van too. They were Mark and Claire if I remember correctly, and dove in the lakes of Alberta mostly which I found amazing. I know I want to dive in lakes at some point, but only diving in lakes? I guess if that's all you have that's what you do! It made me realize again how lucky we are on the West Coast. Steve and I did the tourist guide thing on the ride out for them.

Arriving quite early in the parking lot at Horseshoe Bay, we waited in the van. It was raining a lot harder at that point. Another couple joined us in the van to get out of the rain, but their names completely escape me. Albert from my Open Water course and Jason Kolba from a previous boat dive I was on also showed up, so we all cozied up inside the van until Kevin and Jan from the Sea Dragon showed up. There was one other diver along too, and another couple who arrived very late, but I don't remember their names either. Steve said later the couple was from South Africa. I met Nicola Grice too, who was the last diver to round out the quite full boat.

I was very surprised by the number of wet suit divers on this run. It was about half! Jason and I buddied up, and we brought Nicola along into our group too. Steve took a group of 6 down! It was like the open water training course all over, hah. I don't know what it would be like with such a big group. I find having three hard enough!

Gearing up and getting underway went pretty well. It was a bit damp from the rain, but once I got my drysuit on it was pretty nice. The boat cabin sure was packed with people changing! We moored at the sheltered north side of Bowyer Island and dove the Pinnacle dive site. The first dive started at 9:30, but there was a problem! Jason and I were in the water at the descent line, and a female diver came up. We both assumed it was Nicola, and asked if it was OK to descend. She seemed to say yes, so we thought all was well. We began our descent, but I noticed no one following us. On the bottom, we finally were joined by Nicola. It turns out that Nicola was still on the boat when we started our descent, and the other female diver was not our buddy! A good lesson learned there. Always verify your dive group every step of the way, and don't rely on the boat crew to do it for you. Also, don't assume someone is who you think it is when masks and hoods can make identifying faces difficult!

Jason did a very good job of navigating on the first dive. But, there ended up being another problem, this one a bit scarier, and another important lesson learned. We were checking air pressure periodically amongst us, but either we weren't doing it enough, or signals weren't getting across properly. Nicola's air was going down extremely fast, and neither Jason nor I picked up on it. In the end, we finally realized the situation, and immediately began an ascent. On the ascent, Nicola signaled out of air and I donated my alternate air source and we ended up buddy-breathing for the rest of the ascent. Her pressure gauge was showing basically zero. Pretty scary, more for her than me, but it worked out OK. The training we have does work. We missed the safety stop, but came up within limits. Jason finished his stop and joined us at the boat later.

Nicola was pretty shaken by the whole experience, and rightly so. But the lessons learned were very valuable. I'll not forget to check my buddy any time soon, and not just ask for air pressures underwater, but to actually comprehend and project air usage before a problem occurs. Steve had some good advice after we had time to discuss the situation too. Basically we got a stamp of approval that we handled things ok, so that was good! The rescue diver course is even more appealing to me now. I'll definitely be doing it in the spring. One of the other divers gave me some tips on that course. It's very hard on your gear, so rent if you do it. Use a wetsuit too, since you're doing a lot of activity and you'll overheat in a drysuit. In the end, the problems we had were completely preventable if you pay attention and catch them before they become an emergency. Pretty much exactly what we were taught in the course!

The second dive was done again at the Pinnacle. It was just too windy and choppy to move outside of that area. The current was quite strong too so we ended up deploying and using trail lines to haul ourselves along to the descent line instead of swimming. It's a lot easier to pull yourself along a line instead of swimming! I had no idea until then. Rule number one; don't let go of the line!

Nicola came down with Jason and myself, so it was great she got past the incident. On this dive we paid a lot more attention to air pressures! On the ascent we hit the safety stop fine, and Jason and I ended up descending again because we had quite a bit of air left. It turns out he and I are very similar in air consumption and skill level, so we were a good match. We are certainly going to dive together again.

In terms of wildlife, there was nothing massively new to me. No octopus this time! However, it was all beautiful as usual. The white plumose anemone fields are always stunning. Jason was quite a bit ahead of me on his identification skills. I picked out some kelp greenlings and copper rockfish, a ling cod or two, and the usual plethora of star fish. I noticed for the first time how many brittle stars are spread all over the bottom, and that they move a lot! They reminded me of some of the machine creatures in the Matrix movies. There was also a bunch of chimney sponges with shrimp living in them. Pretty cool!

There are a couple of books I'm reviewing right now for marine life identification. “Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest”, “Pacific Reef & Shore”, and “Whelks to Whales”. That last one is sold in the IDC dive shop. So far, I'm not sure which is best. “Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest” is a very large hard cover book that has a lot of great photos, but not something you'd want to take on a dive. “Whelks to Whales” looks to be the most comprehensive and smaller winner. A friend of mine pointed out today the value of visiting the Vancouver Aquarium to help bone up on your identification skills. I can't believe I didn't think of that! Thanks, Melissa!

We packed it in for the first half of the day around 12:30. The weather was taking a turn for the worse; more rain, and even more wind. It was looking grim for the afternoon dives. But Kevin said the alternate would be Ansel Place which is near shore and fairly protected. The next load of divers included Ivan Rivera Cruz whom I had met briefly on the boat dive two weeks past. He ended up being my dive buddy on this run, because Steve took another big group out. There was a pair of older divers, one of whose name was Will, and a pair of more advanced divers Jay and Vince. I had heard Vince's name around the shop. Jay and Vince became pretty valuable on this trip as you'll soon see. Rounding things out was a warm-water diver named Brandon, along with two new open water divers. Out of that pair, I only remember Julie. The other girl's name escapes me at the moment unfortunately.

Once the boat was loaded and we were under way, the weather took a turn for the better. What a strange day! The sun came out and the rain was gone. The wind was still quite strong, but it meant we could return to Bowyer Island and dive those sites again. We started at the Canyons this time, and when we arrived the dive ladder broke off and sank! No one was on it. It happened when it got dropped into the water. Just snap! Then gone. This is where Vince and Jay came in very handy as they embarked on some search and recovery. Ivan and I had a pretty good dive seeing much the same things that I mentioned above. The current was quite strong again, and it was difficult in parts to swim against it. We also got a bit lost, coming up at least a hundred feet short of the descent line. We almost made it, but not quite. Got to work on that navigation!

Jay and Vince were successful in retrieving the ladder and earned their keep even more by helping the other divers get back on board. With no ladder, we had to take off our gear and weight in the water, grasp the back dive platform, wait for a swell, then kick and pull ourselves up. Jay and Vince helped by hauling gear on board, and then hauling us up too. I didn't expect so much help, so I kicked quite hard, and when they pulled I rocketed up and on board almost into the rear cabin. It was pretty funny. Will ended up losing his new $800 camera, and his friend got a jelly fish sting across his upper lip. They were in good spirits about it though. The jelly fish sting looked pretty painful. I'd never seen what one looked like before. I ended up losing something too; the bolt snap that I had attached to my dive light. But when I heard about the camera loss, I couldn't be very sad about it! I learned another very good lesson; make sure everything is secure!

During the surface interval when tanks were getting filled, we hung out in the sun on deck. Ivan ended up taking a nap on the upper deck and almost lost his hat overboard from the wind. Steve talked a lot about and demonstrating dive floats and how to use them. It's a very good idea for every open water diver to have some kind of reel and float combo to release underwater to mark your ascent location. Especially when diving without a descent/ascent line or from a boat. They're pretty simple and compact little things. But you've got to have one with you to use it! I've got to look into getting one very soon. You don't need it for dives at Whytecliff, but any place where there might be boat traffic, you really should. Ideally, Steve was saying you need to swim out and put up a dive flag where the boats can see it, but when shore diving that becomes pretty impractical because of the huge extra distance you have to swim, and then do it again to recover the float.

For the fourth and last dive of the day we ended up back at the Pinnacle. Mostly I think because Kevin was getting fed up with divers getting lost! The Pinnacle is a lot easier to navigate, since after you descend, you note the depth of the descent line, then go either left or right. The Pinnacle is shaped like a two-tiered wedding cake, so you just keep one rock wall on your left or right, then turn around at some agreed-on air pressure and return to the same depth. Voila, you're back! Still, Ivan and I had a bit of a dicey return trip. He was using his compass, but I found mine next to useless because we were going in basically a circle. I ended up watching the rock formations a lot more and using natural navigation to get us back. Ivan ended up following me! There was one section I got worried on as the rock wall kind of disappeared into a sand bed, but I remembered we had to cross that before, so I trusted in my heading, and sure enough the wall re-appeared where it should have been. I've got a huge amount of work to learn on navigation. That's one thing all these dives showed me. Compasses are great, but using natural navigation backed up by a compass is often the best way to go.

On that fourth and last dive, I saw something new. Small spotted prawns in the crevices of the rocks. They were tiny and easy to miss. I'm glad I had my dive light on every dive. Ivan meant to bring his along, but ended up kicking himself after descending because he forgot it on the boat. It's great to have something, but if you don't remember to take it, it's almost worse than not having it!

As much as I didn't want to go, the day was pretty much done. All in all, I was pretty happy with my buoyancy and comfort level, as well as energy level. I told Ivan that I would have totally gone on a night-dive with him if I had had my Advanced course done! Diving with a computer is a god-send too. The extra no-decompression time they give is great, along with keeping track of your surface intervals automatically. I still take time to calculate things out with tables, but only afterwards. I think I will also get the wireless air monitoring module add-on. As I dive more, I like the idea of having my exact air pressures recorded for me. This makes calculating your air consumption a lot easier. Manually writing down your pressures is fine, and I'll still do that, but having it right there in the computer is getting more appealing. Also, it's a one-stop place to check depth, air pressure, time and temperature. Pretty valuable! You don't want to stop checking your manual pressure gauge, but you can do it a bit less often.

After saying so long to the new friends I met, I hitched a ride back to town with Steve. Well, that was after he found the van keys! He had left them hanging in the van door, and spent 15 minutes looking for them. It was pretty funny. We ended up going to Dix Brewery right beside my place for some beer and the Piggy Platter. It was the kind of day you want to top off with a plate of barbecued meat! Steve's key woes weren't over, because he promptly locked the keys inside his car after we arrived. Good thing he lived up to his burglar-looks and broke back in pretty easily!

I ended up getting home at 10pm. Quite the day! I hung out my wet gear, fell into bed, and it was lights out. I can't wait to do it again!

Some random things I learned/was reminded of today:

Bring a drybag or two on boat trips
Try to keep all your gear in one bag/spot
Keep everything you can attached to you
If it's not attached know where it is
Secure anything that might fly way overboard
Always secure your BCD/cylinder! We had one fall over on this trip, and it was dangerous
Don't rely on the crew to think for you
Bring cash for air fills
Bring enough food and water, especially on multiple dive trips
Bring some essential dry cloth items

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