Porteau Cove 12/09/2009

I was pretty excited about this dive because I had heard a lot about Porteau Cove from other divers. I was a bit nervous, because every time I heard about it wrecks were mentioned. Up to this point, we had it drilled into our heads how dangerous wrecks were. It was a bit of a psychological barrier since there is really no difference between a wreck and a regular rock reef. You just don't go inside or under it! I guess they did their job too well during the Open Water course with me :-)

Originally, this dive was going to be at Whytecliff park with Patrick Hung, Joaquin Puga and Lyenne Lawrie, but Joaquin had a schedule conflict and Patrick got sick. In the end that actually worked out for the best. Bad that they couldn't go, but good because there weren't enough drysuits to go around! It was actually even worse than that, because there weren't even enough rental suits. Alan Johnson went above and beyond the call of duty and lent me his own personal drysuit, with the caveat that I would take extra special care of it. That took me aback, because it was such an investment of trust on his part. I felt honored! In return, I promised him he could use my new suit whenever he needed since they were basically identical. I also returned the suit the next day in perfect condition, but also added in a four pack of beer in appreciation! But on to the day's dive...

Lyenne was my dive buddy on this dive, whom I had met on a previous Sea Dragon boat dive. She's quite an accomplished warm-water diver and underwater photographer, so I was very happy to have her agree to dive with me. Since I had wanted to dive Porteau Cove, I jumped at the chance to change dive locations from Whytecliff to here because she was along. We weren't disappointed! Lyenne mentioned she had did Porteau Cove, but a long time ago. She also said my buoyancy was pretty good when we were done and driving back, but I'm getting ahead of myself! I'll take that as an indication that I'm improving as a diver, since if I can keep alongside a photographer, I think that's pretty good.

Getting gear from IDC went smoothly as usual, except for the short shock that there might not have been a drysuit for me. That was sorted out as already mentioned, and we were on our way. It was a fabulous summer day, and the drive along the Sea to Sky was awesome. Pam Rocks beckoned to us out in Howe Sound since Lyenne was wishing to dive with seals. It would have to be another day, because we were boat-less! Pam Rocks sounded great though, as I had read up on it in the “151 Dives” book, and heard a lot about it from the divers I had met on the Sea Dragon.

Arriving at Porteau Cove, we surprisingly found a pretty good parking spot even though it was near noon. It didn't seem all that busy, but there were at least 4 or 5 other groups of divers in various states of gearing up / gearing down. We did a quick tour around for orientation's sake, and found the shower near the stairs down to the water entrance / exit area. The washrooms and change-rooms near the parking lot had lots of signs about not being for diver use, which was a bit worrying. But in the end, it seemed not to be a problem. There was no hose, and when I asked another diver about it, they confirmed that. They said that they rinsed off in the shower, but did their BCD at home in the tub. If you get your gear from IDC, you could also use the hose there if you were returning it, so it's not a big deal. The shower is good enough.

Lyenne and I also checked out the dive site using the posted map near the stairs to the water. The whole area is sectioned off from Howe Sound by white marker buoys. Inside that were yellow marker buoys at the various interesting locations. We decided to surface swim to the closest buoy which was over the so-called “Leaning Tower of Porteau”, and they follow the artificial reef to the wrecks. Here is a link to the dive-map:

http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/explore/parkpgs/porteau/porteaudiving.pdf

Gearing up went smoothly, and Lyenne took along her camera. It was a pretty hot day! In the drysuit I was quickly baking. The shower helped a lot once we got to it, and entering the water felt so nice. But, there was a problem! I quickly realized that I had forgotten to put on my gloves for underneath the dry-gloves of the new suit! I was so used to the previous Nexgen suits where you put on your neoprene gloves separately that I forgot to do it when I was gearing up. To put them on, I would have had to either undo the zip-seals of the drygloves (something I didn't want to mess with on someone else's suit) or totally gear down. I decided to dive without them, but boy, did my hands get cold! Don't underestimate proper insulation in 10 degree water! Vince was gearing up beside the stairs and I said hi. He filled us in about the resident octopus, and to keep an eye out for masses of white crab shell parts which would mark his lair. I said we'd do our best :-) I also noticed Jason Kolba gearing up next to Vince when we were already in the water swimming out. It's too bad I didn't have a chance to say hi.

Another thing Lyenne and I learned very quickly about Porteau Cove was that you'd better be prepared to swim. The surface swim to even the closest marker buoy is very very long, about 150m to the closest one. That doesn't seem like much, but it is since you are often fighting a pretty decent current. A few of the divers recommended descending fairly early, especially if you find that you aren't moving at all. Swimming along the bottom is a lot easier. Make sure to get a good compass heading first though! Over such long distances, it would be easy to get lost.

I didn't time how long the swim took, but it was pretty long. We had a bit of a rest at the middle marker buoy and then descended. The plan was to follow the artificial reef around to the west. But, after we descended I ended up heading us too much to the north east. Live and learn! So there I was trying to figure out why all we were seeing was featureless bottom with the odd anemone covered rock here and there. It was still pretty cool, because each rock was like an oasis in a sandy desert. There were copper rockfish hanging out on them, along with tonnes of plumose anemones. On the sandy bottom, we saw lots of coonstripe shrimp. They congregated in huge groups, and shot backwards in unison as we approached. Lyenne got pretty excited chasing them around :-) I had never seen these little guys before, and they were really cool.

Realizing that we were heading in the wrong direction, I curved us back around to the west. At this point the bottom began to slope off slowly, and we were at a depth of 13-15m. The bottom was still pretty featureless, but there were quite a few large schools of silvery fish, probably shiner perch since the schools were so big. But, the best part was yet to come. Suddenly, looming out of the gloom was the stern of the Granthall! It was the first wreck I had ever seen underwater, and it was just amazing. The hull was covered with plumose anemones, barnacles and life in general. We swam around the stern and up the starboard side. Another group of three divers came out of the gloom along the same side, which was also very cool to see. They turned out to be from Austria, which Lyenne found out later. Along the starboard side, I couldn't help but call attention to the toilet that was sitting on the bottom beside the hull. It had a few anemones arranged on it, and was pretty amusing. Talking about it later, Lyenne and I had a good chuckle over it, and both agreed that someone must have put it there on purpose.

Unfortunately, we didn't have much gas left since we had spent so much time puttering around on the bottom before discovering the really good stuff. But we made the most of it and explored the artificial reef as much as we could. There were tonnes of copper rockfish resting on the iron girders, as well as a huge number of giant sea cucumbers. There was one spot under the stern of the Granthall's hull where there were at least 8 all in one spot. They were at least one foot long. By this point, we were nearing the 40 minute mark of the dive, so we started to follow the bottom back towards shore, even though we both wanted to spend more time in the reefs. The surface buoy connected to what was known as the “Leaning Tower of Porteau” was especially cool since it had plumose anemones attached directly to it. Lyenne spent a good bit of time trying to get some interesting pictures of it.

It turned out that even though I had improved my gas consumption, I was the limiting factor on this dive. Lyenne was way more efficient, and had something ridiculous like 1500psi left, and I was at like 500. Later when I checked my SAC rate, it was like 0.6 SCFM. Also later, Alan told me that a lot of women could have SAC rates of like 0.4. Argh! Well, my solution will be to use bigger cylinders in the future. I figure steel 100's will be perfect. Anyway, I wasn't the only limiting factor, since Lyenne was getting pretty cold. She hadn't completed her drysuit course yet, so was still in a wetsuit. Very brave considering the water was 10 degrees! My hands were super cold because of forgetting to put on the gloves, so I couldn't imagine how it would be in a wetsuit. We hit our 3 minute safety stop, surfaced and started to swim to shore. We discovered a very strong surface current that ended up driving us into the boat launch ramp. Instead of fighting it, we just exited there. There were no boats going in at that point, so that was OK. Divers are probably not allowed to enter and exit there. I'll have to find out the proper rules later.

We ended up having a pretty long surface interval of over 2 hours. Lyenne really needed to warm up. Even though it was pretty sunny, the breeze so near the water was stiff so it wasn't as warm as it could be. During this time, the Austrians that we had seen at the Granthall asked Lyenne to send them some of the photos she took of them.

Part of the other reason the surface interval was so long was that after we got geared up and in the water, Lyenne noticed that her camera housing was fogged up inside! She geared down and tried to clear it, but in the end it didn't help. So, for the second dive we were camera-less. Damn! Not wanting to make the same mistake as dive one, we decided to swim out and descend right on top of the reef. Well, at first we were going to swim all the way to the Granthall and descend there, but soon realized that the surface current was just too much. We made it to the closest marker buoy and had to rest and descend there.

We spent a lot of time slowly weaving around the girders and objects curving around to the west. It was pretty awesome. Porteau Cove is a great place to practice buoyancy. You really needed it! We checked out the sailboat hull and the dredger, then circled the Granthall and also swam over top of the deck. Looking down into the gaping holds was very cool. A bit scary too! At that point I was pretty comfortable knowing that I wasn't going to “fall” into anything. I think I'm really starting to get the hang of this weightlessness thing! Lyenne spotted the mother of all ling cods near the dredger hull. It was huge! At least 5 feet long, and just lying there on the bottom as pleased as could be. There was also what I was sure must be a canary rockfish. It was orange, but I'm still not sure if that's what it was. The fins didn't look right when I looked up the picture later. But, it might be an alternate form maybe. I'm also sure that I spotted the remains of the octopus's meals, but I couldn't spot the diner himself. Next time! There were more coonstripe shrimp to chase, a lot more copper rockfish to marvel at, and all the anemones and sea stars and sea cucumbers of course. Jason Kolba would email me later that he found the octopus, so I'm going to rely on him to help me find it next time.

At this point, we were around the 37 minute mark, and Lyenne signalled that she was very cold. So we ended the dive at that point, hit the safety stop and surfaced right there. I was under 1000psi anyway, damn my fast air consumption! Since we surfaced so far out, we had a long swim back. The current wasn't as bad, though.

Even though the surface swims are long, they are certainly beautiful since you can look at all the tree-covered mountains around you. It's quite spectacular. I can't wait to dive Porteau in the winter when they are covered in snow! It will be awesome.

After gearing down, we took a quick dip in the ocean. Why? I have no idea, it was Lyenne's! So much for being “cold”! Once you got in, it wasn't so bad, but moving around was freezing. I really appreciated my drysuit after that. But, it was the first time I had swam in the Pacific, so there is that. There was also an old lady rescuing stranded sea blubbers on the beach. I'm not quite sure if it did them any good though, they looked pretty dead to me!

Since our second dive went quite long, there was no way we could get back to IDC to return gear in time. So, we just rinsed everything off, packed up, and I returned it the next day. All in all an awesome dive! I'm going back to Porteau Cove as soon as possible.

One final note: Alan's suit was awesome, but he had just had the neck seal replaced. Whatever factory chemicals that were on it really did a number on my neck. I got a huge rash, which was compounded by moving my neck a lot to look at all the fantastic things, so I had a really raw neck after. I learned a valuable lesson, I'm using the suit saver lubricant stuff next time that Alan mentioned! It ended up looking like I survived a suicide attempt via noose :-)

Look for the next instalments of my Porteau Cove dive adventures next weekend. I have two dives planned with Gosia and Jason there for Saturday and Sunday.

Until then!