Tuesday, March 9, 2010

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!

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