Egmont 07-10/10/2011

I had planned to go to Egmont with Mihai, but he and Christina had to cancel because Christina had very bad stomach pains. I drove up with them, but they had to go back home after we arrived at the dock in Egmont. It was too bad. I stayed on, arranging to get a ride back with some of the other folks who were there.

We were with Porpoise Bay Charters, Kal and Anne again. They were fabulous hosts as always.

On arrival, we did one dive in the evening at South Sutton Island. I had brought my scooter and so did Alan Johnson, so we had fun scootering the island. Funny enough, he hurt his foot, so he had asked me to bring my scooter so he wouldn't have to fin so much.

I stayed in one of Kal's yurts again. They were as comfortable as always. Dave Williams was my yurt-mate, and also dive buddy when I wasn't scootering.

On the next day, we started out with Agamemnon Power Lines. Alan did a tech dive, so I teamed up with Dave. The cloud sponges were awesome as always. For the rest of the day, Alan and I scootered about.

The next day, we started out with the wreck of the Chaudiere. Alan and I scootered it, and it made it a lot more interesting. The last time I had dove the Chaudiere, I thought it was a bit dull. Being able to circle the wreck 3 or 4 times made it a lot more interesting. It was big!

Here is a bit of video of us scootering the Chaudiere.



After the Chaudiere, we were able to dive the famous Skookumchuck Narrows. It was a lot more sedate than I imagined. We ended up seeing a lot of urchins, and surfaced in a beautiful kelp bed. Awesome! We finished off the day with Swede's Reef (scootering) and then Dave and I explored under Kal's dock. We found the box cutter that Kal asked us to find. But I also broke the spring-strap on my fin. I was very surprised that it broke, I thought they were indestructible. The pin was not however. Some stainless steel wire did the trick to fix it though.

The final day we went back to Agamemnon. An awesome dive again. The last and most spectacular dive was a scooter dive of Craggy Crack with Alan. We came across a great octopus out in the open, and the visibility and underwater topography was just stunning. An awesome end to an awesome weekend!