Thursday, November 14, 2013

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.

 



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