End of a beautiful era

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Captain Tim recommended God's Pocket for our next trip. Mike Lever bought an island where he will rent a house and entire island for a shore based operation with the Inde as the dive boat. It will be at least a year before that dream comes true. Merry and I began planning our next trip to B.C. before we got off the Swell.

---------- Post added September 29th, 2014 at 11:06 PM ----------

The Swell is still up and running under a different company, but not for diving. I'm not sure how much the previous dive trips cost, but the new prices aren't cheap: $6700 for 8 nights.
The October 19th trip is $1495 for a double stateroom and $1895 for a single or a suite. A five day trip to the Sunshine Coast on November 16th is $799-999. A seven day Campbell River trip on November 3rd is $1495-1695. The new company takes over the boat on December 1st. The deal doesn't include the Inde nor the compressor.

---------- Post added September 29th, 2014 at 11:25 PM ----------

For the record, the water temps weren't much colder than Palos Verdes. We even had 51° on one dive. The coldest was 46°, which is only two degrees colder than we experienced at home this year.
 
For the record, the water temps weren't much colder than Palos Verdes. We even had 51° on one dive. The coldest was 46°, which is only two degrees colder than we experienced at home this year.

For the record, Phil, this old geezer thinks that is cold! I've only hit 46 F once on my dives here off Catalina (even at depths of 200 fsw where the temperature never dropped below 50 F). The camera shake in my video footage would be akin to the Big One hitting SoCal if I were wearing my "holy" wetsuit!
 
We did have a guy from Austin, Texas wearing a wetsuit. The rest of us were normal North Americans in drysuits. :)
Even then, 46° felt a tad chilly after 50 minutes. I think our longest dive was 53 minutes. Sometimes we didn't notice the temps because there was so much to see right in front of us. Some of the wall dives would take us years to fully explore. It took 50 minutes just to look over a small area.
 
A sure sign of a world class dive site.

Sent from my SGH-T989D using Tapatalk
 
I'm fortunate to dive in an invertebrate and rockfish filled environment every weekend, yet the PNW impressed me more than anywhere I have ever dived. B.C. residents are some of the luckiest divers in the world.
 
Here's the new company: Maple Leaf Adventures - Schedules and Pricing
I guess there is a bigger pool of non-divers willing to pay prices like that.

It is indeed a sad state of affairs when boat operators can charge more for sight seeing than diving! Not only charge more, but not have to worry about filling cylinders, running a dive skiff, and worrying about divers not coming up or drifting away!
 
Gorgeous photos and great trip report, Max!

I'm very bummed, though. I'm local, but a new diver and never even heard of this ship. Looking at the website, this would have been perfect -- and they have single cabins at good prices. But I can't quite squeeze one of their last trips into my work schedule. :depressed:
 
I'm holding my breath for the opening of their land based operation. They purchased Cates Island and will use the Inde as the dive boat there. I don't know what the cost will be, but renting the island and house among six people and diving the Sunshine Coast for a week sounds wonderful to me. I can't wait.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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