Dissapointing day of (not) diving

[Malpaso]

Brought the latest class up to Cape Ann for their checkout dives this morning, and it just wasn't meant to be. We all met up at the BK on 128 and started seeing a lot of vehicles with bicycles on them. Lead instructor says, "Oh no, is today the races at Stage Fort Park?" Someone checked on their smart phone and sure enough. Okay, that's one site out. next stop, Pebble Beach. Three foot breakers coming in hard. Strike two. Third stop, small cove I'd never been to. Waves weren't too bad, but you could tell the vis would have been close to nothing.

Students were all pretty bummed. One FF had to switch shifts, one couple drove up from CT. Not a real choice in it, safety was the primary concern, and realistically, they couldn't have done any skills in those conditions.

Try again tomorrow. About half the students and instructors were staying overnight anyway. Maybe make it home for the 8:00 PM football game

 

[lowviz]

Sad fact of NE life. As a generalization, the further offshore, the better the viz.

 

[Malpaso]

Sad fact of NE life. As a generalization, the further offshore, the better the viz.

Great point. Trying to at least get some learning points out of the day, the lead instructor mentioned that same thing. He was explaining wind, waves, fetch, etc. He told them it would have probably been a better day to boat dive than shore dive. No way to do checkout dives off a boat, and we didn't have a boat anyway

 

[spectrum]

Kudos for holding them back. I have seen too many "whatever it takes" efforts made in the name of meaningful training. You also provided an important lesson in making those hard choices.

Pete

 

[lowviz]

C'mon down to the Joan III. Inshore, intact, upright, shallow!

(crappy viz and cold, but that doesn't help make my point much...)

 

[RHarhen]

Too Bad. Friday morning had about 25ft of visibility on the north coast of Cape Ann

 

[large_diver]

Yeah, we were booked on a Cape Ann Divers charter on Saturday...cancelled. Silver lining was a breakfast at Lee's in Gloucester...great breakfast place.

 

[Malpaso]

Got it done today, students were real troopers. Went to Niles Beach, and the conditions were great, relatively so. Water was calm, but vis was under 10'. This was definitely one of our better groups of students, so that made a huge difference. That and the student instructor ratio was 2:1.

 

[lowviz]

-see if you can nudge one of them towards becoming a local diver...

 

[Malpaso]

-see if you can nudge one of them towards becoming a local diver...

I know what you mean. They're all enthused about more diving right after the checkouts, but I don't know where they go after that. I'm the newest diver that does anything with our LDS.