Dive Reports (7/20/05): Beavertail and Bull Pt., RI

[RIOceanographer]

Last night mstudley and I did a pair of after work dives. Dive 1 was at Beavertail Point, Parking lot 2. We wanted to hit Parking lot 4 and the marine forecast looked perfect for it, but when we got there we found that there were a lot of big ocean swells rolling in, which would have made the entry and exit on the rocks hazardous anywhere on the east side of the point. So we switched to Parking lot 2, which is on the west side and was sheltered from the swells.

Unfortunately, due to the swells and surge stirring everything up the visibility was practically non-existent, so we ended the dive after 27 minutes. Water temps were up to 66 degress at 33 ft.

For our second dive we decided to head up to Bull Pt since it was approaching slack tide to see if we could find some better conditions. We did a giant stride off the DEM pier and went south around the point along the wall, exiting in the left cove at Ft. Wetherill. This site was much better, we had around 15 ft visibility. The temperature below the thermocline was 61 degrees.

In summary:
Beavertail conditions= :frown:
Bull Pt. conditions=

 

[Tampico_ED]

Hi,

Where is Bull PT.? What time did you start your dives...

A friendly neighbor!

 

[RIOceanographer]

Hi,

Where is Bull PT.? What time did you start your dives...

A friendly neighbor!

Bull Point is directly next to Ft. Wetherill in Jamestown, RI. If you were driving to Ft. Wetherill you would drive past the entrance to the Ft. Wetherill Parking lot and keep going to the end of the road. This will land you in another parking lot at the RI DEM Fisheries facility. From here you can walk out onto the DEM pier and do a gaint stride entry, or if you face west toward Ft. Wetherill there is a small path down to a cobble beach you can enter from. You can dive around the point from the pier to the cobble beach. There is a rock wall here that goes from between around 40 ft to over 100 ft (below around 80 ft there isn't much to see). The rocks are covered in anemones.

The other dive here is if you enter at the Pier there is a very large rock (basically more of an island) straight off the pier as you face Newport. If you head outside that rock there are some awesome rock formations down to around 60-70ft. It gets much deeper if you get too far out, but there is no point in going that deep at this site.

When the tide is running this site can have a raging current (2+ kts) so you either need to dive it at slack tide or plan it as a drift dive. Due to the possible depth and the potential for high current it is definitely an advanced dive.

We started at Beavertail around 6pm and did Bull Point at about 730pm.

 

[mstudley]

[...] on the west side and was sheltered from the swells.

Until we tried to exit that is. It was strange because when we entered the water the conditions were just fine and 27 minutes later the swells seemed to have moved around the point and were building up as we exited. The forecast didn't call for any of this. Weird...