Seven years ago, when I joined ScubaBoard, I identified a few posters whose writings were always to the point, and always useful. One of my favorites was Diver0001, because he has the knack of approaching a problem from a completely different angle than everybody else, and he always made me think. Over time, we exchanged PMs and eventually e-mails, and became what passes, in this electronic age, as personal friends. But my only face-to-face contact with him had been a 45 minute meeting in the airport in Amsterdam.
So, when Rob e-mailed me and told me he was coming to BC for a couple of weeks of vacation, and would we like to come up and meet him and maybe go diving, I was thrilled. The weekend he was free turned out to be two days after we got home from our Mexico cave diving, and the day after our Thanksgiving dinner, so although it was going to be a bit hectic, it was going to work.
But there was a lot to organize. First off, it really doesn't make sense to drag an entire suitcase full of dive gear from the Netherlands to Canada for one weekend of diving. So we sat down to figure out what Rob needed to bring, and what we could provide. This is where standardized equipment is awfully handy -- in the end, what Rob had to bring from Europe to go diving on Vancouver Island was . . . his mask! A Fusion dry suit gave us some flexibility; continuous harnesses allow custom adjustment, and everybody dives Jet fins
A set of double HP100s, and we were good to go. (It's kind of scary that we could so easily completely outfit another diver with stuff we own. The only thing we had to borrow was a can light, and that was only because, between the two of us, we've toasted two batteries in the last six months.)
The next question was where and how we were going to dive. Anybody who has read Rob's posts over the last seven years knows that he is at best rather dubious about DIR diving and DIR divers. So, of course, the first day just HAD to be an outing of the Vancouver Island GUE folks, who had arranged a boat (as it turned out, two boats) to go drift Gabriola Passage, something one can only do when the tides are favorable. For the second day, we had the option of shore diving with the GUE guys, or trying to get out on a boat to Race Rocks, to dive with the sea lions. Rob liked the idea of diving with big animals, so we went with that. Which leads to a funny story, because I was trying to organize this whole trip while I was down cave diving, and when I e-mailed the owner of the Pinnacle dive boat, he almost deleted the message as junk, because he couldn't imagine why this woman was writing to him from MEXICO and wanting to dive in cold water!
One of the final issues was fills, and that was solved when Vancouver Island's GUE instructor, Guy Shockey, volunteered to do them for us. As it turned out, he left work, ran to his house, filled our tanks, and went back to work -- Thank you, Guy! The other was weather, and by the time we got home from MX (at 1 am on Thanksgiving Day) the forecasts were promising, indeed -- no major rain, more importantly no WIND, and maybe even some sunshine!
So Friday midday, we set forth for Canada, with a pickup FULL of dive gear and two little carry-on suitcases with underwear, toothbrushes, computers, cameras and chargers. We installed ourselves in the Buccaneer Inn, which is not the cheapest lodging in Nanaimo, but is so nice that we couldn't resist. The place looks like not much from the street, but inside, it's really lovely, and more importantly, it's right across the street from the dock where the boat was going to pick us up on Saturday morning. Which didn't prevent us from getting completely lost, trying to find it . . . Thank goodness for Google Earth photographs!
We were diving off the Sea Dragon, and it was my first time on this boat. I'm quite sure my reactions are somewhat colored by having absolutely LOVED the boat that used to sail there, the Diver's Choice (which burned) but I had mixed reactions to this one. The dive deck is spacious enough, but the tank supports are quite high, and difficult for this short person to get tanks into. For the guys with doubles, who had to use boards running across the tops of the tank "holes", they were higher yet. The inside space on the boat is not as big as the outside dimension of the cabin make it seems as though it would be, and they do not segregate a dry area for dry storage, which meant dry stuff got damp. They did provide some nice snacks, tons of warm drinks, and hot soup, and our DM, Christine, worked VERY hard to make sure everybody had what he needed. The ladder on this boat is one you can board with your fins on, but lacks good handholds at the top -- I was very glad I was single-tanking it.
The consensus for the first dive was to go do the Saskatchewan, which is a deliberately scuttled wreck lying in fairly deep water, with the deck at about 90 feet. We had done this dive about 5 years ago, but I had heard that there had been significant growth of cloud sponges on it in the meantime, and I was interested to see them. Rob was pleased, because he is a wreck person. So we geared up and splashed into magnificent visibility -- we could see the plumose anemones on the superstructure from just below the surface.
We had decided to do the bow section of the boat, have a look at the bow guns, and peek into one of the cutouts, where it was rumored that an adult yellow-eye rockfish was likely to be found. There was no current at all, and in the clear water, we could see the other teams exploring. Rob proved to be exactly what I expected -- a beautiful diver, quiet, solid, and aware. We moseyed along, taking pictures, and all too soon, the short bottom time that even 32% permits at those depths was over. We worked our way up the superstructure to the base of the buoy, and then rose through the cool, sunlit, green water.
Surface interval included hot tea, hot soup, fresh vegetables, and a big bag of brownies which we had brought (Thanksgiving leftovers). We talked about the second dive, which was the big reason for the charter -- the tides for that day would permit drifting one of the narrow channels north of Nanaimo, which are known for the density and color of the life that covers their walls, fed by the rapid movement of nutrient-rich, cold water. We weren't going to do Dodd's Narrows, which is the one I had done before, because the currents were a little too big for that one, so we were going to do Gabriola Passage. Apparently, the normal dive is to be dropped on the north side of the channel (I think it was at Josef's Point?), but because two of us were carrying cameras, they decided to drop us on the south side, thinking the current would be a bit milder.
Big mistake. It turns out that the topography of that side is a shell rubble bottom, with very little depth contour at all, and no structure whatsoever. The biggest things we saw during the whole dive were clumps of ENORMOUS sea urchins. It was true that there was very little (read essentially no) current, but there was very little to photograph, either. But one of my dear friends, who is airsix on this board, says that you will never do a bad dive, if you look at what's there and not what isn't, so we set busily about making lemonade, and found a few interesting critters. Rob patiently danced attendance on two photographers, who managed to spend over 45 minutes looking at not very much, until we worked our way to where the current was noticeable, and we shot a bag and came up.
One comment I want to make about this day of diving -- I am VERY impressed with the performance of my Thermal Fusion undergarment. I've had it about six months, but I haven't written anything about it, because I keep finding it so hard to believe, how well it works. On this day of diving, I was soaking wet from the groin down on my left leg (p-valve balance chamber malfunction) and it was very clear that I was no colder than my two dry dive buddies. I'm going to have to give up and salute the thing; I don't know HOW it manages to do what it does, but it is very warm, even when wet.
After unloading the boat, we all took off in different directions. Rob, and his friend Dave who was with him, were going to look up a friend in Nanaimo, and Peter and I were going to hit the Guy Shockey fill station in preparation for the next day's diving. My friend Dave Healey, who was on the boat with us in the Red Sea last year, was taking charge of dinner location decisions, and suggested Six Mile Pub, or Four Mile Pub (which is where we ended up having a great dinner). I do find it funny that a country that measures everything in metric (witness Rob, coaching me through adjusting his harness by saying, "I need another ten centimeters here . . .") has pubs that are named in miles. Coordinating Dave, Rob, us, and another internet friend who wanted to join us, all by means of Facebook messages, texts and the occasional phone call, was interesting, but it all worked.
---------- Post added November 26th, 2012 at 10:08 AM ----------
Day two was to start at an equally obscene hour of the morning, which, since we were staying in Victoria and the boat was leaving from a marina about 40 minutes away, involved getting up WAY too early. I stumbled around the Accent Inn room (very pleasant place, btw) trying to find undergarments, batteries and gauges, and Peter remembered to take the camera chip out of my laptop, so I would actually have the opportunity to shoot some pictures. Sometimes husbands ARE useful
Off we went, using Google instructions, in the general direction of the Pedder Bay Marina, where the Pinnacle Charters dive boat departs. Our directions were good, as far as they went, but after the last turn, they told us that the entry into the marina should be 800 m on, and in fact, it's several kilometers. But there was a white pickup truck following us, and Peter pulled over and waved it down, in the not unreasonable expectation that anybody in a pickup truck on the road at 7 am on a cold Sunday morning was probably ALSO going diving, and might know where. A cheery voice said, "Follow us!" and off we went. It turned out that cheery voice belonged to Scott Stevenson, one of the owners of the business, and a warm, friendly, and delightful person. And that was a good thing, because we took one look at the boat and exchanged very worried glances. From a distance, it looked tiny, and reminiscent of the Rockfish Divers boat in Saanich Inlet, which barely has room for two people to squeeze into the heated cabin. As it turned out, the boat is actually pretty near perfect for the purpose it serves. The forward cabin, which I don't think is heated but got very warm in the sun, can easily hold four and probably six, if you're friendly. None of the hardy Canadians huddled in there, but we American (and Dutch) wimps certainly did. The bench space is very adequate and bench height is great -- the only thing I'd mention is that, if you are using a backplate system, you will find the depression for the tanks a bit deep, and I was worried about pinch flats. When I go up there again, I'll take a little piece of 2x4 to put in there, to raise the tank a little.
We were not fast enough loading, as it turned out, to hit the slack Jesse had wanted for our first dive, so we had to settle for second choice, the Great Race. If that is second choice, I REALLY want to see first choice someday . . . This was a small bay on the side of the island with the lighthouse on it, which is apparently somewhat sheltered from current on an ebb. It can't be sheltered all the time, because it is one of the most amazing places I've seen underwater ANYWHERE. It's a fairy garden of boulders, covered in cyclamen-purple coralline algae, and thickly covered with proliferating anemones in pastel shades of pink, lavender and cream.
The rocks shelter lots of small sculpins, and schools of rockfish float placidly above them. A slow and observant diver will be rewarded with fun finds, like the enormous Puget Sound King crab, and his juvenile brethren:
We made this dive last until we were all cold, and surfaced reluctantly. Pickup was quick and efficient, and I found the ladder on the boat was like everything else -- dubious at first glance, but actually quite well engineered.
Diving this area is pretty easy, because everything is fairly close together (and we were lucky, with a day of completely flat water and no wind at all). So we motored over to the proposed second site, and sat until we'd been out of the water long enough to dive again. Sitting in the cabin, with the sun streaming in through the windows, was very comfortable, although I almost stole Darnold999's food, since we had had no breakfast, and had not realized that the boat didn't provide any.
I did not get the name of the second site, but it was a steep slope covered with very large boulders, in an area that was clearly not current-swept. I took one look at the silty, hydroid-covered rocks and thought, "This is nudibranch country!" And so it proved to be -- on the side of one big rock, I counted five different species. Very soon, the water was full of the happy flashes of macro photographers, as we wandered in and out of the boulder field in search of things to record.
During both this dive and the previous one, I was struck by something . . . when you dive with someone with whom you "click", you get the experience of looking over at your buddy, and finding your buddy's looking at you. Quick eye contact, and back to the dive, reassured and comfortable that you are on the same page. Rob's one of those people . . . I felt as though I was diving with someone I had known forever, rather than someone whose first dive with me was the day before. You never know how internet folks will turn out in real life; some people write very well, but their actual skill at whatever they write about falls short of what one might have imagined. This was absolutely not the case here. What a delight, these two days of diving were!
All too soon, we ran out of thermal units, and called the dive. We worked our way up the slope to the anchor, but nobody really wanted to ascend, so we did another little swim around, and finally admitted that, sad as it was, it was time. We did our deco up the anchor line in the kelp, which I love, and as so often happens, the water was full of small jellies, which Peter spent time trying to photograph. Rob hovered quietly among the kelp stalks until it was time to give up and rejoin the land mammals.
Back on land, we had one thing on our minds . . . FOOD! As it turned out, we were not alone, and the entire group of us, crew and guests, repaired to My Chosen Cafe for a very welcome (and more importantly, WARM) lunch. I enjoyed the fact that the crew joined us; the folks who run this boat are honestly nice people, and they will see us again. But of course, my primary focus was talking to Rob, and we spent a good portion of lunch going over Ratio Deco (as much as I understand it) and talking about life, and jobs, and future plans. It was too short; time with quality people always is, but I hope in another five years or so, we'll all end up somewhere together again.
So, when Rob e-mailed me and told me he was coming to BC for a couple of weeks of vacation, and would we like to come up and meet him and maybe go diving, I was thrilled. The weekend he was free turned out to be two days after we got home from our Mexico cave diving, and the day after our Thanksgiving dinner, so although it was going to be a bit hectic, it was going to work.
But there was a lot to organize. First off, it really doesn't make sense to drag an entire suitcase full of dive gear from the Netherlands to Canada for one weekend of diving. So we sat down to figure out what Rob needed to bring, and what we could provide. This is where standardized equipment is awfully handy -- in the end, what Rob had to bring from Europe to go diving on Vancouver Island was . . . his mask! A Fusion dry suit gave us some flexibility; continuous harnesses allow custom adjustment, and everybody dives Jet fins
A set of double HP100s, and we were good to go. (It's kind of scary that we could so easily completely outfit another diver with stuff we own. The only thing we had to borrow was a can light, and that was only because, between the two of us, we've toasted two batteries in the last six months.)The next question was where and how we were going to dive. Anybody who has read Rob's posts over the last seven years knows that he is at best rather dubious about DIR diving and DIR divers. So, of course, the first day just HAD to be an outing of the Vancouver Island GUE folks, who had arranged a boat (as it turned out, two boats) to go drift Gabriola Passage, something one can only do when the tides are favorable. For the second day, we had the option of shore diving with the GUE guys, or trying to get out on a boat to Race Rocks, to dive with the sea lions. Rob liked the idea of diving with big animals, so we went with that. Which leads to a funny story, because I was trying to organize this whole trip while I was down cave diving, and when I e-mailed the owner of the Pinnacle dive boat, he almost deleted the message as junk, because he couldn't imagine why this woman was writing to him from MEXICO and wanting to dive in cold water!
One of the final issues was fills, and that was solved when Vancouver Island's GUE instructor, Guy Shockey, volunteered to do them for us. As it turned out, he left work, ran to his house, filled our tanks, and went back to work -- Thank you, Guy! The other was weather, and by the time we got home from MX (at 1 am on Thanksgiving Day) the forecasts were promising, indeed -- no major rain, more importantly no WIND, and maybe even some sunshine!
So Friday midday, we set forth for Canada, with a pickup FULL of dive gear and two little carry-on suitcases with underwear, toothbrushes, computers, cameras and chargers. We installed ourselves in the Buccaneer Inn, which is not the cheapest lodging in Nanaimo, but is so nice that we couldn't resist. The place looks like not much from the street, but inside, it's really lovely, and more importantly, it's right across the street from the dock where the boat was going to pick us up on Saturday morning. Which didn't prevent us from getting completely lost, trying to find it . . . Thank goodness for Google Earth photographs!
We were diving off the Sea Dragon, and it was my first time on this boat. I'm quite sure my reactions are somewhat colored by having absolutely LOVED the boat that used to sail there, the Diver's Choice (which burned) but I had mixed reactions to this one. The dive deck is spacious enough, but the tank supports are quite high, and difficult for this short person to get tanks into. For the guys with doubles, who had to use boards running across the tops of the tank "holes", they were higher yet. The inside space on the boat is not as big as the outside dimension of the cabin make it seems as though it would be, and they do not segregate a dry area for dry storage, which meant dry stuff got damp. They did provide some nice snacks, tons of warm drinks, and hot soup, and our DM, Christine, worked VERY hard to make sure everybody had what he needed. The ladder on this boat is one you can board with your fins on, but lacks good handholds at the top -- I was very glad I was single-tanking it.
The consensus for the first dive was to go do the Saskatchewan, which is a deliberately scuttled wreck lying in fairly deep water, with the deck at about 90 feet. We had done this dive about 5 years ago, but I had heard that there had been significant growth of cloud sponges on it in the meantime, and I was interested to see them. Rob was pleased, because he is a wreck person. So we geared up and splashed into magnificent visibility -- we could see the plumose anemones on the superstructure from just below the surface.
We had decided to do the bow section of the boat, have a look at the bow guns, and peek into one of the cutouts, where it was rumored that an adult yellow-eye rockfish was likely to be found. There was no current at all, and in the clear water, we could see the other teams exploring. Rob proved to be exactly what I expected -- a beautiful diver, quiet, solid, and aware. We moseyed along, taking pictures, and all too soon, the short bottom time that even 32% permits at those depths was over. We worked our way up the superstructure to the base of the buoy, and then rose through the cool, sunlit, green water.
Surface interval included hot tea, hot soup, fresh vegetables, and a big bag of brownies which we had brought (Thanksgiving leftovers). We talked about the second dive, which was the big reason for the charter -- the tides for that day would permit drifting one of the narrow channels north of Nanaimo, which are known for the density and color of the life that covers their walls, fed by the rapid movement of nutrient-rich, cold water. We weren't going to do Dodd's Narrows, which is the one I had done before, because the currents were a little too big for that one, so we were going to do Gabriola Passage. Apparently, the normal dive is to be dropped on the north side of the channel (I think it was at Josef's Point?), but because two of us were carrying cameras, they decided to drop us on the south side, thinking the current would be a bit milder.
Big mistake. It turns out that the topography of that side is a shell rubble bottom, with very little depth contour at all, and no structure whatsoever. The biggest things we saw during the whole dive were clumps of ENORMOUS sea urchins. It was true that there was very little (read essentially no) current, but there was very little to photograph, either. But one of my dear friends, who is airsix on this board, says that you will never do a bad dive, if you look at what's there and not what isn't, so we set busily about making lemonade, and found a few interesting critters. Rob patiently danced attendance on two photographers, who managed to spend over 45 minutes looking at not very much, until we worked our way to where the current was noticeable, and we shot a bag and came up.
One comment I want to make about this day of diving -- I am VERY impressed with the performance of my Thermal Fusion undergarment. I've had it about six months, but I haven't written anything about it, because I keep finding it so hard to believe, how well it works. On this day of diving, I was soaking wet from the groin down on my left leg (p-valve balance chamber malfunction) and it was very clear that I was no colder than my two dry dive buddies. I'm going to have to give up and salute the thing; I don't know HOW it manages to do what it does, but it is very warm, even when wet.
After unloading the boat, we all took off in different directions. Rob, and his friend Dave who was with him, were going to look up a friend in Nanaimo, and Peter and I were going to hit the Guy Shockey fill station in preparation for the next day's diving. My friend Dave Healey, who was on the boat with us in the Red Sea last year, was taking charge of dinner location decisions, and suggested Six Mile Pub, or Four Mile Pub (which is where we ended up having a great dinner). I do find it funny that a country that measures everything in metric (witness Rob, coaching me through adjusting his harness by saying, "I need another ten centimeters here . . .") has pubs that are named in miles. Coordinating Dave, Rob, us, and another internet friend who wanted to join us, all by means of Facebook messages, texts and the occasional phone call, was interesting, but it all worked.
---------- Post added November 26th, 2012 at 10:08 AM ----------
Day two was to start at an equally obscene hour of the morning, which, since we were staying in Victoria and the boat was leaving from a marina about 40 minutes away, involved getting up WAY too early. I stumbled around the Accent Inn room (very pleasant place, btw) trying to find undergarments, batteries and gauges, and Peter remembered to take the camera chip out of my laptop, so I would actually have the opportunity to shoot some pictures. Sometimes husbands ARE useful
Off we went, using Google instructions, in the general direction of the Pedder Bay Marina, where the Pinnacle Charters dive boat departs. Our directions were good, as far as they went, but after the last turn, they told us that the entry into the marina should be 800 m on, and in fact, it's several kilometers. But there was a white pickup truck following us, and Peter pulled over and waved it down, in the not unreasonable expectation that anybody in a pickup truck on the road at 7 am on a cold Sunday morning was probably ALSO going diving, and might know where. A cheery voice said, "Follow us!" and off we went. It turned out that cheery voice belonged to Scott Stevenson, one of the owners of the business, and a warm, friendly, and delightful person. And that was a good thing, because we took one look at the boat and exchanged very worried glances. From a distance, it looked tiny, and reminiscent of the Rockfish Divers boat in Saanich Inlet, which barely has room for two people to squeeze into the heated cabin. As it turned out, the boat is actually pretty near perfect for the purpose it serves. The forward cabin, which I don't think is heated but got very warm in the sun, can easily hold four and probably six, if you're friendly. None of the hardy Canadians huddled in there, but we American (and Dutch) wimps certainly did. The bench space is very adequate and bench height is great -- the only thing I'd mention is that, if you are using a backplate system, you will find the depression for the tanks a bit deep, and I was worried about pinch flats. When I go up there again, I'll take a little piece of 2x4 to put in there, to raise the tank a little.
We were not fast enough loading, as it turned out, to hit the slack Jesse had wanted for our first dive, so we had to settle for second choice, the Great Race. If that is second choice, I REALLY want to see first choice someday . . . This was a small bay on the side of the island with the lighthouse on it, which is apparently somewhat sheltered from current on an ebb. It can't be sheltered all the time, because it is one of the most amazing places I've seen underwater ANYWHERE. It's a fairy garden of boulders, covered in cyclamen-purple coralline algae, and thickly covered with proliferating anemones in pastel shades of pink, lavender and cream.
The rocks shelter lots of small sculpins, and schools of rockfish float placidly above them. A slow and observant diver will be rewarded with fun finds, like the enormous Puget Sound King crab, and his juvenile brethren:
We made this dive last until we were all cold, and surfaced reluctantly. Pickup was quick and efficient, and I found the ladder on the boat was like everything else -- dubious at first glance, but actually quite well engineered.
Diving this area is pretty easy, because everything is fairly close together (and we were lucky, with a day of completely flat water and no wind at all). So we motored over to the proposed second site, and sat until we'd been out of the water long enough to dive again. Sitting in the cabin, with the sun streaming in through the windows, was very comfortable, although I almost stole Darnold999's food, since we had had no breakfast, and had not realized that the boat didn't provide any.
I did not get the name of the second site, but it was a steep slope covered with very large boulders, in an area that was clearly not current-swept. I took one look at the silty, hydroid-covered rocks and thought, "This is nudibranch country!" And so it proved to be -- on the side of one big rock, I counted five different species. Very soon, the water was full of the happy flashes of macro photographers, as we wandered in and out of the boulder field in search of things to record.
During both this dive and the previous one, I was struck by something . . . when you dive with someone with whom you "click", you get the experience of looking over at your buddy, and finding your buddy's looking at you. Quick eye contact, and back to the dive, reassured and comfortable that you are on the same page. Rob's one of those people . . . I felt as though I was diving with someone I had known forever, rather than someone whose first dive with me was the day before. You never know how internet folks will turn out in real life; some people write very well, but their actual skill at whatever they write about falls short of what one might have imagined. This was absolutely not the case here. What a delight, these two days of diving were!
All too soon, we ran out of thermal units, and called the dive. We worked our way up the slope to the anchor, but nobody really wanted to ascend, so we did another little swim around, and finally admitted that, sad as it was, it was time. We did our deco up the anchor line in the kelp, which I love, and as so often happens, the water was full of small jellies, which Peter spent time trying to photograph. Rob hovered quietly among the kelp stalks until it was time to give up and rejoin the land mammals.
Back on land, we had one thing on our minds . . . FOOD! As it turned out, we were not alone, and the entire group of us, crew and guests, repaired to My Chosen Cafe for a very welcome (and more importantly, WARM) lunch. I enjoyed the fact that the crew joined us; the folks who run this boat are honestly nice people, and they will see us again. But of course, my primary focus was talking to Rob, and we spent a good portion of lunch going over Ratio Deco (as much as I understand it) and talking about life, and jobs, and future plans. It was too short; time with quality people always is, but I hope in another five years or so, we'll all end up somewhere together again.
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