Saturday we were supposed to do the first dive of the season from my buddy Earl's boat on the wreck of the Heroine, but faced with a less than ideal marine forecast we scrubbed the trip.
Still, none of us wished to run the risk of drying out or depleting our residual nitrogen reserves by missing a weekend of diving so we fell back to a good old fashioned shore dive.
I noticed we had a favorable slack tide to dive the big Rock off the DEM Fisheries pier at Bull Pt in the East Passage of Narragansett Bay. Better still, it was a slack low tide which makes the giant stride entry off of the pier a blast, so I talked Matt and Brian into doing it.
I find that low tide giant stride entry so fun that I tried to convince my buddies to climb back up on to the pier to do it again but they declined so instead we made our long surface swim out to the rock.
We descended and swam to the north along the wall in the East Passage at between 40 and 60ft. Vis was fairly decent, and the water was up to 48 at depth. We saw a good sized sea raven and some nudibranchs along with a lot of the usual suspects.
At the northern end of our run we ran into a downdraft of more dense colder water spilling down the wall and mixing with the warmer water below. You could even see the two water masses mixing. Pretty cool. Running out of time with the slack tide we turned back to our exit in a now very slight current and made our ascent.
Unfortunately, I had loaned Brian another heavier undergarment for his drysuit after he'd been shivering our last time out, but he didn't add enough weight to offset it so by the end of the dive he was a bit floaty and not enjoying himself much.
Upon returning to the surface we made the long swim back to the pier and hauled ourselves up the ladder and back onto the pier, which is a pretty good climb at low tide in full gear.
Great dive, but I think I made all my buddies pretty sore with all the swimming and climbing. Oh well, it was good for them. Still, I wish we had done the giant stride a few more times, that never gets old!
Still, none of us wished to run the risk of drying out or depleting our residual nitrogen reserves by missing a weekend of diving so we fell back to a good old fashioned shore dive.
I noticed we had a favorable slack tide to dive the big Rock off the DEM Fisheries pier at Bull Pt in the East Passage of Narragansett Bay. Better still, it was a slack low tide which makes the giant stride entry off of the pier a blast, so I talked Matt and Brian into doing it.
I find that low tide giant stride entry so fun that I tried to convince my buddies to climb back up on to the pier to do it again but they declined so instead we made our long surface swim out to the rock.
We descended and swam to the north along the wall in the East Passage at between 40 and 60ft. Vis was fairly decent, and the water was up to 48 at depth. We saw a good sized sea raven and some nudibranchs along with a lot of the usual suspects.
At the northern end of our run we ran into a downdraft of more dense colder water spilling down the wall and mixing with the warmer water below. You could even see the two water masses mixing. Pretty cool. Running out of time with the slack tide we turned back to our exit in a now very slight current and made our ascent.
Unfortunately, I had loaned Brian another heavier undergarment for his drysuit after he'd been shivering our last time out, but he didn't add enough weight to offset it so by the end of the dive he was a bit floaty and not enjoying himself much.
Upon returning to the surface we made the long swim back to the pier and hauled ourselves up the ladder and back onto the pier, which is a pretty good climb at low tide in full gear.
Great dive, but I think I made all my buddies pretty sore with all the swimming and climbing. Oh well, it was good for them. Still, I wish we had done the giant stride a few more times, that never gets old!
Got to get in shape for summer.
