Time For Fundies

[lamont]

Also the other thing is that yes, definitely divers get burned out on doing drills and skills and practicing for fundies for the purpose of practicing for fundies.

Everyone needs a recharge.

But that is up to the diver's themselves to figure out for themselves.

Definitely, after getting fed up with dive after dive in cove 2, I went off with a buddy we found a site we knew nothing about other than it had beach access and we planned a dive there based on current predictions (and nailed it perfectly so the eel grass shifted on the way back). Lovely experience to be independent of any dive site or any knowledge other than some idea of what the currents are going to do there, and something I hope all the fundies students go off and do perfectly safely after we've given them all the tools they need.

But its up to the individual diver to judge what they need, and telling them that they're less of a diver because of how they're practicing is just making a jerk of yourself online. I know that hearing that when I was in the process of building up to overdosing on skills in cove 2 wasn't actually useful at *all* to me, it just comes off as condescending. And yes, I hit that wall eventually and went off and did other dives.

People need to really shut up about newer divers practicing in cove 2. That's a good thing, and being critical of that just makes the critic feel more superior. It isn't helping anyone out.

 

[DiverLaura]

As students and mentors and instructors of all ilk, we are supremely lucky to have a place like 'the coves' (1, 2, and 3) Where else can you take a newer diver out basically ANY time of day or night, be party to Giant Octopus hatches, make friends with a Seal pup, be bombarded by ratfish, accosted by mating market squid, have a Giant Octo encounter where like the mouse and the lion, it lets you remove a bobber from its arm (i HAVE dove some pretty cool wrecks and other sites, and that encounter is STILL one of my favorite moments diving) see all sorts of random "different" marine life (the red brotula comes to mind), just a short scooter away to cove 1 see the MONSTER octo under the Monomyth, look up from the bottom of the i-beams at 100' and see the ripples on the surface though giant balls of sandlances and herring, watch SALMON hunting the herring balls, do shore to shore dives to cove 3 and get out on the other side of the parking lot.... need i go on?!

all of this is coming from someone (me) who before 5 years ago had done all of 2 maybe 3 dives in "the coves" (and thousands in the rest of the sound). I mocked them myself, i laughed at people who I called the "cove 2 commandos", i laughed at the people who skilled and drilled their brains out...

and then i took a second look, and i started to 'see' the coves for the wonderful gift they really are.

They are a fabulous, dynamic dive site that changes with the seasons, having probably one of the best surface views of ANY urban dive site after a night dive... They have a wonderful crab and fish house that lets the local divers debrief from morning till closing... the powers that be have let the community put in an AED... Metro has put in showers....

i mean really... how many divers have what we have? and yet here we are on scubaboard dissing it like its the stupidest place to dive?! seriously! get a grip!

its a nice dive, its a great place to practice.. get over it!

 

[TSandM]

Laura, I think we'd dis any dive site, if it turned out to be the only place a group of people dove. The idea is to make sure that folks who are learning these skills get out and do the dives that the skills fit them to do . . . whether that's the deep tour of the cove to go octo hunting, or the Dungeness Crane, or Davidson Rock. I know Richard's goal is to encourage divers to get out and see the less frequently dived places in the Sound, and he goes out of his way to make that possible, by setting up dates and taking people out on his boat. Sometimes he may sound grinchy, but that's just Richard. His goal really is a good one, and his picking on me really helped me get out of Cove 2 as a habit, and make the effort to go do some other dives.

 

[DiverLaura]

and right now we are talking pre-fundies students some with a whoppin' 20 or so dives, so i see nothing wrong with cove 2, or the junkyard (as they learn current planning), or the Leschi wall at some point... As they progress we lure them to other sites... but as Lamont has stated, with regards to a Weekly practice dive, the people have voted with their feet...

 

[VooDooGasMan]

kaizer, take the class, meet the new horizon in your scuba adventure. Yet go dive most all shore dives, then do a bunch of boat dives and your there. Every dive site is different and the location has the currents and tides all different. You will see that diving at slack, octos and wolfeels are in there dens, while diving during and exchange they are out and waiting for food to come buy. Don't always dive at slack, learn how to dive any time of the day and you will see so much more than the average diver, it will exceed the fundies, but the memories will last a lifetime.



Happy diving

 

[DiverLaura]

LOL! nice one voodoo

 

[aquaregia]

One day I want to make it up there and get a feel for the whole tide and current planning thing. Sounds fun.

 

[DiverLaura]

I'll give a current planning workshop...

dives will be:

shore to shore agate passage
Agate pass bridge on slack
fox island bridge on slack
if you have CUDA's or better the "around" Alki Point shore to shore.

for the advance current planning workshop:

Tacoma Narrows from shore
some of the San Juan sites
Deception Pass
and the Diamond Knot shipwreck (from a boat unless y'all are totally whacked)


for each site you will plan plankton reversal times...

for the dives utilizing current as transportation to and from the site, figure set and drift along with current speed in 5 min intervals.


In their defense, i actually DID take some of the current fundies students out to the Junkyard at NOT slack a couple times, and made them swim around and feel what its like to miss the slack, and how to deal with it without CO2'ing out or getting too stressed out, AKA despite all this stuff about diving pretty, sometimes pretending to be a flounder while your nutball buddy is vidoeing baby wolf eels as you're getting whipped in the current is a good way to conserve energy

 

[lamont]

Laura, I think we'd dis any dive site, if it turned out to be the only place a group of people dove.

And it isn't your place to do that (even if it is true).

Let people figure it out for themselves.

And if you want to, be positive instead of being negative, and setup dives at other sites.

 

[Scott L]

Time for another Kumbaya session by Joan...