Where did I go with my force fins?

[Blair Mott]

Soakedlontra,
A slice of time travel through your videos, music and text is a start. Congrats on having your text printed on page 14 of the current issue of Northwest Dive News Volume 14 issue 9 A great magazine and always a good read.

Way to go Sam! The photos for the story fit very well - topside and at depth is a great combo.

 

[sambolino44]

Thanks, but there's an error in the photo credit. Betty took the photo of the orange sea pen and the striped nudibranch; I just held the light. Check out that great lighting, though, would ya?

We never found out what was going on with that slug hanging off the sea pen. Maybe the nudibranch started munching on it while it was retracted under the surface, and then it sprang out in an effort to shake it off. It didn't really move while we were watching.

 

[Blair Mott]

Sam,
Great lighting!, But you did take the photo of Betty swimming?, as I said great lighting! Good thought on the Sea Pen you have again sparked my curiosity to find the answer. Thanks again for sharing your adventures.

 

[dk2943]

At the end of October, I will be taking my ForceFin Pros on a cruise to the southern Caribbean. I plan on diving in Dominca and St. Kitts. The cruise is also going to Samana in the DR, Antigua, Tortola and Barbados, but haven't got great reports of diving in those places.

 

[TN Traveler]

You might want to reconsider - both Antigua and Barbados have some excellent diving - better than St Kitts, in my opinion!

 

[Blair Mott]

dk2943,
Have a great trip. It sure sounds like you will be making the most of every port of call. I have never been there, but our good friend and Force Fin supporter John Chatterton has co operates Pirates Cove Dive Center in Samana and the diving sounds and looks great, especially if you like wreck diving.

 

[Soakedlontra]

Nitrox deep dive in the steep underwater moon called Glendale:


[vimeo]15551791[/vimeo]​

(I battled the sound editing with Adobe Premier Pro until I screwed up something and I could not figure out how to fix the mess anymore. Eventually I gave up and finished to edit the video with Windows Movie Maker and the result is certainly not a winner by any means but another learning experience)

 

[sambolino44]

I'm always torn between wanting to interact with, or at least just look at, these neat animals, but can't help feeling guilty when we make them squirt ink because that means they're fearing for their life. At least we don't kill them and eat their flesh.

And who knows? Maybe somebody will see how neat they are from one of our videos and have second thoughts about eating them.

 

[Soakedlontra]

Antilon Lake is not a particularly spectacular lake. It's near the busy city of Chelan. It was dammed in the 1910s and its water is used for irrigation purposes. By late summer the visibility at the lake was quite poor. Its shore is dotted with campsites and a dirt road allows four wheelers, dirt bikes and other kinds of vehicles to roam close to the water. Despite the fact that there are toilets available near some campsites a certain number of campers defecate in the bushes without digging holes into the ground on the lake shore.

Even with the pollution created by human faces and the motorized vehicles wildlife was thriving at the lake ('For how long?' I kept wondering). I watched a couple of ospreys teaching their young either how to fly or hunt (I could not figure out which one it was), families of different species of waterfowl were sharing the lake bounty of algae and water plants, heard frogs croaking, saw for the first time beautiful birds such waxwings.

While I was observing the osprey's nest and young lying on a rock I dozed off. Miraculously all the four wheelers, pick ups and dirt bikes were gone and Nature was able to take over the lake again for a while. After a short period of time I opened my eyes...A fox was looking straight into my eyes. That magical moment lasted for few seconds. The puzzled animal was hesitantly standing few feet away from me. It was my first time that I saw a fox in WA.

At Antilon Lake I saw my first rattlesnake too. I camped close by one! For the first time I saved the life of a rattlesnake! When I arrived at the lake two young couples were camping near the shore. One guy was holding a stick. He was getting ready to strike it on its head. The snake was trying to escape into the bushes...I begged him to spare its life. He and everybody else in his party looked at me as if I was totally crazy. Eventually he dropped the stick onto the ground and let the snake go.


[vimeo]15813611[/vimeo]​

 

[Soakedlontra]

What do you do when you live on Whidbey Island and want to dive other dive sites than the ones close home but cannot afford to drive to distant places or pay for long expensive ferry trips and you yearn for affordable funky coffee shops and it's Halloween?

:reaper: :devil3:

Catch the least expensive ferry and drive the least amount of time to reach those sites by going diving and camping at Port Townsend!

My buddy and I got there on Friday evening, October 29, the day with best weather and water conditions. On Saturday the south-east wind began to blow making the entry near Hudson Point in the downtown a bit problematic. Sam did not want to go in, I would not have minded giving it a try. After talking about it for a short while we decided to look for an alternative site.

A dive Master called Terry from Admiralty Dive Center told us about another dive site that was protected by the SE wind: North Beach. We had never heard of it before. North Beach is a county park that borders with Fort Worden State Park located just few miles north-west from Port Townsend.

There we did a long shallow dive among beds of surf grass and kelp. Surely the vegetation was pretty luxuriant. The rocks were all covered with pink coralline algae. It was a different marine environment from the usual that we see on Whidbey Island. Marine animals were more difficult to see because of the thick canopy of seaweeds. I was able to spot the rear of a red Irish lord and a deep orange/red with yellow spots kelp greenling while schools of tubesnouts were swimming around us. The bottom does not get deeper than 25 ft but to reach that depth we would have to swim a lot further out than we did. After the dive we took refuge from the inclement weather in a cozy and tasteful underground coffee shop called Undertown, where a band was playing acoustic live music.

On Sunday the wind calmed down and we tried to dive at the barge not far away from Point Hudson, but the current was not very favorable and I did not want to have to take pictures with the extra hassle of dealing with it at 60 feet. So we did another long dive in the shallows closer to shore negatively buoyant because the current was moving there too.

While I was busy taking pictures and looking the other way a large sunflower sea star decided to check out one of my fins and began to crawl on it. When I was ready to move somewhere else I suddenly felt that the fin was as heavy as hell. I turned my head and I saw a glimpse of the star's arms. After my buddy took some pictures it fell off and I was free to swim again without feeling the drag of the sea star.

We certainly had a thorough look at the bottom there. Despite the shallow depth there is always something to see, especially invertebrates like nudibranchs and big Lewis’s moon snails.

(I have never seen a moon snail burying itself in the sand before)

At the end of the dive my undergarment was so wet that we decided to look for a laundromat to dry it with a dryer. At another nice coffee shop my buddy asked a local where we could find one. He suggested we go to Carol's laundromat near the boat yard. It was a funny little place with an exhibition of framed yearly first-found socks, a notice board where customers could write quotes and issues of National Geographic to read.

After this break we went back to North Beach to use up the air left in out tanks and swim over that sea of surf grass once more. I was hoping to take some good pictures of the shrimps that were hiding among the kelp blades but I underestimated how tricky that was. They kept jumping around from one blade to the next like underwater butterflies, vanishing from sight entirely every time my strobe light would fire.

By the time we were out of the water it was getting dark and we had to rush to the ferry terminal to get on the line reserved for drivers without a reservation. I was even more soaked than after the previous dive. My feet felt as if they had dived inside wet boots. My left one was totally numb. We had enough time to walk to downtown Port Townsend to look at some Halloween costumes on the way to another friendly coffee shop called Better Living Through Coffee, with a view on the water where I had a hot homemade spicy chai tea that warmed up my extremities.​