A buddy and I headed up to Vancouver this week-end. We dived Whytecliffe Park on Saturday, and worked on the HMCS Annapolis ... a 365-foot destroyer being prepared for sinking as an artificial reef ... on Sunday.
We drove up Saturday morning, getting to Whytecliffe around 10:30. It was a hot, sunny day and the park was packed ... and I mean PACKED ... with divers. Every dive shop in western Canada must've been there ... I've never seen a place so crammed with divers in the PNW before. But the funny thing is, they were all inside the cove.
We geared up and headed off for the lighthouse. After about a 10-minute surface swim, we were there. I went to switch on my light and ... nothing ... I'd forgotten to plug in the battery. Seein's how we were planning to head down to 120 or so, I decided to kick back toward the rocks to a place where I could stand up, unclip my light, and plug it in. Having done that. we headed back out toward the lighthouse ... another few minutes worth of surface swimming. Along the way, as we were passing this big rock, I got this feeling like I was being watched. Looking up ... sure enough ... I was ...
Finally, we descended. The thermocline was astonishing ... a 20-degree temperature difference between the first 10 feet (66 degrees) and below about 50 feet (46 degrees). There was also an interesting halocline, giving the water that "Italian salad dressing" look to it. Almost immediately after dropping down I found a giant dendronotid nudi ...
... and then we found three more of them. Rich and I spent a few minutes taking pictures. Then we moved on down the wall. At about 90 fsw, the cloud sponges started showing up. At 120 fsw, they started getting interesting ...
... someday I gotta get up there with trimix and deco bottles and see what they look like at 200 fsw. The wall has a "siren call" that you really have to watch out for ... it's really tempting to go too deep here, because the deeper you go the better it gets. After a few minutes, we started our ascent up the wall ... spending a LOT of time at between 50 and 30 feet, just poking around the cracks and crevices ... looking for the little things ...
Eventually we headed back into the cove ... surfacing after a 74 minute dive into that same massive crowd of student divers we had swam through on the way out. Amazingly, out on the wall we didn't see a single 'nother diver.
After a nice, two-hour surface interval we started gearing up for our second dive. While we were gearing up, a group of Japanese folks came over and asked if they could have our table when we left. I said sure, and (imagine this) started talking to them. They wanted to know what we saw down there, so I pulled out my camera (which was in my gear tub) and showed them. Then I laid the camera down on the table while I finished gearing up. Big mistake. We got in the water and surface swam out to where we were gonna start the dive. On the descent, I went to turn on my camera and ... nothing. I tried it a coupla more times, and got pretty much nothing (a funny green diagonal stripe ... that was it). Turning the camera over I saw what looked like two giant water droplets on the lens. I signaled for Rich to ascend and we surface swam back to shore ... where I got out of the water and opened up my camera to discover ... it wasn't wet. Pulling the camera out of the housing, I discovered that what looked like water was, in fact, melted plastic. The macro lens attachment on my camera had ... when I laid it on the table in the sun for a few moments ... focused the sunlight down like a magnifying glass onto the retracting lens cover on my camera and melted it. I was able to make it work ... but the retracting cover would only partially retract. Putting it back together as best I could, I waded back out to Rich and we went for the dive. I probably shouldn't have. During the dive I noticed I'd gotten water droplets inside the housing, despite being careful ... and it was so distracting it took my mind completely out of the dive. About 40 minutes into the dive I was so focused on the problems with my camera that I managed to lose my dive buddy ... something that just shouldn't happen to someone with my experience. I surfaced to find Rich talking to a couple people standing up on the rocks. At that point I decided my head wasn't in it, and we should just surface swim back to the beach.
Somehow, I did manage to get a couple pics on that dive ... this was the only decent one ...
Sunday on the Annapolis, my "lucky" streak continued when I accidentally went down a hatch ass-first ... and ended up dangling above a metal deck by an arm and a leg, both of which sustained some hefty scrapes and bruises.
When I got home, I tried to repair my camera ... only to (I think) make it worse. With a trip coming up next week I didn't want to be without a camera ... so I went down to Best Buy and bought another G10. Figured with the investment I have in this housing, it's probably not a bad idea to buy a spare anyway. So tomorrow my original one's heading off to Illinois for repair. Hopefully by the time the trip comes along my body will be repaired as well.
It was an interesting week-end ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
