Yesterday, I taught the first day of a PSAI Level 1 freediving course in Alexandria Bay, NY. Freediving usually requires a lot of water time, so I prefer doing classes in warmer water rather than the mid to upper 60's
we have here in the 1000 Islands this last week of September.
I've been wearing my 3mm wetsuit despite the cooler temperatures knowing I had this course coming up. I prefer thinner, lighter suits when freediving and I didn't want to wear a 5mm wetsuit or a drysuit and get spoiled only to have a miserable two days feeling the chill.
All I wanted to do was go back to my place after a day in the water, make some Stouffer's French Bread Pizza in the oven, crawl under the covers, and turn on Turner Classic Movies. Instead, one of my wreck penetration students had returned to the river to dive and invited me out to dinner with him and his wife. I'm glad I went. I enjoyed meeting my friend's wife and we had a nice time. Just as I was leaving the restaurant, I received a text from a dive shop owner who was running a night dive and suggested I stop by to say hello. I figured I should because I had been working at the shop earlier in the season before I felt the need to just go back to being, more or less, and independent instructor. I want to keep a good relationship with all my friends who own dive shops on both sides of the border in the USA and Canada and help them out with tech, cave and freediving courses and instructor development when needed.
Anyway, I went by for some face time with the gang only to discover the dive pros were in the process illuminating a 125 foot long shipwreck with special effects causing it to glow a ghostly and eerie green 25 to 50 feet below. The last thing I wanted to do was get in the water again. The air temperature was 54°F and little bit breezy. The water temperature had been something like 67°F or 68°F. But, I cowboyed up and made myself don my wet 3mm O'Neill that had been chilling nicely in the open bed of my pickup truck. I slipped into my long blade Picasso Black Team fins and entered the nocturnal water in front of Boldt Castle just after a walking ghost tour had been hearing about the 2 or 3 local ghosts people supposedly captured through photography. One of the DM's who is a tech student of mine handed me a Halcyon backup light so I wouldn't run into any hazards while freediving.
I watched them go about the business of decorating the Islander wreck, turning the popular entry level shore dive into the stuff of fantasy. The dive pros were also smart enough to highlight some hazardous pilings and such that jutted toward the surface and could have caused injury -- especially to me. After an hour or so, the pro staff was done and the wreck was a living wraith, like the sister ship of the Flying Dutchman rising from the depths crewed by goblins, ghosts, and ghouls. I gave the light back to the DM and spent a long while freediving with the faint spooky haze to show me the way. As I ventured closer, the wreck became more inviting like the galaxy dive at Ginnie Springs meeting a fireworks display. It was like clubbing in NYC with bass, pumpkinseeds, and other fish. Disney would love this! I'm not liberty to disclose the tricks they used to create this amazing dive site. The shop owner wants to keep it proprietary and something you can only experience at St. Lawrence Scuba Co., for now. But, it was fantastic! In 37 years of diving, it was probably one of the top coolest underwater attractions and probably the best freediving of my life.
Totally worth the chattering teeth. Only my core temperature screamed after spending so much of the day in the cool, yet freaking cool water.
What was worth freezing your butt off to see?
