This past weekend was packed with fun, friends and food. It was originally supposed to be my Drift weekend but due to some uncontrollable events the training dives were moved. Now Shannon being her usual amazing self emailed my class to let us know that the gear was already set aside for us so we were invited to take the gear for the weekend and go for a fun dive. So after a quick email to a few of my favourite dive buddies it was discovered that Ocean Quest Diving along with a few other local shops and equipment suppliers were working with Whites Diving to put on a demo day to try out some of their new suits. At the same time Chloe Boone was in the midst of organizing an evening at Porteau Cove to celebrate with Ryder Heim who was recently accepted into the RCMP and is leaving this week.
So a quick call to Greg at Ocean Quest confirmed my plan to attend the demo and pay my $10 fee. Another call to Chloe confirmed my intention to join her and Ryder, and any other divers interested, up at Porteau for the night of diving. Then finally a few Blackberry messenger messages and a few emails to some of my dive friends and before I knew it, Saturday nights dives were planned and Sundays Demo was booked, and partners were lined up for both.
Saturday arrived before I knew it, a quick trip to Ocean Pro was needed to pick up my tanks and the gear I was borrowing for the weekend and confirm times with Chloe. Then it was home to pack up my gear and head out for Porteau.
As I pulled into Porteau and made my stop at the change rooms to get my thermals on I was greeted by the friendly and familiar voices of Ward and Virpi who were also joining us for the evening. Needless to say the excitement of diving with Virpi again and finally getting a chance to dive with Ward was overwhelming. After donning my thermals we all headed to the parking lot to set up our kits and wait for Chloe and Ryder to arrive. Joining us down in the parking lot was a friend of mine who I had done my Night and Deep courses with so he was to be my dive buddy for the night. After assembling our kits it was time for some visiting and to have an opportunity to see Wards newest invention, a tester for calculating gas concentrations. This invention is in addition to his heater (yes a heater) for use under his dry suit, which beleive me, works and is really warm. These are only a couple items amongst a list of tools Ward has build to aid himself or his fellow divers. So after a demo of his newest gas tester, which I will surely be buying one of for when I get my Enriched Air certification, we looked at the time and realized it was starting to get late and unfortunately Chloe and Ryder had not arrived yet so the decision was made to gear up and head out for our dive before it got too late. Of course with buddy checks complete and dive plan in place and just as we reached the stairs to descend to the water, Chloe and Ryder arrived...lol. As it turned out Ryder was diving his twin set-up and Chloe wasn't diving so Ryder was heading out on his own to video the wildlife so our group of four headed out.
Our dive plan was a pretty simple one, surface swim to the first buoy descend and staying in our buddy team and trying to stay together as a group, we would follow the fire hose and look at the wildlife. Once in the water it was the dreaded surface swim. This is the part of diving I am least fond of, my force fins are amazing for moving around and control in the water at depth but on the surface I find that I don't get enough "push" with them to move as quick as many of the divers I dive with. So, eventually I caught up with the rest of my group at the buoy, caught my breathe, and staying close to my buddy we descended to depth. Now surprisingly despite being only 30 feet of water, there is an amazing amount of life that comes out at night. Following behind Ward and really taking our time to move through the water we were able to capture images of some of the interesting life that moves around beneath the surface without any of us really noticing. The highlight of the night was our squid-a-pus, when we spotted it in the middle of the water column it was carrying a prawn away in it's legs (probably a late night snack)...lol. We came up on it and started snapping photos and video and I guess it was shy or it's parents told it no snacks after 7:00 or something because it let go of the prawn who, very happily, raced away into the dark, and then our new friend decided to rest himself for a spell on the ground, which is where I got the best of my pictures (still not very good) but after showing the photo around my squid-a-pus turned out to be a juvenile Humboldt squid. For anyone who doesn't know what a Humboldt Squid is, just think of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or Pirates of the Caribean 2 - Dead Mans Chest. Now of course my new friend was not a man eater nor was he able to sink ships with his massive tentacles, in fact his "massive" tentacles were only a few inches long and he probably would have had trouble sinking a toy ship...lol. After snapping our fill of video and photos it was time to carry on and see what other wonders awaited us in the depths. The rest of the dive was much like many dives at Porteau, lots of critters, some a little braver in the cover of darkness. Lots of ling cod, especially daddy's watching their egg clusters and taking a run at the occasional diver to show us how big and scary they were. Of course the ling cod of the wonderful underwater world are very similar to many people on the surface in the fact that the smaller you are the tougher you need to make yourself look. For example if you get in the way of my oldest son at 6'3 and 160 lbs and only 14 yrs old, he'll simply give you the look that says, "I could kill you, if you make me move I will make you pay dearly!" and people usually leave him alone. My younger two sons on the other hand are little guys just pushing 50 and 60 lbs at 8 and 10 yrs old. Now those two, people tend to make the mistake of crossing and they find out quickly that you were safer messing with my oldest...lol. Ling cod are much the same, in that the little ones are the ones you want to watch out for, the big ones look at you and sometimes will do a slow circle around their turf to show you where not to go, but the little guys, you often don't even see them (especially at night) before they are rocketing off the bottom to race past you or even in some cases, ram you to show you that you are in their turf, time to swim away...lol. The dive finished and we made our short swim to the stairs and excited to the smiling face of Chloe and her crutches. A quick strip down of gear had us deciding we were calling it a night at just one dive so it was clean up time, stow the gear away time and then head to the stairs and wait for Ryder time...lol.
After a great visit with Chloe where she continued to extol the virtues and advantages of always buying gear, rentals and air from Ocean Pro and no where else, Ryder finally made it back to shore. It was fun to watch as he approached though, through the darkened water you could make out the ring of light that was his video light as he made his way to the stairs. Once out it was a short visit while he got his gear stowed and then it was time to head for the cabin.
Well the drive to the cabin lasted all of 10 seconds for me, for as soon as I started driving I heard the recognizable thump, thump of a flat tire. Quickly turning into one of the parking stalls and checking, sure enough the front left tire of my van was dead flat. Fortunately the walk to the cabin is short (when you don't get lost the first time, but that's another story, I had to use the washroom anyways...lol) and getting to the cabin I was fortunately able to borrow Virpi's inflator, a great invention that connects to the low pressure hose on your regulator and can be used to inflate tires. Ryder was nice enough to accompany me back to my van and assist while I pulled out one of my tanks and filled the tire. Then we waited as we listened for the inevitable hissing of the air leaking out. Sure enough it was there and after a quick look at the tire we were able to see where the tire had blown up, literally with metal fibers showing through and not holding air for more than a couple minutes. Fortunately it was a quick drive to limp the van back to the cabin and park it till morning when I would change out the tire.
Once parked, gear secure, and clothes bag moved inside it was time to join the group. As I entered the cabin I was met by the smell of cooking, mmm food. Crackers and cheese and chips and breads were plated on the stool and Ward and Virpi had been hard at work preparing pasta and shortly after sitting down a plate was thrust in front of me heaped with spaghetti and Ward telling me not to be shy, dig in, we were all family. With that the music started, the beers were cracked, the wine flowed and the evening began....
7:30 the next morning came way too fast... the cabin was super warm, outside was not so much and I still had a tire to change....lol. So up I got, changed and made a coffee (or as Ward called it "flavored water", and it wasn't even that flavorful...lol), and headed outside to work on the tire. I was very fortunate in the fact that the tire was quite easy to repair, the spare (a mini tire) drops down from below, the jack (once found) was fairly simple to use, and the bolts came off and back on without too much of a struggle. With the tire changed and tools stored back in the van it was time to head back inside and have some breakfast and another cup of flavored water. A little morning visit and then it was time to say my goodbyes and head out to for Whytecliff where i would be meeting up with my next group of friends and dive buddies.
Whytecliff is a nice short drive from Porteau, in fact some of my friends from the night before had joked about filling my drysuit with air and floating me down to Whytecliff park...lol. Arriving a little late my team was almost already geared up so it was time for me to hurry up a little and get checked in with Greg from Ocean Quest and get my registration completed with Whites and get myself in a suit. While I waited for my turn in the Whites trailer I grabbed my dive kit from the van and got it built so that I would be ready to go as soon as possible. A quick visit to the Whites trailer and with the help of the fabulous staff from Whites I was in a beautiful red suit much like this one. With suit in hand i was directed to a changing and staging area, this was like being back stage at a fashion show...lol, into the changing area (a tent with the flaps drawn) hurrying as fast as possible as there are others waiting for their turn, then out of there in your undergarments carrying your suit to the next tarped area where you are met by several people who help you pull wiggle and otherwise make a fool of yourself as you get into the suit... getting into any dry suit is not an attractive act, this suit is no exception...lol. Fortunately, Monti Richardson from Ocean Pro was there as well helping out (apparently he works with or has connections to Aqualung and they were part of the weekend) anyways he was there and was able to walk me though the dance of getting into my suit and getting my dry gloves on and otherwise turning me into a Whites Product model, and not a very attractive one at that...lol.
With suit on and kit built it was time to join my team and head for the water. Now once again this was just a fun dive for me and the girlfriend of one of my regular dive buddies to try out the Whites suits and then for us all to go back and enjoy some BBQ!!! As planned it was a nice and relaxed dive, swimming along the left side of the bay doing a shallow dive to look at all the critters along the wall. Not a lot critters to see on this dive, probably due to the large number of divers in the water, many of which were trying out dry suits for their first time ever, understandably this meant a lot of divers bouncing off the bottom and then back to the surface, sometimes more than once...lol. Nothing dangerous of course, especially being in only 20 feet of water, but enough to stir up the bottom, limit visibility and scare all the critters...lol.
Following the dive, due to a high need for gear, the staff from Ocean Quest needed to get their gear back from 2 of our divers so there was no second dive for us for the day so instead we went for a walk along the shore line to watch the divers from above (always a fun sight to see...lol.) After seeing a few divers pop up out of the water feet first and enjoying the nice weather something caught my attention out near the day marker. Now for those of you who have read Seals to Emergencies understand why seeing something pop up suddenly out near the day marker catches my attention. So immediately my eyes were drawn to the location and quickly pointing in the direction of where the object surfaced and catching my friends attention we all scanned the horizon only to have one of my dive partners point past the end of the rocks we were walking on as something broke the surface, and then again, and again. It took only a moment for one of our other team, an instructor in training, to identify the objects as dolphins, white sided pacific dolphins to be exact, hundreds of them. Before long we could see the pod jumping out of the water as they swam back and forth across the opening to the bay. Soon after some of the boats out in the sound, obviously now aware of the dolphins, started towards the bay. One of the boats, a zodiac, left a wake behind it that the dolphins found entertaining to jump over as they cleared the water giving all the spectators a perfect look at their sleek bodies as they flew through the air.
Back up top, it was time to clean my gear and stow it away in my van, then accompanying my dive team, head over and grab some food and visit with some of the divers and students in town from school and on-site to aid the new divers and lead the tours. After my fill of visits and burgers it was time to make my slow limp home in my van on it's mini-tire...lol. Another weekend done and another 2 dives logged... more to come soon. Next up, Drift Diving with Dennis... can't wait. Update you all soon.
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