Diving the Marker and Experiencing The Cut!

Ok.. so you remember my "little" problem yesterday with getting me ears to clear? Well, it happened again today!

Much like yesterday this day started out amazing, it was a cool crisp morning, still some snow on the ground, but not enough to make driving or gearing up an issue.  We met early as usual and proceeded to get our kits put together.  A short discussion on today's dive to 130 feet (the deepest I have ever been) and the few skills we will review at depth.  Suits on, kits fastened up, gear clipped in place and we were off to the water.  Whytecliff is a great place to dive for the many different levels of divers due to it's gradual bottom, mixed ocean life, walls and last but not least depth!  But for us to fully enjoy the depth we must be out far enough, which means a good surface swim.  Today for dive one, we headed to the day marker.  Now for those of you who have been following my blog and have read Seals to Emergencies you will understand why I am a little apprehensive about being out at the day marker on Whitecliff and even more so when the plan is to descend down to beyond where she was brought up from.  Needless to say I am writing this now so I made it... yeah me!...lol.  So after grouping on the surface, not an easy task with the waves and surf pushing you all over the place, we started our descent, and once again on hitting around the 20 foot mark, the ear just wouldn't clear.  So a short ascent up a few feet and a few more, some pushing and struggling and presto the slow relief of my ear starting to pressurize for the dive.  Yeah, time to catch up with Roger and my dive partner, hit our 130 mark and begin to review a few navigation skills and a short tour.  To finish today's dive Roger has us practicing a new skill, this is where as you approach or hit your 15 foot safety stop, you release your surface marker (attached to your reel) so that it hits the surface an notifies (typically your dive boat) that you are in your 3 minute safety stop.  This is particularly useful as mentioned for boat dives, as you are able to give the boat a 3 minute heads up of where you are going to be surfacing so that they can be there to pick you up.  This is not a difficult skill, just one that is good to practice, you don't want your line held too tight as it can actually pull you to the surface if you are not careful, and you don't want to leave the line spooling after it reaches the surface or you'll end up having the line drop below you or the marker drift away from your actual ascent point.  Ours comes off without a hitch and we make our final ascent, and our surface swim back to enjoy some beverages, and food during our 90 minute surface interval required for our deep dives.

Bellies full, hands warmed up and kits strapped back into place it's time for dive number 4 and our last one required for certification as a Deep Diver.  For this dive Roger and my dive partner are going to show me "The Cut".  There is a decent hike to get to the cut and as we found when we got to the waters edge, there is also a lot of debris to get past before you can move into the water.  This is only further complicated by the surf that comes in to the very narrow "Cut" and makes it difficult to get your fins on.  So... after carrying all our gear along what could laughably be referred to as a goat path and climbing over trees and debris on the shore and fighting to get our fins on while time the waves, we are finally ready to get started.  It takes only a few steps before you are well over your head in the sudden drop of the cut and we start our descent only to again have my ears give me issues....  So back over to the wall, raise up a bit, a couple good pushes and one big whoosh and my ear is clear.  Pushing off the wall and following Roger and my dive partner down through the cut we are signaled by another diver just below us.  Dropping to see him, Roger signals back and forth and then signals for us to drop to the same level as this new diver who points out that there is an octopus, more closely described as a crack-topus, as you can only see an arm and part of an eye in the crack it calls home.  Turning away from the octopus and working along the wall led by my Dive Partner we make the slow swim along the hidden edge opposite of the bay I am used to diving in and around the point to enter the bay covering the area that you don't normally see when you descend in the bay.  Unfortunately my air consumption being what it is the dive is short as usual and we are unable to reach our initially planned objective of swimming all the way into the bay eliminating the long surface swim.   So, alternatively we choose to surface swim back into the cut and climb back out that way, taking the hike and climbing over the long surface swim.  The walks not too bad, even came across a dog that was not too happy to see three grown men dripping wet and dressed in dark rubbery material.  So once again we were back at the vehicles, stripping off gear and packing it away.  Looking forward to the next time the open water calls,  and we are there to answer!