This last weekend, a friend had put together a technical charter off the NakNek boat out of Friday Harbor. The plan was to go find good walls in the 150 range, with a shallower second dive. Eight divers made the Saturday boat, and stayed overnight; I joined them for Sunday. Saturday was apparently very nice and sunny, but the "weather" underwater wasn't as kind; viz was marginal in the shallows, and current did not cooperate well at all. Nevertheless, Peter and our friend Scott got in a couple of good dives.
I was in class on Saturday, and was going to drive up to Anacortes after class, and take the walk-on ferry across to the island. Unfortunately, given the timing of the class, the likelihood was that I would only make the 8 pm ferry, which meant arriving in Friday Harbor at 10:30 at night, and also meant dinner would probably be McDonald's. When I got out of class a little early, I leapt into my car and fled for the freeway, in the desperate hope that exceeding the speed limit would get me onto the earlier boat. I called Peter, and bless his heart, he said, "There's a seaplane out of Lake Union at 5 -- can you make it?" And I COULD!
So my weekend began with a beautiful seaplane flight up through the San Juans. I spent much of it peering out the window, identifying places I had dived, and places that looked as though I ought to dive them . . . As we arrived at Friday Harbor, the rain was just beginning, but it unfortunately was not going to end.
I got to have dinner with the entire crew, and hear a bit about the day's diving. The meal was surprisingly good, and I can give Haley's Cafe a definite thumbs up. I devoured a blackened prime rib sandwich on a lovely, crunchy roll, which was enriched with quite a bit of melted blue cheese, and tried hard not to think anything relating to calories.
The next morning, we awoke to drizzle. It wasn't raining hard, but the multiple trips from the truck to the boat resulted in an annoying dampness. I am never entirely sure if boat diving really is any less work than shore diving; honestly, I rarely carry my gear as far as the typical walk from the car to the boat, nor do I make multiple trips back and forth. But boat diving does have its redeeming features (ladders not being one of them).
We were organized and ready to go a bit before time, and headed out to Hick's Bay, where rumor has it there is a nice 150 foot wall. Unfortunately, although conditions were really pretty optimal -- reasonable, 15 to 20 footish viz, and no current -- 5 of the 7 of us failed to find any sort of wall at all. I had my scooter as current insurance, and since the heading we were given was into what current there was, Peter signaled to me to tow him, so I did. We followed the heading, and must have done a decent job of it, because after several minutes, we were passed by the last team (all of whom had their own scooters, so they were moving faster than we were). But all we saw was a gradually sloping silt floor with clam siphons, and at ten minutes of scooter time and 105 feet, I stopped and wrote Peter a note. We decided to turn and just drift slowly back -- a disappointment, with 200 cf of 21/35 on my back, but diving is like that.
As it turned out, it wasn't a bad dive. We spent a lot of time looking at every bit of kelp or rock or log we could find, and found quite a few fun things. Probably the most exciting was the snake-lock anemone (which shouldn't have been there, as they don't normally grow in silt) harboring a convention of candy-striped shrimp, something Peter had never gotten to see before. But there were also lots of nudibranchs:
and I found a tiny grunt sculpin tucked into a leaf of sea lettuce, but I lost him before Peter got a photo.
We racked up an impressive 5 minutes of deco, and went ahead and gas-switched at 70 for practice, and then continued upslope until we finally found some structure. We spent five minutes or so in 20 feet of water, looking at little stuff in the rocks, and then Peter told me to shoot a bag. We didn't really need one, but I wanted to do it because I hadn't in a while, and I found out I needed the practice! Identifying the clip in my pocket with cold, numb hands was not as easy as doing it in Florida was!
Back on the boat to chili and homemade cornbread, and the smug expressions of the team that actually FOUND the wall, which was apparently lovely.
For the second dive, we did Turn Island, and this was a shallow dive (although apparently one could have gotten more depth than we did). The sheer part of the wall goes to about 70 feet, but Scott's team found that there were ledges that continued down. Peter and I contented ourselves with 70 feet, because to tell the truth, by the time we got that deep, we were so surrounded by life that we were too fascinated to leave. This was a stunning wall of brilliant color, with a wide variety of sponges, tons of feathery hydroids, anemones, and coralline algae. Nudibranchs abounded, including this one which I had never seen before:
But the highlight of the dive, for me, was finding an ENORMOUS Puget Sound King Crab in the rocks at about 35 feet. He was bigger than any of the ones we saw up in Port Hardy. They are such amazing, prehistoric-looking animals:
I was trying to model for Peter, getting my face very close to the crab for scale, but he kept vehemently pointing to the animal and was clearly irate. Eventually, I figured out he wanted my HAND on it; I refuse to touch anything, but I did put my hand there for visual reference, thus the photograph. (Subsequently, on the boat, I'm describing this and our friend Casey said, "I would have loved to see this -- underwater bickering!")
At any rate, I called this dive on cold, and as we were doing our agreed upon (again not required, but planned) five minutes on O2, we found a water jelly with a hitchhiker -- it was carrying a tiny shrimp, utterly translucent except for bright blue claws. Unfortunately, neither of us got a photograph of it, but it was sure cool.
We were back on the boat and in the harbor at about 1:30 pm, which allowed us a nice, long wait for the 4:15 ferry -- and another trip to Haley's, where I talked them into just giving me one of those lovely rolls with some butter, to accompany my post-dive glass of wine.
A great day of diving with good friends. Lots of critters, no drama. Diving the way I like it.
I was in class on Saturday, and was going to drive up to Anacortes after class, and take the walk-on ferry across to the island. Unfortunately, given the timing of the class, the likelihood was that I would only make the 8 pm ferry, which meant arriving in Friday Harbor at 10:30 at night, and also meant dinner would probably be McDonald's. When I got out of class a little early, I leapt into my car and fled for the freeway, in the desperate hope that exceeding the speed limit would get me onto the earlier boat. I called Peter, and bless his heart, he said, "There's a seaplane out of Lake Union at 5 -- can you make it?" And I COULD!
So my weekend began with a beautiful seaplane flight up through the San Juans. I spent much of it peering out the window, identifying places I had dived, and places that looked as though I ought to dive them . . . As we arrived at Friday Harbor, the rain was just beginning, but it unfortunately was not going to end.
I got to have dinner with the entire crew, and hear a bit about the day's diving. The meal was surprisingly good, and I can give Haley's Cafe a definite thumbs up. I devoured a blackened prime rib sandwich on a lovely, crunchy roll, which was enriched with quite a bit of melted blue cheese, and tried hard not to think anything relating to calories.
The next morning, we awoke to drizzle. It wasn't raining hard, but the multiple trips from the truck to the boat resulted in an annoying dampness. I am never entirely sure if boat diving really is any less work than shore diving; honestly, I rarely carry my gear as far as the typical walk from the car to the boat, nor do I make multiple trips back and forth. But boat diving does have its redeeming features (ladders not being one of them).
We were organized and ready to go a bit before time, and headed out to Hick's Bay, where rumor has it there is a nice 150 foot wall. Unfortunately, although conditions were really pretty optimal -- reasonable, 15 to 20 footish viz, and no current -- 5 of the 7 of us failed to find any sort of wall at all. I had my scooter as current insurance, and since the heading we were given was into what current there was, Peter signaled to me to tow him, so I did. We followed the heading, and must have done a decent job of it, because after several minutes, we were passed by the last team (all of whom had their own scooters, so they were moving faster than we were). But all we saw was a gradually sloping silt floor with clam siphons, and at ten minutes of scooter time and 105 feet, I stopped and wrote Peter a note. We decided to turn and just drift slowly back -- a disappointment, with 200 cf of 21/35 on my back, but diving is like that.
As it turned out, it wasn't a bad dive. We spent a lot of time looking at every bit of kelp or rock or log we could find, and found quite a few fun things. Probably the most exciting was the snake-lock anemone (which shouldn't have been there, as they don't normally grow in silt) harboring a convention of candy-striped shrimp, something Peter had never gotten to see before. But there were also lots of nudibranchs:
and I found a tiny grunt sculpin tucked into a leaf of sea lettuce, but I lost him before Peter got a photo.
We racked up an impressive 5 minutes of deco, and went ahead and gas-switched at 70 for practice, and then continued upslope until we finally found some structure. We spent five minutes or so in 20 feet of water, looking at little stuff in the rocks, and then Peter told me to shoot a bag. We didn't really need one, but I wanted to do it because I hadn't in a while, and I found out I needed the practice! Identifying the clip in my pocket with cold, numb hands was not as easy as doing it in Florida was!
Back on the boat to chili and homemade cornbread, and the smug expressions of the team that actually FOUND the wall, which was apparently lovely.
For the second dive, we did Turn Island, and this was a shallow dive (although apparently one could have gotten more depth than we did). The sheer part of the wall goes to about 70 feet, but Scott's team found that there were ledges that continued down. Peter and I contented ourselves with 70 feet, because to tell the truth, by the time we got that deep, we were so surrounded by life that we were too fascinated to leave. This was a stunning wall of brilliant color, with a wide variety of sponges, tons of feathery hydroids, anemones, and coralline algae. Nudibranchs abounded, including this one which I had never seen before:
But the highlight of the dive, for me, was finding an ENORMOUS Puget Sound King Crab in the rocks at about 35 feet. He was bigger than any of the ones we saw up in Port Hardy. They are such amazing, prehistoric-looking animals:
I was trying to model for Peter, getting my face very close to the crab for scale, but he kept vehemently pointing to the animal and was clearly irate. Eventually, I figured out he wanted my HAND on it; I refuse to touch anything, but I did put my hand there for visual reference, thus the photograph. (Subsequently, on the boat, I'm describing this and our friend Casey said, "I would have loved to see this -- underwater bickering!")
At any rate, I called this dive on cold, and as we were doing our agreed upon (again not required, but planned) five minutes on O2, we found a water jelly with a hitchhiker -- it was carrying a tiny shrimp, utterly translucent except for bright blue claws. Unfortunately, neither of us got a photograph of it, but it was sure cool.
We were back on the boat and in the harbor at about 1:30 pm, which allowed us a nice, long wait for the 4:15 ferry -- and another trip to Haley's, where I talked them into just giving me one of those lovely rolls with some butter, to accompany my post-dive glass of wine.
A great day of diving with good friends. Lots of critters, no drama. Diving the way I like it.
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