No pictures, buddy has the camera, but let me tell you where I went today. With Soakedlontra away on a long hiking trip, I had to fend for myself for a dive buddy. We usually do shore dives locally, but we also have a friend named Todd who owns a boat, and I went out with him today. Our first dive was at the Possession Point Fingers, at the southern end of Whidbey Island. We've done this as a shore dive, but this time we went a bit further south, and the wall seems to be more dramatic the further south you go. We dipped down to 90 ft. but stayed mostly around 50 - 60 ft. We saw a couple of shy ratfish, and a couple of pretty big Giant Pacific Octopus tucked back into their lairs. There was current at the surface, but none at depth. When I dive with Todd he takes the pictures and I'm the model. Maybe we'll have some pictures, after all.
Our second dive was at the southern end of the man-made reef off the west side of Gedney (or Hat) Island. We've dived further north on that reef before - a bunch of concrete columns and stuff, but this time the structure was more like metal poles. Plenty of plumose anemones covering them, and lots of rockfish, as were at the Fingers earlier. A nice, easy dive around 40 - 50 ft deep with not much current. Viz at both sites was in the range of 15 - 25 ft. at depth; almost nothing near the surface.
Every diver on the boat except me uses yellow Twin Jet fins. Todd expressed curiosity about my Force Fin Tan Deltas, and luckily enough our size is the same, so we swapped for the second dive. I have to tell you, those split fins are OK for going forward with a scissor kick, but that's it! I kept running into stuff because I couldn't back up, or maneuver in at all. I'd just have to push off the reef with a finger and swim around in a circle to get back to where I wanted to be. When I got back on the boat, I asked everyone, "How do you back up with those things?" The answer, from everyone all at once, was a resounding, "You don't!" So now I know. I didn't really grill Todd about what he thought of the Force Fins afterward, but he seemed to have a positive impression. I tried to get him to try going backwards underwater, but since I hadn't discussed it earlier, he didn't know what I meant when I tried to show him, especially since what I was trying to do was not working! He said, though, that he was curious about using the fins for work, where you really do have to be able to maneuver. Maybe we'll have another convert soon!
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