Day #2
Sunday 26 Oct looked more promising - the rain was now falling steadily, and to compensate for the end of Daylight Savings Time we all met at 07:00, which sounds earlier than Saturday but in actuality was half an hour later. We put together our gear in the club and loaded it pre-assembled into the vehicles. I decided to use my own weight belt, with 21 lbs on it, instead of the 20 lbs of round lead weights on an overly long belt that I had used the day before.
We went back to Portsmouth Olympic Harbour. The water was barely rippling, and standing on the breakwall, we could see straight to the bottom. Without any delay we started getting dressed.
Dive #3:
Our first dive, we went out to the dive flag, already tied off for us by the DM near the wreck, and practiced line descents followed by an OOA (alternate air sharing) ascent. (Later on the instructor told us we had collectively done one of the best line descents he had ever seen - nicely evenly spaced, no "domino effect", and a good descent rate) He also complimented me and my buddy for one of the smoothest OOA ascents he had ever seen. Because I had missed out on some skills the day prior I got to do my mask clear and reg recover as well - then an emergency swimming ascent. When I got back down the instructor came over to peer at me - he's getting pretty good at that scrutinizing look - and promptly made my reg freeflow by holding in the purge button. So we headed up for a nice leisurely trip to the surface from 8'. When we got up there, he said Nicely Done, especially since I hadn't had any idea of what he was planning to do to me.
As a group we headed out to the shallow little wreck, spent some time hovering and looking at stuff. I had a few problems getting down - my left ear started making odd noises and refusing to clear - it would clear just fine partway through the descent then spontaneously decide not to. I spent quite a few minutes getting to the bottom where the group was, and emerged shivering as well. More Tim's remedied that! (decaf this time though)
Dive #4:
While gearing up, the course staff introduced us to the wonders of warm water & wetsuits
This would be a shore dive onto a couple of anchors, with a surface swim out, and we were to use natural navigational aids to help us find our way. In addition, we were going to be responsible for the dive flag. Each of us in turn got to lead the group from point to point on the dive.
My ears for some bizarre reason decided to cooperate this dive. I relaxed and had a lot of fun looking at stuff. The instructor mentioned that at one point, he had hovered very close to the bottom, half upside-down, to look at some fish tucked under the wreck, and when he looked back at the group, he saw ME doing the same thing! He praised me for keeping my fins high above the level of my head to avoid stirring anything up.
Those of us who wanted to also got the chance to swim under the extended arm of the anchor, practicing maintaining good buoyancy to avoid crashing into the bottom while swimming past it. I got very close to the bottom - I find that when I pass within a few inches of something I tend to tuck my SPG out of the way against my stomach which lets me get within an inch or two of any surface I want to skim.
Once we as a group had navigated back to shore, we all surfaced and the instructor said he was so pleased that anyone who had air left and wanted to go back out to the wreck was welcome to do so, staying in buddy teams. He gave us 10 minutes or whenever someone hit 500psi, to come back in.
I managed to lose my buddy about 4 times - I glanced over at him about every 30 seconds or so, but several times I had to go up to people and see if they were my buddy. Finally the fourth time I didn't find him at all, so I looked all around me, backtracked along the wreck in the direction I had come (passing the safety diver who signed to me to ask where my buddy was, and I signed back that I didn't know, without stopping) then looked all around again and finally surfaced. A minute later buddy popped up too and said he had stopped to talk to the DM. Oh well, our 10 more minutes were up so we all headed back to shore. This time I didn't even feel cold until I stepped out of the water, whereupon the uncontrollable shivering started.
We didn't have time for Tim's - I'll tell you why in a sec - but all scattered back to the Club (most of us by way of Tim's drive-thru anyhow) to refill tanks.
Dive #5:
The crowning cap to an already terrific day. The instructor had managed to talk us onto a charter boat for a wreck dive. We would be heading out to the Aloha and the Effie Mae. The Aloha was an old - and very large - wooden sailing vessel that was later converted to a barge and lies mostly intact in 60' of water. Beside her is the much more modestly sized Effie Mae, which was Kingston's first charter dive boat and now entertains divers from below water level. Both wrecks have open portions which can be swum through, and the Aloha has a portion of deck that penetration-qualified divers can explore beneath, as well as a few odd remaining beams above an open part that the instructor said would be all right for us to swim beneath if we felt comfortable doing so, since at no time would they block open water above.
We loaded our gear as per the skipper's instructions and headed out. Enroute we changed into our neoprene - warm water jugs flowed. It was great. The instructor went over the site, gave us quite a tongue-lashing for not having used our tables to determine our NDLs, and explained the dive plan to us all. He would be leading the dive, but we would be responsible for 'turning' the dive based on pressure or time, and we would do so as a group as soon as one person wanted to turn it.
We did our Giant Strides and met up at the bow buoy. We did a nice line descent - instead of "OK-ing" the line, we had been told we could just put a finger along the line. One student (we later found out) didn't make it down - he got down around 45' before his ears started to hurt and no matter how much he ascended to clear them, he couldn't get them to behave. The DM ended up adopting his buddy)
We had a great tour of the wrecks - the Aloha was covered mainly by zebra mussels as was the Effie Mae, although there were portions where the mussels had broken off in sheets, re-exposing the deck beneath. I looked in some portholes, practicing hovering, and I think we all got to swim under those exposed struts on the Aloha. All too soon it seemed, someone turned the dive, and we headed back to the line.
We did our safety stop - the instructor moved amongst the group checking that we weren't too high nor too low - we were a little spread out through the 20 - 15' depths and nobody had a death-grip on the line - only a few of us were touching it at all. Some people were swimming around a bit staying at approximately that level under the very wary eye of the safety diver and DM. We completed our safety stop and all headed back to the line to follow it back up. The instructorsaid he was very surprised and pleased to see us do that as most classes just shoot straight up from wherever they are once they are done their three minutes!
By the time we were all back aboard the boat, it was starting to get dark, so it was a very happy and somewhat tired group that returned our neoprene to the dive shop and headed back to the club to take apart our gear. We worked on our dive logs (the instructor wanted to read over each person's logs and sign them off, although it didn't have to be the same day) and he had a brief word with each of us individually before we went home.
The instructor said he was impressed with the amount of progress I had made to get me to this point and congratulated me. He shook my hand and I tried to turn in my dive log - he looked surprised that the pages were complete already! (Most of the other students by the end of the evening had fleshed in only the bare minimum, if anything at all) But I hadn't drawn a site sketch on each page, so he said he wanted me to finish that before turning them in.
So all that's left now is to get my log pages completed, and wait for the instructor to complete the paperwork if he hasn't already!
I wonder if I can dive again soon before the water gets too cold? Or if I have to wait for a card or something to arrive?
). 
