We dove with Dive Brockville Adventure Centre. Captain Vincent (great guy) on both trips.
Friday afternoon
The Robert Gaskin - old, neat, but more like a pile of wood to look at. Visibility wasn't great, so it was hard to gauge how nice it is if you could see the entire wreck. A good bit of wildlife though.
The Lillie Parsons - technically a wreck, but more like an obstacle course. You drift around the wreck (which is 100% upside down), then pull yourself back to the beginning via a chain and drift around again, pull yourself to the beginning again. The last stretch is drifting over the wreck instead of around and you realize just how massive it is. After all that, you drift along a wall for 2 min or more and then have to grab a rope dangling in the current to bring yourself around the back side of the island away from the current. By far the most exciting dive of all 4. If you were still allowed to dive from the island I would walk across and do it at least 2-3 times it was fun. The wreck itself is interesting, but not as interesting as the current (to me anyway).
Saturday morning
Keystorm - sadly, I only got to see ~ 20% of this one. I was helping my wife and by the time she called the dive it was too late for me to go see all of it. There is supposed to be a monster of a propeller @ ~ 110' or so. I saw some pictures, looked pretty neat. The others in my group said the visibility wasn't spectacular the day that we went
Kinghorn - the best wreck dive (at least to me). She sits upright as you would expect a ship to be sailing. There's a few things to look at and you can fin to one side on the top deck and then let the current take you over the entire wreck as somewhat of a slow drift which was really interesting. I enjoyed the fact that as you swim over the bow? of the ship you can really gauge how large it was by looking at how far it is to the river bed. Beautiful wreck.
I was made aware of beforehand but if not I would not have known that tanks are not included in the trips (as it is in the FL Keys). I actually rented 2 100cf steel from Dive Tech up the street (really awesome place to go check out). If you don't need tanks then that part is irrelevant. Dive Brockville only had 3 100cf to rent and I needed 4 for myself and my wife. Dive Tech has ~ a million tanks, so plenty to rent
Everything is listed in Canadian so to gauge any real price I had to multiply by .76 (really .89 after you add the 13% tax). I knew this, but forgot on occasion. Was pleasantly surprised on my credit card bill to see prices LESS than what I expected.
Water for us was 67F, the St. Lawrence River does not have a thermocline. I wore 7mm farmer john, no hood, no gloves and that was great for all the dives. I would probably wear a hood if I had it to do again. The water was great, but I got a slight chill at around the 45 minute mark. Nobody in my group did drysuit, although 3 of the 6 owned them....not sure why they didn't.
Unfortunately because of time we did not do any shore dives, but the dives that we did do were really different. I've never experienced current like that before so that was new and exciting for me. I would go back in a heartbeat. It was darker / colder diving than my wife is used to and I think she would have been better had we done a few shore dives to start. For me it was magic. The SLR by itself is beautiful, but to be able to go down to 100'+ and see what's underneath was definitely a check on my bucket list that I didn't even know existed
