Dive 92 feet for 50 minutes. Sunday greeted us with the rare pacific northwest treat of sunshine. It was still windy, and when we checked with the weather it looked like the straits of Georgia were not going to be navigable in our small boat, specially not with over 100 lbs of gear. Possible we could have made it later that afternoon but 2.5 days in canadia is my limit. Plus jimmy had to work in the am. We elected to hit the Rivtow Lion again, it’s a nice wreck, if not as exciting or ‘cool’ as the giant cape bretton or the sleek destroyer the Saskatchewan http://www.oceanexplorersdiving.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=26&Itemid=50 We dropped down the stern line – that’s the front, I am learning some boat words. And examined the bumpers at the front which were giant tires. Allegedly there is an octo in there somewhere. We continued to drop down to the port side and cruised along the ocean floor looking up at the tug, which is tilted slightly to port. It had an interesting ominous feeling looming over us, like it was about to roll over and squash us. It Didn’t. We went up to the deck around the wheelhouse and cruised to the back of the boat and studied the $30,000 prop. Its 10 feet and solid bronze. The Rivtow was sunk about a year ago and the prop looks pretty cool, completely covered with life. I guess they are going to salvage it and use the proceeds to pay off debt on the other two wrecks that the NDA still owes. Interesting enough, the diving community wants to keep the prop on there, but is not willing to contribute the money to support the divers that footed the bill to sink the other wrecks. Being an outsider and not aware of all the details it is probably not appropriate for me to expound upon this subject – but we did receive some information. I guess the positive thing is that Ian Hall has done a great deal for divers in general, and particularily the community around Nanaimo. Back on task here, after studying the prop for a few minutes we went up and swam in and around the wheel house. We dropped down the chimney and into the engine room, a simple enough feat, but both of us make pretty wide loads with the heavy twins and the o2 on the side. I dropped into an open hold, which possibly from earlier divers, or just the viz in general, was a eerie blackness. Not the blackness of pure darkness, but particulate matter in the water in a contained area that look like it might swallow an intrepid diver right up. I swallowed and dropped down. To my relief the bottom materialized in about 2 seconds and I instantly felt like a coward. Looked like bunks along the side, it is possible that when prepping the boat for sinking they pulled stuff out of there and it was just a hold. We may have wandered around a bit more, eventually we got bored and even though we had plenty of air and bottom time we decided to ascend. To practice we both wanted to drop (send up?) our lift bags. Jim seemed to have no problem, but as soon as I pulled my reel out I tangled it. I then proceed to untangle it, which in fact ended up tangling it worse. I gave up and pulled out my thumb reel or whatever its called. I sent my bag up and swam back to the stern line to ascend next to it, mostly to avoid drifting away, but partly to have the security of a line to the bottom in case I became overly buoyant. You’d think with 200+ dives I would be able to get neutrally buoyant through the whole dive but that never seems to be the case. This particular dive I was trying a new weight assortment, sandwiched between my backplate and harness, so I did not want to risk anything. The thumb reel was a huge pain to unreel, another one of those things in scuba that is (oops just checked it is called a spool reel http://www.techdivinglimited.com/ ) sobering in that it is so difficult to pull off in controlled situations that you only imagine how difficult it would be in an emergency. When I got to about 20 feet a deployed my o2 and did my 3 minute safety spot at around 17 feet. After that I ascened to the boat and boarded after Jim, nice to get that junk off me. It was a struggle undoing the reel but I was able to get it. Overall a nice weekend of diving, a bit disappointing in that we did not get to do the boats we wanted to, but great that they sunk the rivtow and Ocean Explorers were great as always to work with.
The Rivtow link: http://www.oceanexplorersdiving.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=52
