The theme for this trip started a few days before we were to leave, when the weather turned unseasonably cold and stormy, dumping several inches of snow on the ground and rocking the region with high winds. On Monday evening the power went out at my home, and didn’t come on again until Tuesday morning. Temperatures that night dropped down into the mid-teens, and spending a night shivering in my house resulted in a nasty cold just a day before we were leaving. Determined to give it a try anyway, I dosed myself Wednesday night and went to bed early … prepared for a 3 am wakeup the next day, to be on the road by 4.
Just before I’d turned in for the night, Sandra had called. She was concerned about the weather report for Thursday, and thinking that a 375 mile trip in a snowstorm probably wasn’t a very good idea. We talked about it and decided to go ahead and give it a try. And sure enough, when I got up the next morning the snow was coming down and there was already 3 more inches of snow in my driveway and on the roads. Determined to not let it deter me, I packed the car and headed north, picking up Sandra and meeting with Larry and Kathy a few miles up the road. They live in Arlington, and needed tire chains to make it out of their driveway. We anticipated that it might be a very long day, but all of us really wanted this trip … so off we went.
The trip to the border really wasn’t all that bad. As we drove north the snow slacked off to flurries, and the roads were reasonable enough to make decent time. We arrived at the border around 7 am … a bit later than anticipated … and after a quick conference decided to head for Horseshoe Bay rather than Tsawassan, because that would give us an hour and a half to make the ferry rather than the 40 minutes we were facing if we stuck to our original plan. But what we hadn’t considered is that Thanksgiving isn’t a holiday in Canada, and so between the icy roads and the commuter traffic it took us a bit over two hours to make it to the ferry terminal … we missed our ferry and would be on the next later one than we’d planned for.
Once on Vancouver Island, the trip was fairly uneventful with only minor slowdowns to make our way around snowplows as we headed up the highway to Campbell River and along the winding mountain road to Gold River. My biggest concern was the last 40 miles of the trip, on the unpaved logging road that eventually took us to Tahsis. But once over the pass, the west side of the mountains proved to be completely clear of snow. Ironic that the best road conditions of the whole trip were the part I’d been most worried about. We pulled into Tahsis around 5:30 pm … tired but glad to have finally made it.
We stopped at the dive shop, settled into the house we were renting, and as we were unpacking the cars Larry discovered one of his tires was going flat. Oh well, if it’s going to happen, the timing couldn’t have been better. We quickly settled in, Larry got the tire changed, and we were off to meet with Scott and Jude – the dive op owners – who were treating us to a traditional Thanksgiving dinner at the local pub. Sue, the woman who runs the pub, was all warm smiles as she greeted us … making us feel like we were at home celebrating our holiday with family. It was small-town hospitality at its finest. But the long day and my continuing battle with a cold had gotten the best of me, and by the time dinner was over all I wanted was a dose of decongestants and a warm bed … tomorrow would bring what it brought, and I’d worry then whether or not I’d be able to dive. I went back to the house, crawled into bed and passed out.
The next day I woke up feeling somewhat better, although the cold had settled into my chest and I could barely talk. We hooked up with Scott on the boat at 9’ish and headed out for our first dive at Mozino Point. The dive plan was for Sandra and I to head down to about 180 … me on my doubles and her on her rebreather … to check out the gorgonian corals that this site is so famous for. She had never seen them before. She and I would hit the water first, and if it turned out I couldn’t clear she would join Larry and Kathy at recreational depths, while I returned to the boat. But as it turned out, my ears and sinuses were fine and so we proceeded downslope toward the corals. Everything went fine until we got to about 160 feet. At that point two things occurred … we encountered a ripping current and Sandra signaled that something was wrong with her rebreather and we needed to turn around. Oh my goodness … we’d reached the top of the wall where the gorgonians started getting thick. I could shine my light down another 20 feet and see our goal. But we weren’t going … I know Sandra well enough to know she wouldn’t turn the dive lightly. And she must have seen the disappointment in my eyes, because she shined her light on a smallish gorgonian nearby and indicated that I should take some pictures before we headed back up. As we had talked about beforehand, she positioned herself off to the side so I could have a model in the picture. I snapped off about a half-dozen quick shots, and fortunately a couple of them turned out quite OK.
The remainder of our dive was uneventful as we proceeded upslope, and with the shortened dive plan our deco was minimal. This proved to be fortunate, as the current continued to build as the dive proceeded. I was totally surprised by how much current there was, because we were on the very front-end of a four-foot exchange, and had timed our dive almost perfectly with slack. But by the time we surfaced it was running quite a bit stronger than I wanted to deal with, and I was glad for the live boat pickup.
But Mr. Murphy wasn’t done with us yet. As we were handing up equipment in preparation for boarding the boat, Sandra dropped her bailout bottle and it quickly sank to the bottom. Scott hurriedly pressed the GPS to mark the spot and we proceeded to board the boat. As I readied my SMB to drop on the spot where it went down, Larry and Kathy surfaced, and Larry volunteered to go back down and see if he could find the bottle. Meanwhile I dropped my spool with a 5-lb weight attached and the inflated SMB at the spot where Scott had marked. But before I could get in the water to follow it down the current pulled the bag under the surface. This isn’t how it’s supposed to work. A few minutes later, Larry surfaced with Sandra’s bottle, which he’d found at about 70 feet. I asked about the SMB and he looked at me and said “Is that what that weight with the line was?” He saw it, but didn’t think to bring it up. Oh well … bags aren’t all that expensive to replace. I wrote it off as lost.
Sandra meanwhile had told me that something on her rebreather felt loose and the unit had been flopping around on her back, which is why she’d turned the dive. Taking the back cover off the unit, she discovered that the mount on one of the two bolts that holds the unit to her backplate was broken, and the two pieces were basically pivoting on the remaining bolt. The unit was functioning fine, but it wasn’t very stable. Nor was it field- fixable. So Scott took us back to the shop and set her up with a recreational rig for the rest of the trip … our planned tech dive for the next day wasn’t going to happen. Nor would we, on this trip, make it down to where the big gorgonians were. Oh well … there’s still plenty of excellent diving to be had … we’ll just go where we can.
Our second dive of the day was back at one of my favorite sites from my previous trip … Shark Point. This site’s great for macro, and there was a big rock down at about 70 feet that was completely covered in sponges and anemones. That was our planned destination. But getting there proved problematic. We dropped into a crystal-clear aquarium on the back side of the point … there was no current at all. Ah, this is more like it. But as soon as we dropped down to depth and headed toward our chosen destination the water flowing around the other side of the point just tossed us around like toys. So we turned back into the lee side and played in the eddy for the rest of the dive. It was still a great dive, and I managed to get a couple nice shots of these tiny, colorful sculpins. I love these guys … they practically posed for me.
That night I cooked dinner for the crew and turned in early. I was still feeling awful, but was so thankful that I had been able to get in the dives. It seemed that no matter what went wrong on this trip it was destined to turn out alright.
(Part 2 to come)
by Unknown
.
