Chanb77's Weblog

Steve and I headed down to Brockville to meet our friends Jen and Jean for a swim out to the Gaskin. Mother Nature had decided to throw a curve ball at us, and dropped the air temperature to -26C, with the windchill. Ay carumba, I think we are certifiably nuts.

The journey down the 416…

We drove down for a 1pm meeting time, and geared up!

Jean…

Jen…

Jean’s Divemobile…

Steve…

..and Me… I was outside for a while, and my cheeks froze…

Well.. we finally made it into the water. We decided on our dive plan on the surface, as we were gearing up, so that we could just drop down once in the water. The air was cold enough that if we bobbed around on the surface too long, we would surely have a few freeflows.

We dropped down, got sorted, and I attempted a valve drill. Normally I don’t have a problem with my valve drills. Today… pftt… for some reason, I had a really tough time reaching them. When I geared up, I did feel unusual tightness across my shoulders, and pointed the blame at my undies bunching up underneath… I was wearing an extra layer of fleece over top of my Xerotherms, which I did do last week, but they weren’t bunched up last week…Pfftt.. Pfftt.. Ok.. sorted myself out, reached my valves and off to the Gaskin we went.

We took a slow, easy pace to the wreck, and when we got there, saw that the visibility wasn’t that spectacular. Normally at this time of year, the vis is great with the water temperature drops, but today… not so much. Not many of the pics turned out on the wreck, as it was too dark, but here are a few anyway!

Looking up through the wreck from the inside…

Steve…

Rail on the starboard side…

Jen…

Me…

OO… Me…

Steve took a couple of pics of me, then turned the camera on himself…

..and Me… just fooling around, pretending I can fly under water…

When we exited the water, we quickly froze, as did our gear and zippers.

Steve also took this fancy pic of my frozen hair do…

Our hoods were frozen, our neck seals were half frozen to our necks, and we had to leave our valves open, as they were pretty icicley too. Jean’s suit, once he finally got it off, could almost stand up on its own…

We did a clothing change as quickly as we could manage, and headed off to the pub for some grub and a Corona!

Bottom Time ~ 66 mins.
Max. Depth ~ 65′
Water Temp. ~ 42F
Vis. ~ 25′ – 30′
Air Temp. ~ -26 with wind chill… brrrrr….

Tomorrow… the Kinghorn!