Chanb77's Weblog

Our friend, Francois came down this weekend, and he, Steve, myself, and Leigh headed down to Morrisburg (east of Brockville), for a scooter dive.

Here’s the van with 3 of ours’ gear…

We drove to our little secret entry spot (it’s not really a secret, but people don’t really know about it), and as we pulled up, the bugs were too bad to even get out of the car. We drove down to Mr. Black’s (another place we get in), and the entry wasn’t that great today, so we went to the public docks.

Public dock entry point…

We were greeted by a fellow by the name of Ray, a friendly local that likes to greet people. We hadn’t met Ray before, but we did get him on video, for the next WGD vid!

Here’s Ray and Leigh…

We geared up, jumped in, and discussed our plan. We were going to scooter in the shallows, where the current was low, cut across the old channel, over to a little island, and see what we could find. We knew that the current was stronger than normal, since the water levels are pretty high, and all of the throughway gates are open, so we discussed aborting the channel traverse should it be too strong. If this were the case, we’d just scooter and drift along the old lock system (Lock 23).

In we went…

We scootered in the shallows for a while, then dropped down the wall, and attempted to cut across… well … holy smokes… That current was freakin’ rippin’!!! We had our scooters on full pitch, and weren’t moving. We attempted the zig zag approach, and that worked for a while, but it was just more work than it was worth.. so… back across to the lock we went. We thought we’d try hitting the triggers, moving with the current.. Holy smokes, did we fly! Once we finally reached it, we stopped for a breath, and a bit of a giggle. We toured around the lock for a bit, then drifted and scootered across to the beach, back past the public docks. When we surfaced, there were many kids swimming (which there usually are), and were all happy to see diving folk. Upon exiting the water, two absolutely wonderful kids came up to us and brought us some nice, frosty bottles of water.
We were very thankful and appreciative. Steve and Leigh walked over to get the van and car, and Francois and I entertained the locals. The boys took forever, as Woofybeotch had locked his keys in his car.. Steve rescued him, and we departed for Dive Tech, where Steve’s new suit had arrived. We played around the shop for a while, and holy smokes.. Steve’s suit is slick!

Another fantastic day in the river!

Bottom Time ~ 60 mins.
Max. Depth ~ 48′
Water Temp. ~ 56
Vis. ~ 30ish and milky

I forgot to mention that we saw a giant muskie in the shallows, that was none too pleased to see us! He was massive, and had his back up at us! I guess we intruded in his territory!!!

We also saw a big carp and a big bass!