Chanb77's Weblog

Monday, August 4th, 2008 ~Steve, Jay, and I headed down to the river for a scooter dive. Seeing as it’s Simcoe Day, we didn’t have to work! w00t!

We geared up and got in the water. We were going to try and find the mythical carriage that Steve has seen once before, and no one seems to have seen it since! Back in the “old days,” they used to take horses and carriages across the ice, in the winter, to take chunks of ice back… for preserving food. Sadly, there was at least one that didn’t make it back. We’ve looked for it a couple of times, but were not successful.

When doing our predive checks, I did have gas in my argon bottle, but at 60′, I didn’t seem to have any “juice” left… Silly me… So I disconnected my wing inflator, and connected it to my drysuit valve, and orally inflated my wing… *shakes head at self.* It was good practice though.

We scootered out to the channel, did some scootering and drifting. We saw various pieces of wreckage, some neat bottles, and even a piece of china. Then… we see a big piece of wreckage… it was an old wreck! Seeing the wood, and the way it laid in the silt and periwinkles, this thing has been here for a very long time. There wasn’t much of it left, but it was fascinating to see. I tried to get some pictures of it, but unfortunately, my camera didn’t like it. After checking it out for a while, we pressed on… holy smokes… there it was!!
We found the carriage!!! The metal was in a bit of a heap, but it was pretty apparent what it had once been. Being a horse person, I couldn’t help but feel sad for the animals that didn’t make it. Seeing this under water was also a pretty amazing thing. We carried on drifting, and came back upon the Gaskin. It’s kind of a tradition to come back to the old wreck. The poor thing doesn’t have any deck left, and the railing is caving in on the bow.

I reconnected my wing inflator, as we were staying at a consistant depth, and only getting shallower from here.

We did a couple of turns of the wreck, and drifted back into the shallows. This is where we were playing silly buggers. Steve found some kind of giant plastic lid… or.. as we like to call it.. a turtle shell…

Steve then turned over on his back and blew water rings…

Jay…

OO.. and a face off!

Me…

Bottom Time ~ 154 mins.
Avg. Depth ~ 35′
Water Temp. ~ 73

Jay…

Steve…

Me…

When we were coming out of the water, we saw a few people that we didn’t know.. or so we thought! We started talking, and realized that it was Crpntr133 (Wally), and Divin’Hoosier (Jim), and their two friends! They were going to take a trip to the Gaskin. It was great to meet them!

From there, we headed over to Dive Tech, where we were meeting up with Bob and Pue! w000000000t! They were a bit tired from their 60 km bike ride, but still managed to come out and have some dinner with us. Funny… the families that were seated around us didn’t stay there for long, and they didn’t seat new people around us after they left either!

I wonder why?

What an absolutely amazing day… Finding new wreckage, the elusive horse and carriage, and meeting new, wonderful people. What more could one ask for???