Another Diving Weekend ~ Day 2

1 05 2009

April 24th – April 26th, 2009 ~

 Day 2

Today was an unofficial DIR Ontario day! Steve, Francois, and I went down to Centeen Park, where we met up with Greg, Jay, Oren, Kevin, and Jeremy for our favourite scooter dive. The water is warming up a bit, but it still wouldn’t be as long of a dive as we normally do in the summer.  

We brought our gear down to the entrance and geared up.

 

As we geared up, we saw another couple of friends, going for a swim…

Scott W.  and Eric B….

 

Frankie also distributed a few scooter end caps…

 

Greg, analyzing gas…

 

Jay, Oren, and Steve…

 

Greg…

 

Frankie…

 

Kevin and Jeremy…

 

Once we got in the water, we did our checks, and formed our teams. There were eight of us, so we’d have to pay a bit extra attention to detail on remaining together. We dropped down to 15′, gathered ourselves, did bubble checks, and headed out.

Our plan was to scooter out into the channel, see what we could find, then drift back onto the Gaskin. This is one of my favourite dives, and could do it just about every weekend. We don’t seem to see many of the same things twice, and we always end up back on the Gaskin.

We headed out, stopping a couple of times, to keep together, and dropped down to the channel. Ok! Time to drift!

Umm… wait a second… Where’s the current? We hovered there for a couple of minutes, but the current forgot to show up. Huh… odd. The current does vary out here, but there is usually enough in the channel for a nice drift back to the Gaskin. Apparently, not today! We decided to hit the triggers again, and zig zagged around, having a bit of fun.

Of course, we did end up back at the Gaskin, and had some more fun, with all of us zipping around the wreck. It was time to turn the dive, and we headed back in.

Bottom Time ~ 68 mins.
Max. Depth ~ 80′
Water Temp. ~ 43
Vis. ~ 30 – 50′

We pulled the gear out, then headed for a bite to eat, to share our adventure and debrief!

 

From left to right:
Jay Roy, Francois Tremblay, Jeremy Jones, Oren Levstein, Kevin Ripley, Steve Blanchard, Chantelle Blanchard, Greg Mossfeldt…

 

Gotta love the new stickers… (plug for Mark Em at Dive Signs)!! 😛

Stay tuned for Day 3!


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Another Diving Weekend ~ Day 1

1 05 2009

April 24th – 26th, 2009 ~

 

Francois came down from Quebec, on Thursday night. We were going to head out to the river for some diving goodness! There were other friends that were to join us throughout the weekend. 

 

Day 1

 

Francois, Steve, and I went down to the river, and scouted out new entry points for the river. We headed down near Lock 21, to see about finding the entry for Lock 22. We ended up scouting out a few other spots, and even checked out the Upper Canada Village.

It looked promising, until we saw the steep rocks we’d have to climb down, with our doubles and scooters. The picture doesn’t show how steep it is, but it’s pretty rocky too…

We then saw something pretty promising…

…until we came upon more rocks, blocking entrance to the water. It would be a bit of a task to climb over them in tanks, and lift scooters over. It was too shallow to just push over. 

 

It was getting a bit late in the day, and we were itching to get in the water. We decided to head down to Morrisburg, and go for a dive at Lock 23. When we arrived at one of the three entry points, we saw that the water was pretty high, and the dock had collapsed a bit over the winter. I guess that’s what happens when it sits on tires.

It was still stable, so we put the scooters in and went for a ride.

Our mission was to head west from the dock, then drift onto the Lock system. Our scooters were on full pitch, and we were not making any ground at all. The current was absolutely screaming, and there was no way we could follow the original plan. This is not uncommon for this site, and we always have a back up plan, should this happen. In one spot, there was so much “gunge” flying through the water, it almost looked like an under water snow storm. My guess is that it was a result of the rain that we’ve had, as well as the algae lifting.

We drifted over to the Lock, and did a few passes up and around.. up and around. Francois and Steve both had the video cameras going, so we did get footage of this insane current today. When we drifted with it, it actually looked like we were using the scooters… quite funny.

We had originally planned on exiting back at the dock, but the current was that strong, that it proved to be more difficult than we thought, to get back to it, so we decided to drift down to the beach area.

We got there, surfaced with big grins, and debriefed about our adventure.

Bottom Time ~ 40 minutes
Max. Depth ~ 45′
Temp. ~ 43
Vis. ~ 20′ – 30′

Steve had his camera housing lid modified. Amazing results with the new lens…

 

I also got a camera mount for my scooter, but it will have to be modified, in order to accommodate the 8″ port.

 

Another great day in the river!

Francois and I…


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