Chanb77's Weblog

Sunday, July 19th, 2010 ~

Myself, Steve, Jay, Andy, and Eric met up at the mighty St. Lawrence, for some adventure out of Centeen Park. It was a pretty busy place, and we ran into quite a few people that we both had and hadn’t seen in a while. Apparently, there had been about 5 charter boats on the Gaskin, with another couple of boats circling, waiting for their turn on one of the two mooring blocks. I guess visibility wasn’t going to be the best today…

By the time we got into the water, did our pre-dive checks, and ducked under, we saw that not only was the visibility bad, it was horrible. The five of us stretched out, checked for bubbles, then Steve gave us all the “ok” sign, in which we all returned… we’re off…

Ok.. so.. Jay and Steve were in the lead, with Andy, myself, and Eric behind.. wait a second… I don’t see Eric… “One, two, three..” sets of bubbles… *look behind me*… no Eric. So.. I stopped to wait for him, as I watched the others go off into the abyss. Hmm… still no Eric… I did a quick pass back, then back up. I was about to surface, when I heard his scooter, and went directly to him. *Phew!* We decided to continue on, in hopes of running into the others. We past the corner of the park, then surfaced, to see if the others were there. Ok… not here… We discussed it, and since we knew the plan, we decided to descend and continue on with the plan. Perhaps they were waiting for us near the channel drop.

I swear I thought I heard their scooters at least once, along the way, but you really couldn’t see anything more than about 7′ away from you. We continued along the wall, and still no friends. We reached the spot where the channel drop was to be, and decided to head back to the entry. We weren’t sure whether or not they would have dropped into the channel without us, so we scootered back.

Once we got there, there were no signs of them. We had another discussion, and decided to head over to the Gaskin. If the visibility was that stinky, we would just turn around.

Finding the line out wasn’t very hard, but I had to look twice at the hoop, to get the right bearing on it. Voila.. we have a line! We came close to thumbing it, but we were very close to the wreck, and this is where we always end up after a channel drift dive, so we proceeded. The visibility was horrible, but we plugged on.

Once we got there, we went for a couple of tours through the wreck, which is in such poor shape. It’s sad to see the state of it now, even the changes over the last five years. The visibility actually improved on the wreck. We messed around a bit, then gathered up to head back. Wait a second.. what’s that??

A light! Another light! Holy smokes.. and another! w00t! We had found our friends! We played around some more, then drifted off for a bit, before heading for home. This is about the time that my little video camera malfunctioned, so some of the most fun video bits never made it.

Upon discussing our separating with the other three, it turns out we surfaced within 120 seconds of each other, and must have passed each other at least once, without being able to see each other. They tell us that the visibility was much better in the channel. Bah!

Oh well.. Eric and I still had alot of fun, and it was kind of fun doing the navigating. 🙂

Bottom Time ~ 110 minutes
Max. Depth ~ 70′
Water Temp. ~ 73
Visibility ~ 2′ – 20′

Andy…

Jay…

Eric and Steve…

Eric and I… (Congrats on your Tech 1, Eric!)

As we were doffing gear and getting changed, a little boat went over the Gaskin…

We finished the day off with some Swiss Chalet, wished Jay a “Happy Almost Birthday,” then to Dairy Queen for dessert… Eric’s favourite! Dairy Queen was decorated with sunflowers, which I thought was quite nice…

We also saw a fellow pull up in a rather large pickup truck…

From there, we pan over to Eric’s divemobile. It is entirely possible to dive out of a mini.. doubles, a stage, and a standard body…

I caught a picture of a really old car, about to pull out of a driveway, in Brockville…

It was another day of Diving Goodness out in the River, with friends!