Ahh… Jodrey Goodness!

13 10 2013

Saturday, October 12th, 2013 ~

We gathered a few of the troops, and headed down to Caiger’s. Our charter was in the afternoon, so we brought some gear down to the docks, to wait for the morning folks to return. Once River Diver came in, we gave the other divers some time to unload, then we climbed aboard!

We did our usual stop at Boldt Castle, for customs clearance, then made our way over to the mooring tree. The usual branch had been broken, so we settled on another one. We couldn’t figure out why Frankie wasn’t grabbing it, until we noticed that it was just hanging there. 😛

We went through the usual routine… gear checks, pre-dive briefing, etc… then, off we went. Eric V. and Frankie teamed up, and Sofie and Cas joined Steve and I!

Our plan was to stay on the bow, so we got down the wall, and did a bit of a tour. We decided not to go in anywhere, since 4 people would have been a little much for a lot of the spaces. Steve brought the Go Pro, and got a little bit of footage, too.

We had a little bit of bumper car action, on deco. It was nice and relaxing, but since there were four of us, we did catch a little bit of the current, which just made us have to use a fin, here and there. I seem to recall that someone’s bottom timer bungee may have come into contact with my spring strap. My spring strap won. 😛

We also noticed the vacuum cleaner, that we had not seen in a really long time. It used to be near the stool (at 20′), but is now sitting a little bit downstream.

Once most of our deco was up, we scootered around to the bowl – where the boat was anchored, finished up, then made our slow ascent to the surface, where we did our 1 ATA deco stop – Or, chilled at the surface. There were a few smiles. 😀

Bottom Time: 1 hour, 16 mins.
Max. Depth: 187′
Water Temp.: 62F

I think Cas is fitting right in, as he has learned the “Moose Ears” signal!

The one and only… Frankie Boy!

Eric V. …

Rick had a bunch of Deco Cookies for us, too! No, I didn’t eat all of those cookies!

Group shot 1…

Group shot 2…

Once we returned to Caiger’s, we had to stay on the boat, until we cleared customs. We had visions of the sun going down, and us shivering in the dark, but… that didn’t happen. We were cleared in no time, and the unloading began! We were at a pretty far dock, thanks to the very low water levels. Once we had all of our stuff put away, it was Swiss Chalet for dinner, where we met up with even more friends.

Ahhhh… It doesn’t get much better than this… :o)


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To The Power House!

10 10 2013

October, 2013 ~

Ahhh…. an afternoon dive, out of Guindon Park. We unloaded our gear at the water, moved the van and car to a parking spot, and got ready to dive!

We did our gear checks, and away we went. We scootered south, down the “trench,” drifted for a bit, then south again, where we reached the Overflow Bridge. This meant that we had gone a bit too far, for the Power House. Steve had the Go Pro, so as he was tending to something else, I decided to make some funny faces for the camera (it was on a scooter mount).

We changed our direction, and made our way a little further west, and finally found it! w00t! We tied off our scooters, and went inside a large opening. We swam around, checked out a few different spots, and even came upon a very large eel. He didn’t really want to spend any time with us, so we left him alone.

We exited, removed our stage bottles (added them to our scooter bouquet), and went inside a smaller opening. This was a lot of fun, and we came out another hole, which was right below our gear.

Time to turn back! As we got to the shallows, we surfaced to confirm where we were, and we happened upon an absolutely gorgeous red sunset. We were right on track, so we descended again, and made our way through the weeds, back to the boat ramp. There was a boat coming in, so we went to the other side of the dock to exit.

Bottom Time: 1 hour, 58 mins.
Max. Depth: 77′
Water Temp.: 62F

It was a lot of fun, and great to show our visitors some of the sunken villages!

“This is how I roll…”

After our dive, we settled on Pizza Hut as our after-dive nourishment spot… and we noticed that they actually moved it. From there, Sofie and Cas had a date with the border folks, while Steve and I started on our way home, and unloaded gear! Until the next dive!


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That Was Some Current!

6 10 2013

Saturday, October 5th, 2013 ~

Sofie and Cas arrived the night before, from the Netherlands, and today we were taking them across the border, to Alexandria Bay! DUI was having their Demo Day there, so we had to stop and say hello to our wonderful friends! It was the tail end of lunch time, and Jimmy tried to feed us!

James had been helping out for the day, and joined us for some Diving Goodness, once we got there.

We also saw Mario and Lisa, who had been waiting for us (sorry we were late… border patrol had something to do with that)!

We decided to go for a scooter dive, along the wall, to see what we could find. We followed the pipe, then out into the channel. We found a few lines along the way, including some gold line, that wasn’t there the last time we were there. We made it to the little car that is against one of the rock pilings, and followed some of the line for a while. Once we got to the wall, it was full speed ahead… sort of. The currents started to get much stronger, and it was as if we were barely moving. I even gave a few kicks, to try and make some headway. The currents went from strong to completely erratic, and were moving every which way but horizontal. As I looked at the others, I noticed that I was not the only one with the nose of my scooter pointed downwards, and we were all scootering with our feet up in the air, to keep ourselves from being thrown upwards. That lasted for about 5 minutes (even though it seemed much longer), and then we let go of the triggers to let ourselves drift. We signaled each other, “Phew!” Yes, there is a signal for “Phew!” 😛 We still all had smiles on our faces, and we had all weathered the wall, safely.

We drifted and scootered back, and reached our exit in no time.

As we surfaced, Cas said something to the effect of, “Now, that was a drift dive! We don’t have diving like THAT, in the Netherlands!”  I think our guests enjoyed that dive! What a blast!

Bottom Time: 1 hour, 13 mins.
Max. Depth: 105′
Water Temp.: 64F

Rock ‘N’ Roll!

We packed up our gear, then made our way to dinner, to meet our DUI friends! What a great day!


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Another Day At Mo’s Quarry – Camera Day!

29 09 2013

Saturday, September 28th, 2013 ~

We met David J. at the quarry, with Hugh, so that Dave could do his Fundies Rec to Tech upgrade, which went really well! We also did some rescues, which were a lot of fun.

Congratulations, Dave! You have worked very hard, and come a long way! w00t! *Clap Clap*

First Dive
Bottom Time: 51 mins.
Max. Depth: 58′
Water Temp.: 55F (below thermocline)

Second Dive (Rescues)
Bottom Time: 20 mins.
Max. Depth: 13′
Water Temp.: 64F

Steve and I had a little snack, then got back in. We recently upgraded our camera system from Tom W.’s old backup system, to the system that he had upgraded to, when he sold me his old one. We now have both generations of Tom Wilson cameras. Thank you, Tom! If I can only shoot half as decent as Tom, I will be a happy camper. This would be my first time ever using strobes, so it is a totally different ball of wax, for me! Shooting with ambient light, for the last 5 years (wow… I can’t believe it has been almost 5 years, since purchasing the Nikon D100), and switching to the Nikon D200, with…. STROBES, is going to be just a little bit different!

We got in on the far side, and we each took a couple of shots.

Me…

Steve…

We swam across the quarry, towards the plane, where we kicked on the strobes. We each took a few shots, that didn’t exactly turn out very well. We will need to work on positioning the strobes, and getting them to a good place, using a wide angle lens.

One, that turned out, of Steve…

I notice that in the above picture, my habit of using ambient light is still there. 😛

Me, in front of the boat…

Steve, in mid-water, as we made our way down to the sub…

Time to play…

I spy a Steve, hiding in the Shark Sub’s mouth!

Then, it was my turn!

Out, I come!

w00t!

We made our way back up the wall.

In this pic, it looks like I am about to do a somersault. I have no idea what I was doing, here…

Steve…

Bottom Time: 35 mins.
Max. Depth: 61′
Water Temp.: 55F

Well, there is a wide margin of improvement to be made, with regards to the camera settings, and I am really looking forward to some fun winter shots, this year!


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Anchor’s Away!

16 09 2013

Sunday, September 15th, 2013 ~

Well, since we never go to Centeen Park (a little bit of sarcasm, there), we decided to go for another scooter/drift dive, entering at the park. Frankie was down for the day, and Eric B. joined us, too.

We hit the triggers upstream for a bit, then dropped into the channel. We headed up the embankment on the other side, and started to drift. We found a lot of wreckage along the way, some cool bottles, and a lot of things that we had not seen before. We then came upon a very large anchor, that Steve had seen before. This thing was absolutely massive. The chain links were bigger than Steve’s hand. The current is a little strong in this area, so we didn’t stay long, but it was a really neat thing to see. I hope we can find this one again!

Apart from that, we did have quite a few laughs, made our way back up, did a little deco, then headed back in! Just another day in the Riva!

Bottom Time: 2 hours, 6 mins.
Max. Depth: 108′
Water Temp.: 68F


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