The Lost Villages ~ Cornwall

17 08 2008

Sunday, August 17th, 2008 ~

 

Steve and I headed out to Guindon Park, where we were going to take the scooters out for a run. Steve has done numerous dives here, but this would be my first time out here. This was the location of the Lost Villages, where they flooded towns in the late 50s, to expand the St. Lawrence and a Hydro project, decided on by the Canadian Government. They relocated the people from the towns, as well as the highways (Hwy. 2 and Hwy. 38).

 

Here is a link to the old and new boundaries of the towns and the St. Lawrence.

 

http://www.lostvillages.ca/en/html/map_of_villages.html

 

There is a public boat launch here, so we have to be careful when descending and ascending, as it is pretty shallow at the entry point. We dropped down, made our way through the weeds, and found Old Highway 2 (Lol.. scootering down the highway). We made our way through the old channel, that drops to about 60′, then back up to a bed, where we saw an old wreck. We played about here for a while, then continued on. The current was pretty strong in spots, so I was happy we had our scooters. We buzzed along, checking out all of the old structure foundations, railway tracks, and pieces of old buildings. We even found old cables. It’s not often you find a shipwreck beside an old building…lol… Once you realize what you’re looking at, it’s pretty amazing. We spent over an hour looking through the old villages, and I found it so fascinating. I can’t wait to go back!

 

Bottom Time ~ 91 mins.

Max. Depth ~ 66′

Water Temp. ~ 72

Vis. ~ 20′

 


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The Jamieson

3 08 2008

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008~

Steve, Leigh, and I headed to Kingston, to meet our friend, Jay. We then headed over to the ferry, that would take us over to Amherst Island.

We had a bit of a wait, so we goofed around a bit…

Jay…

Steve…

Leigh…

…and I even caught a pic of a little otter with a fish in his mouth…

Here comes the ferry!

Jay was a bit famished…

Upon looking overboard, there was a lip where people had thrown coins…

After about a 15 minute ride over, we exited onto the island. Leigh has a friend that lives here, and has allowed us access to his property. You can see the jug to the William Jamieson wreck from his kitchen. Today, we were going to scooter over to it, and see if this was feasible to line, in the near future.

We drove up to what is believed to be the life raft from the Jamieson, when it sank in 1923. Some believe that the raft was switched out later on, but no one really knows for sure. We aren’t quite sure what’s up with the wagon wheel…

We lined our gear up on the shore, and got ready…

We did our predive checks, took a bearing, and headed out to the wreck. The visibility was a bit stinky, and we wanted to check to see if we were still on the correct bearing, so we blew a bag and surfaced after about 12 minutes on the trigger. The water was a bit choppy, as there was a bit of a storm brewing, not that far away from us. We looked for the jug, and saw that we were about 100 feet away from it! w00 h00! We took another bearing, and back down we went. We managed to get right to the mooring line, to the wreck! W00 H00!! There was an obvious thermocline at 63′, and the bottom of the wreck is at about 75′. You could actually see the haze of the thermocline. Seeing as we had wet gloves on, we tried to stay above it for the better part of the dive! None of us had done this wreck before, and it is a pretty fun one to do. Although the vis wasn’t the best, it was still pretty cool. The Jamieson is a two masted schooner, about 100′ long, and carried coal. The stern is still intact, but the bow is pretty broken up. We had the camera with us, and both Steve and Leigh took turns filming. I made sure I did the Heleen dance too. ;o)

On the way back, we stayed at exactly 62′, in order to keep toasty! The ride back seemed alot quicker! We did see what might have been a mast of some sort, sticking out of the silt, quite a ways off of the wreck… a very interesting thing to see.

Bottom Time ~ 76 mins.
Max. Depth ~ 71′
Temp. ~ 55/65
Vis. ~ Hazy

We surfaced, doffed our gear, and went back in to laze about in the water for a while.

The pics are a bit dark, but… oh well…

Steve…

Leigh…

Jay…

Me…

Myself, Jay, and Leigh…

We packed up, and headed over to the ferry dock ~ It seems we missed it by about 5 minutes. We’d have to wait another hour, so we loitered for a bit by the cars…

We finally boarded and made our way back to the mainland!

We headed back over to Northern Tech Diver, where Commander Tom was going to be having a BBQ!

Here are the boyz, trying to get it started… it was quite the ordeal… rofl…

There was quite a crowd of us gathered round for burgers and sausage. Thanks to NTD, and to Matt for doing the cooking!


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Brockville ~ July 5th & 6th ~ 2008 ~

7 07 2008

Steve and I headed down to Brockville on Saturday morning, to meet with friends, and go for a dive on the Daryaw. We were diving off of Stefan’s zodiac, and leaving from Mallorytown Landing. We arrived a bit early, and met up with a bunch of other friends, who were also heading out to the Daryaw on their zod, from the Henry Street Boat Launch ~ Steve S., Mat B., and finally got to meet with Greg Mossfeldt. When we got there, there was a huge freighter going by. It was definitely empty, as it was moving pretty quickly, and was sitting very high out of the water…

We chatted for a while, then headed over to Mallorytown to meet with Sean M., Martin R., and Stefan M. En route, we made a stop at Timmy’s, where we also ran into David H., Alan, and April. 😛

Steve, Martin, and Stefan…

The zodiac was pretty cool.. It was an 18′ boat, with a 90 hp, 4 stroke engine.

What I thought was great, was the stainless steel bar down the middle of the boat, where we were able to stand up all of our doubles on either side, and strap them in.

The Daryaw is about 11km from where we launched, but it really didn’t take long with this zodiac.. Holy smokes, does it move! We got to the mooring line, and tied off beside our other buddies, who were just about to drop in. The surface current was absolutely freakin’ ripping, and we had to put in a pull line, to make it over to the mooring line. Steve, Sean, and I were going to drop in first, do our dive, then man the boat while Stefan and Martin went down.

We geared up and in we went. Holy smokes… that surface current was absolutely nasty! Without the pull line, we’d have been picked up in Cornwall, I’m sure! This is one wreck, where you really do need to use the line to descend ~ The current is just way too strong to fight it on your own. We hand over handed it down, taking it slowly, and tucked in behind the wreck, where you are sheltered from the worst of the current. We went in for a peek of the coal chute, came back out, and checked out the holds. There is an air pocket in the second cargo hold that we also went in and said a quick hello to each other. You don’t breathe in here, but you can remove your reg and talk. Your voice changes a bit with the pressure as well. We left the pocket, and poked around a few places for a bit, then went over and drifted down the keel, and back up. The ascent was a bit easier than the descent, but you still had to use the line most of the time. When we surfaced, we were greeted by about 4 or 5 other boats tied off to the two moorings, and another zodiac tied beside ours (a rather nice one at that)!

Bottom Time ~ 62 mins.

Max. Depth ~ 82′

Water Temp. ~ 67 ~ Wet Gloves~ w00t!

Vis. ~ 25′ – 30′

When we surfaced, it seemed that Martin had ripped his neck seal, and was a little bummed out. Steve offered his suit to him, so that at least he hadn’t driven all the way from Quebec not to dive! Luckily it fit.. with little extra room in the turbos, but he was very grateful.

They dropped in for their dive as we manned the boat and relaxed in the sunshine. Did I mention that it was an absolutely beautiful day??? 😀

Stefan and Martin also had a good dive, and we headed back to shore. It seems that I got a little bit too much sun!!

Steve and I then went to see our friends, Kris and Jess. We sat around and chatted for a while, then Kevin dropped by as well, so I could give him Martin’s suit to repair. Steve and I ended up staying over, and Kevin made the drive back to Ottawa.

Sunday morning seemed to come early, and we met Stefan at Centeen Park at 8:30am. We were going to swim out to the Gaskin! We got in the water, did our predive checks, flow checks etc., then off to the Gaskin we went. It took us nearly 20 mins. to swim to the wreck, as the current was a lot stronger than usual. The current also gets a bit stronger at about 20′ off the wreck. We made it there, did a couple of turns of the wreck, then drifted off. We saw some really neat bottles, and a lot of periwinkles… there was also quite a bit of boat traffic, that we could hear. We drifted back to the entry point, where we saw the little black bass from last week, and about 100 of her little babies swimming in a small cloud. If I was a fish, I’m not sure I would have placed my eggs right near the entry point of a popular watering hole, but I guess she knows best. 😛 We debriefed and exited.

Bottom Time ~ 69 mins.

Max. Depth ~ 69′

Water Temp. ~ 67

Vis. ~ Stinky

We were meeting more friends for an afternoon swim to the Gaskin, and all I could think was… “uh… scooter time for the next dive.”

Our friends started to arrive one by one… Mat B., Ritchard F., Greg M., Steve S., Carmen C., Rick, and Mat’s wife and doggy too! The dog really wanted to come on the dive too…lol…

We chatted for a while, and watched as another giant freighter went by…

After our 3 hour surface interval, we dropped in with everyone. Steve and I had our scooters, and Steve was going to film everyone too!

Ok… we felt pretty dumb as we were going out… We would stop along the way to get footage of everyone, and the current was almost non-existent. How dumb do we feel now?  The current did pick up at the wreck, but not nearly as strong as it had been in the morning! Ah well… playing with the scooters is never a bad thing, anyway!

We gallivanted around the wreck for a while, got some footage of everyone going through the wreck, then headed back in search of a purse that we had found the previous week. After searching and searching, we finally found it. We thought Steve had put it in a barrel, but the barrel ended up being some rolled up carpet.

On both dives, we saw a ton of really big arsed fish! There was a school of Perch that I hadn’t seen before, and a bunch of super-sized carp. There were two that kind of freaked me out, when they came right up beside me, and were inches from my face! Man, those things were big!!! I think Steve got some footage of the Perch.

Bottom Time ~ 89 mins.

Max. Depth ~ 69′

Water Temp. ~ 67

Vis. ~ Stinky

I think we may have convinced Ritchard that he needs a scooter!

The whole gaggle of us, less Ritchard, headed over to Timmy’s for some sandwiches and great story-telling.

It’s really fantastic to hang out and dive with everyone on such a beautiful sunny day!

Here’s Greg and his cool car!


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Tag Along!

4 05 2008

Sunday, May 4th, 2008 ~

Steve and I headed down to the mighty Ktown on Friday night, to sit in on a split weekend Fundies course. This was Steve’s first course that he was interning on, on the road to becoming a GUE instructor. I like sitting in on classes, as I enjoy reabsorbing information. Friday night was some classroom stuff, Saturday started off at the pool, for the swim and breath hold tests, then back to the classroom again!

Sunday was dive day. There were four students ~ Two in doubles and two in single tanks. Dive one was a “see where you’re at dive,” and Steve had the video camera going. I went in with Tom R for a leisurely dive in the Brule Road Quarry. We dropped down, did our valve drills, swam around the boat, found a ton of bottles, and Tom even found a gold necklace… We watched the students for a while, and surfaced with them. The two of us then went back to shore, but sat at the surface for a bit.

Bottom Time ~ 48 mins.
Max. Depth ~ 26′
Water Temp. ~ 55 above, 52 below thermocline
Vis. ~ 30′ ish

We saw some familiar faces gearing up to get in, and ended up chatting for a while. I wasn’t sure if I was going to last a whole lot longer on the second dive, as my back was a little sore, so I warned Tom that I may pull out the thumb. Back down we went.. back to the boat… through the boat…while my mask flooded… We made our way back to the class, where we watched a bit, then ascended with them. Tom wanted to take a turn with the camera, so Steve and I hovered nearby. After a few propulsion exercises, Steve and I were to bring the reel in.. Steve started, then handed me the prize! I reeled in, and we surfaced. I was then elected to be one of the single tank students’ buddy for her Valve Drill and S Drill, and I had to play “dummy.” She did the drills without a hitch, then did a timed ascent to the surface. Steve and I went back down for the lift bag, then came in. What a fun day!

Was I ever glad I had my She-P!!!!!!!

Bottom Time ~ 57 mins.
Water Temp. ~ 55/52
Max. Depth ~ 25′
Vis. ~ 30′ ish

Our training dives start up again this Thursday!

w000000000000t!


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Ktown In August!

20 08 2007

August 17th, 18th, & 19th, 2007 ~

I was looking forward to going to Ktown on Saturday morning, to do a nice, relaxing shore dive with some of the gang, and to fix some of the line that had been broken in a few places at the site. Steve was playing hockey on Friday night, and had decided that he didn’t want to make the early rise to drive to Ktown.

Ok.. let’s figure out what on earth we can do so that I can dive my doubles out of my little Honda Civic ~ 2 Door Coupe ~ Not the most desired Dive Gear Transportation Unit…

We started brainstorming, and came up with this…

…with tanks…

…with stages…

I also have two small Rubbermaid tubs placed on either side for removing wet gloves, hood, masks etc.

We finally got it done at about 1 am.

The alarm went off early (way earlier than it should have, so it seemed..) Lol.. and after pressing the snooze button a couple of times, I got up, loaded up the water and yes, Kool-Aid , and off I drove to Kingston, to meet up with James, Dan, and Igor.

Our mission was to fix up the lines at the Stacked Hulls and/or Nicholson’s Point. I arrived at about 12 minutes past the agreed time, to which I felt horrible about (not really), and greeted Captain Tom and Mistress Polly. They had informed me that James had just called, and wasn’t going to be there until 10am… DOHHH… Igor was there, and opted to leave and come back, so I just became a dive shop bum for a little while. (Yeah… like I’ve never done that before?).

At least there were people there that I knew, that were loading up for charters, so I had people to chat with, as well as helped out a bit in the shop, and did a muffin run.

James finally made it into town, and once all the camera stuff and line was ready, off we went to the Stacked Hulls entrance.

Doh.. bad move. There happened to be a sailing boat regatta going on, and half the place was cordoned off, so we headed to Nicholson’s Point.

We ended up doing quite a relaxed dive, fixed the line, and worked on some skills. Not a whole bunch to see, but there is a nice wall, once you get past the old river bed, that contains some pretty cool iron ore formations in about 80ish feet. There’s one that looks like a fire pit.

On the way back, we picked up the pieces of the old line, attached and ran new line in the broken areas.

Bottom Time ~ 54 mins.
Water Temp ~ 67 below thermocline at 49′, 69 above
Max Depth ~ 84′

Today is another garage fix day. It’s coming along quite nicely. I’ll post more pics later! The new trunk rack worked amazingly, I am very happy with it. I did purchase some rubber matting today though, to put on top of it. I bought enough to leave a flap over the lip of the trunk as well. I’ll post that when I’ve done it too!

Garage Developments ~ Sunday, August 19th, 2007 ~

Well, we finally got the walls insulated, primed, and painted. We picked up some shelves (I will take pics when we have stuff on them), and mounted the booster.

Here are pics of the latest developments!!

Steve built some small shelves below the booster for “bits ‘n’ bites.” He is putting in the chain around the T Cylinders as we speak.

Ok.. I caught a pic…

I guess now we’ll have to find a spot for all the actual “garage” stuff now. Tire lifts, garbage bins and recycling bins etc. just don’t have a place in the dive storage area!!


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