Chanb77's Weblog

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!