Sauntering Through Moulinette

23 05 2016

Sunday, May 22nd, 2016 ~

So… Today’s dive started out with a bang, or a flush, or a swift, cold current… inside my drysuit. Totally my fault.

After bringing our gear down to the water, Steve, Eric, Jen, and I got into our drysuits, and put the gear IN the water. Jen was with me, when I was bringing my camera down, and as we were chatting, and at our scooters, I asked if she would mind clipping my camera to my stage. I didn’t have my dry gloves on, and I didn’t want to let water into my wrist seals. As I am handing it to her, I swear, I felt like I had hit some kind of frigid electric shock system.

Yes… I had forgotten to completely zip my drysuit zipper. After 10 years of diving dry, I finally did it. I mindlessly walked in, and let the flows of the St. Lawrence River completely soak me. *SRLSY*  I may have actually breached the water, as it dripped down, into my feet. Thank goodness, we were only in water up to our waists… er… up to the bottom of our drysuit zippers. *Dork*

Ok… I hung my head in open zipper shame, as Jen was telling an interested passer-by about my “damp” misfortune. I guess the silver lining is that I didn’t pee myself.

I fixed myself up (closed my zipper), and since the water was 50F’ish, I decided to soldier on. There would be no ridiculing in the locker room, for this girl.

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Ok… tanks on, in the water, went over our plan, gear checks, before we made a compass bearing. Our objective was to find the old Grist Mill, that was covered over, as part of the flooding of the St. Lawrence River. There is significant current in most of this area, so it is either a scooter-dependent dive, or a boat dive (we have no idea what the coordinates are, since we are trying to find it). 🙂

We found some foundations, Old Hwy. 2, a lot of tree stumps, and some remnants of what used to be the town of Moulinette. Always a fascinating place to dive, and to wonder how many people once lived here (311, according to the Historical Society), and lived in a thriving small town.

Remnants of the old town of Moulinette…

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We didn’t end up finding the Grist Mill on this dive, but we sure had a lot of fun looking for it!

As we scootered back, in the shallower water, the sun was shining down, and we could see our reflections in the top of the water. I tried to stop and take a photo, but due to the shallowy’ness (new word), I couldn’t get the shot, after we had stopped. I still tried (unsuccessfully)…

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Bottom Time: 1 Hour, 10 Mins.
Max. Depth: 56′
Water Temp.: 51F (53F, in some places)
Visibility: 25′, and milky

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Once we got out, and I dumped the water out of my drysuit (from my earlier self-inflicted zipper misfortune, ending up with chilly feet) and packed up, we went over to Ault Park, where the Lost Villages Museum sits. It wasn’t open, but we did manage to take some photos of some of the buildings that were moved, before the river flooding. I absolutely love this place, and look forward to going back, once it’s open for the season!

Just a couple of photos…

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Here is a link to the Historical Society web site:

Moulinette

We finished up the evening, with dinner at the Pizzeria/Restaurant, just west of the park. Their fries and gravy were really delicious. Oh yeah, and the Jello. That was pretty yummy, too. I think it was my first time, having blue jello! 😛 Blue, for what my toes must have been, at the end of the dive. Thank goodness, the water temp wasn’t too bad!

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Categories : 20 Sweet 16

Brail Diving

14 09 2015

Saturday, September 12th, 2015~ 

We had a bit of a late start to the day, but we still wanted to get in the water. It was chilly and raining, but… DIVING!

Frankie had his heart set on going to the Paper Factory Basement, so that’s where we headed – at least, that is the destination that we attempted to travel to. There were a few cars there, and one boat in the water (we saw the trailer), so we knew to look out for a boat. 🙂 The water was extraordinarily low. Probably the lowest that we have seen, here.

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We put our gear in the water, and as we were getting in, Eric came by to pick up his gear, for the next day’s Diving Goodness. It felt really weird to see him on the dock, instead of in the water.

Once we did our gear checks, we surface scootered out to a spot that we would be able to see a bubble check, and descended.

Ay carumba… Talk about no visibility! We saw the ends of our scooters, but that’s about it. The water was full of particulate, and… just… MILK. All I could think of were Leigh’s words: “I do not dive in milk.” Too bad that I was wearing black wet gloves, because I wanted to pull Leigh’s big, blue thumb. We carried on.

I saw a couple of pike, which was nice. I hadn’t seen any, this year. Also, a couple of sheepshead carp, and some bass.

We dipped into the first bit of channel, then the second, and drifted for a bit. The currents were all over the place – non-existent in some areas, and absolutely ripping in others. There was one spot, where our scooters were not even moving, at half-pitch. If we hit the “turbo,” on the trigger, we did make ground.

It got to the point where there really was no point in continuing. We think we actually were on top of the Power House, but we couldn’t see anything, to really confirm it.

We turned around, and headed back to the entry. Frankie saw a couple of nice carp, on the way back. 😀

Bottom Time: 1 hour, 14 minutes
Max. Depth: 68′
Water Temp.: 71F
Vis.: 5′ of milky, particulatey crap – maybe the worst that we’ve seen, here

Oh, well… We went diving, and were able to practice our no-vis, scootering drills!

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Categories : Twenty Fifteen

Morrisburg – A Current Affair!

1 07 2014

Sunday, June 29th, 2014 ~

A large gaggle of us met down at the Morrisburg public dock, where we discussed our dive plan. We would enter down the road, then scooter/drift through the old channel, and through Lock 23. Since we had a bit of a distance to drift, we unloaded at our entry, then brought most of the vehicles down to the exit, and drove back to the entry, in our van. We would pick up our van, after the dive!

Some of the gear, unloaded…

It appears that sometimes gear DOES grow on trees!

We were going to scooter/drift in “this” direction (east)…

We entered the water, carefully. There were some slippery rocks, so we took our time. We scootered south, into the old channel, then started to drift. The visibility was not great, so staying together was a bit of a task. We did manage, though.

When we reached the lock wall, we tried to stay on the north side, but the current was absolutely ripping there, so we opted to go up and over, to the North side. I was loving how the XK1 handled the screaming current! Perhaps we can try to scooter upstream, another time… the dives where we always have to resort to “Plan B,” since the current gets to strong, to even scooter against.

Before we made it to the beach area, we found what may have been a dump area. There was some old garbage, and a large pile of bottles, in the silt. We blew an SMB, then swam over to the beach area. It was a beautiful day, so the beach was quite busy. We usually get asked by both kids and adults, “What do you see, down there?”

Bottom Time: 1 hour, 39 mins.
Max. Depth: 58′
Water Temp.: 62F
Vis.: 5′ to 10′ – Milky

Our exit point…

Chris took Steve to pick up our van, while I was the designated gear watcher. Raph had quite a drive ahead of him, so he left right away.

After gear loading…

At our post dive meal, I could not help but think of my friend, Jeff Schrieber, making fun of our mooses aboot the hooses…

Cheers, Jeff! 😛

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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Categories : Two-Oh-One-Four

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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Categories : 2000 + 13

The Power House… Or, Thereabouts…

6 07 2013

Sunday, June 30th, 2013 ~ 

The good Doctor Oren decided to come up for the weekend, and we met at Guindon Park.

We decided to get in on the opposite side of the marina…

Getting gear together…

The plan was to go to the Power House, since we hadn’t been in a while.

We headed south, down the embankment, and up the other side. We drifted for a bit, but the visibility was so horrible, that we never ended up getting to the Power House. We did find a lot of other cool things, though!

There were some areas with some absolutely ripping current, and areas with none. It was a pretty fun ride!

We found a large structure, that we really weren’t sure what it was, but it had ties for ships to be tied up to it (obviously, before the River Flooding).

As we made our way back over to the north side of the embankment, we found a really large anchor. Probably one of the largest that we have ever seen.  We also found a tower, and a swing bridge.  It was a pretty cool day to find stuff!

As we made our way in, we had surfaced, to get a bearing on where we were. We blew a bag, in case there were any boats. Since there did not seem to be many boats at all, we decided to head towards the boat launch, to get out.

Yeah… there weren’t any boats, until the the little one that buzzed us, went overhead. I swear, we were inches from the prop. I felt the vibrations in my head. Normally, you can hear them coming, but this one was especially quiet. Scared the living pachoosies out of me! *Phew!* We were only in 6′ of water!

We came in safely, and parked our gear.

Bottom TIme: 2 hours, 37 minutes
Max. Depth: 77′
Water Temp.: 66F
Vis.: 2′ to 20′ (depending on where we were)

Although we didn’t make it to the Power House, we were all pretty excited to see new things!


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Categories : 2000 + 13

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