Advanced Diving Course

A weekend of advanced diving in the waters around Nanimo - what could be better?  We had spectacular weather, amazing sites, lots of camaraderie, and more than our fair share of problems.

We started late - had to pick up Sub Way - arrived to find the trip in disarray and surprise, missed the ferry.  The ferry trip over was calming (We had figured we were taking the little boat over), we got the boat in the water and went off for our first dive - a deep dive on the Saskatchewan.  Kevin and Sean had problems descending causing us to waste precious time at 50 feet at the crows nest.  I pretty much ran out of air on the way up (200 lbs?), but it was a really cool dive.
 

Getting back to harbour we found the van had a flat battery, what later turned out to be a broken alternator.  After several hours waiting for the van to came back and we headed out for a night dive.  We did some surface skills (navigating at night), watched the seals and then did our night dive.  Cool!  Nothing was better than coming to the surface after an amazing dive to see a thin band of orange and a sky filled with starts.  The boat came by to pick us up and we went in for a well deserved dinner.  A few beers later we went to the Tally Ho and spent the evening, and then were diving the next morning.

The next morning we Dove Dodd Narrows - a drift dive when the tide turns.  We arrived a little later - took too long to get in the water - had an amazing dive but had problems getting out of the water.  By the time we were extracting the last person, Wyatt, the current was running at 7 knots with standing white water at the exit to the narrows.  We tried pulling Wyatt out by rope (I gave up my camera), but lost him in the current where he almost got run over by a tug and then run though the white water.  Lots of excitement but everything was OK.

Our last dive of the weekend was again on the Saskatchewan.  We had 3 hours between dives but made a miscalculation on how much bottom time (100 feet) we had which left us right at the edge of the table.   Sean believed he was bent (he was on Oxygen the next day), but the dive was good.  Just as we were arriving in harbour we saw the rescue boats go out.  As we later read in the paper, one of the divers we had seen enter the water (they were the only other boat out when we were diving) died on the wreck.  Having done the dive without a watch, counting my decompression in my head (a very difficult task), I'm buying a computer.