Canada Day weekend we headed over to Nanaimo for 2 days of diving with Diver's Choice charters.

On Saturday, Todd, Ashley and myself did a Tech 1 dive on the Cape Breton using our scooters nad doing some mild penetration. The afternoon dive was a recreational dive with scooters on the Saskatchwan.

Saturday night we all head down to Guy's house outside of Duncan for a great barbecue in the late afternoon. Great food and much fun.

On Sunday, Todd, Ashley and myself did a Tech 1 dive on the Snake Island wall. A nice wall with lots of sponges and some nice cutaways. in the afternoon Todd shot video for Mark and Ashley and I did a scooter dive on the Saskatchwan. For the most part we stayed on the outside of the wreck with lots of rolls and tuns.

After the dive we headed to Starbucks and then Alan, Eric and I headed for the ferry. Since it was Canada Day and Monday was a holiday the ferry were quite lite but we missed the departure of the 5:15 ferry by a few minutes and had to wait for the 7:30 PM ferry. Did enjoy the Starbucks coffee and we had plenty of time to enjoy it.

THe weekend of 5/19-21 is a three day weekend in Canada with Monday being Queen Victoria day. A number of BCUE divers headed over to Bamfield on the Barkley Sound the invite of Curt Smeckler.
Barkley Sound is on the west side of Vancouver Island and Bamfield is located on the southern western edge of the sound and is therefore is quite close to the Pacific ocean. Unlike the BC dive sites I have dived up until now the dives sites are at the receiving end of the Pacific Ocean swells. Barkley Sound has a number of islands and a number of wrecks.

From Vancouver, Bamfield is reached via a 2 hour ferry running between Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. From Nanaimo, Port Albernai is about a 1 hour drive north and then
Bamfield is about a 45 mile drive west along a maintained logging road which was basically a dirt and gravel road. I carpooled up with Dirk and we met at Turner Way at 10:00 and headed up to ferry. We were
hoping to make the 12:30 PM ferry but actually ended up being one of last cars on the 10:30 AM.

After we arrived in Nanaimo we headed a few miles north to dive site named Madronna. We did a quick beach dive, swa 5 wolf eels, a GPO in its den and a variety of other marine life.

Following the dive we head up to Port Alberni arriving around 4:30 PM and then headed out to Bamfield ariving close to 6:00 PM. We left messages on Curt's and Chris Fenton voicemail but as it turned out both
were still on the way to Bamfield. Curt was bringing the dive boat Whimsy down from Port Alberni (Barkley Sound almost cuts Vancouver Island into 2) and Chris was driving down. The road ends in East Bamfield and Curt and Chris homes are in West Bamfield which requires a short trip across the harbor. Once Chris showed up we loaded gear into a smaller boat, parked the cars and motored over to West Bamfield. Whimsy was there and we loaded the tanks onto the boat and then headed up to Curts. On the property at Curts house is the dive shed with plenty of room to store dive gear and a full head with shower as well as the 9cfm dive compressor. We stored our gear in the shed and then headed up to house for a bit of dinner and night of the sleep.

In the morning we has additional divers joining us with the scheduled departure time of 10:00 AM.

We headed out in morning to dive a high spot that Curt had identified as possible new dive site. I ended up with some gear issues so sat the dive out. The ocean swells coming onto the high spot created some interesting conditions for getting on and off the boat but we got everyone safely in and out of the water. Some divers reported some interested bottom and others reported pretty much diving on sand.

For the surface interval/lunch we headed for a protected area between 3 islands. A few of Kirtk's had a house and dock here and ran an oyster aquaculture setup.

After lunch we headed to a wall on Nanit Islet which was not exposed to the swell I dived with Chris and Kim and did a Tech 1 dive along the slope and wall. Initially we dove on sand but as we approached the point it turned into a quite nice dive.

Saturday night was spent at Curt's. .

In the morning we headed out to the Broken Island group and the wreck of the Van Leer. The Van Leer was freighter carrying a bunch of Dodge Colts from Japan in the 70's. It pretty left without any functional navigation gear and probably thought Barkley Sound was Puget Sound. In fog in ran up on the rocks and apparently was high and dry for a couple of years before sliding into the ocean. Curt, Dirk and I dived the outside of the portion of the wreck that sat to the west of the rocks.

The afternoon dive was a search for the wreck of Thiepval which was a Coast Guard vessel that sank in 1932. We had its approximate location and Chris and Kim made a scooter dive without being able to locate it. Curt and I then did a similar search and after no luck chose to search an area to a bit north of the original site. We had no luck but when we returned to our anchored boat, we discovered Chris and Kim and ultimately found it. On our remaining gas we were able to spend 10 mins on the wreck.

Sunday night was again spent at Curts where we feasted on a spaghetti prepared by Curt.

On Monday morning we had an enjoyable dive on Turner Island and then it was off to pack up gear and dash off to catch the Nanaimo ferry.

Great dive last night at Whytecliff. Eric and I formed one team with Todd and Ashley as team 2. First non-scooter dive in awhile. We swam out to the island on the left to a max depth of 80 feet. Viz left a bit to be desired particularly in the shallows but at depth it was around 15 feet Water temp varied around 42-44 degrees. A large harbor seal spend much the dive diving down on us.

Marine life highlights included a Giant White Dorid and Golden Dirona nudibranchs, and all the other marine life that is relatively new to

Picked up a copy of the great book, Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest: A Photographic Encyclopedia of Invertebrates, Seaweeds And Selected Fishes (Hardcover) ,so now I am trying to pay a bit more attention to differentiate the marine life I am seeing.

Took the 8:30 ferry from Horseshoe Bay over to Nanaimo to the dive the Cape Breton, a 400 foot WWII Victory class ship and the Saskatchewan, a 366 foot ex-Canadian destroyer escort (sister ship to the Yukon).

Five of us met in North Vancouver at Eric's place and loaded up Blair's pickup with gear and then all piled in for the short trip to the Horseshoe Bay Ferry Terminal

The first good news of the day was that that the ferry trip over was half price for some promotion that BC Ferries were running. After a short wait we boarded the ferry and headed up a deck and to the galley where everyone grabbed lunch. Oatmeal, yogurt and toast seemed to be popular.

On the approx. 90 min trip over we came into patches of fog but as we approach Nanaimo we saw that the dive site near Snake Island was clear and the seas flat.

Once off the ferry it was a short trip to marina where we unloaded gear onto a barge like small outboard boat that was tied up to the adjacent to the gangway. All of
gear easily loaded and then we motored across the marina to the dive boat. There we transferred the gear onto the dive boat. As the barge boat was quite stable
and its deck height was even with the rear swim step/deck of the dive boat this was one of easiest gear loadings I have come upon.

Once loaded we headed out of the harbor (breaking thru some thin ice on the surface) out to the Cape Breton. Another boat was moored to the stern which we had planned to dive so we moored onto a bouy that was attached to the forward end of the ship.

Eric, Blair and I made up one team while Ashley, Todd and Mark made up the second team. The wreck was large and had limited life, but lots of internal space to explore.

After lunch onboard we motored over to the Saskatchewan. Teams were the same as on the first dive. The Saskatchewan has quite a bit more life on it and the most common growth on the exterior is Metridium anemones. (similar to the Yukon). Fun dive.

Returning back to dive boat it was clear we were going to miss our schedule ferry, so we relaxed and made dinner plans.

A great day.

Pictures

Mike Reedy and I headed over to Catalina yesterday. Leaving the harbor the swell was fairly impressive and we had more wind and wind chop then expected so the trip was over was a bit rougher been expected. We were looking to dive somewhere over by the West End but with the swell we headed towards the Isthmus and finally ended up anchoring near the Submarine Tower. Mike was going to trying out a new undergarment and I had a Dive-Xtras video mount to try out.

Plans for a dive on the Tower ended when a tooth on Mike dry's suit broke and the zipper pulled apart. We were able to get it back together but we decided
to limit the dive to recreational depths so if Mike suffer a major leak we could surface quickly. So with Video housing mounted we headed off to scooter
the area to the east from the Submarine Tower. We saw the results of major squid run and there were even a few squid still in the process of mating. Also
saw a large Pacfic Angel Shark on the bottom and lots of cabezon along the dropoff and the kelp.

The video mount work great. My short body X-Scooter was very stable with the Gates TRV-900 housing mounted. Very easy to use.