Diving with Scuba Scott
Lately I have been mostly traveling. I went to Tofino, BC on Vancouver Island for a week on a surf trip with my brother. Lots of multi-sport days up there. Surfing in the morning, bike ride in the afternoon, some more surfing, a round of golf. Overall the surf was mellow, but really fun. We had a couple awesome mornings where the wind was quiet or even a bit off-shore with some nice shoulder-high waves. Other days were more of a battle to get long rides, but we always rewarded with at least some decent rides each session. Water temp was cold, but not that bad so long as you had the right gear. For me that is a 4-3-2 with a hood, gloves and booties, but with all that, you could do a couple hours in the water no problem.
I recently got SCUBA certified, so I added a dive to my afternoon activities one day. Since you are not as active paddling with SCUBA, we were in 7mm suits with an additional 7mm jacket/shorty. So you end up with 14mm around your core and upper thighs, then the whole bootie/ hood/gloves set up as well. By the time you got on the BCD and your tank, fins and everything else you needed 20-some pounds of weight to actually sink. It was a bit unwieldy, but not bad once we were in the water.
The visibility was okay, but not amazing. We ended up seeing a ton of really cool stuff, you just had to keep fairly close and make sure your buddy didn’t get too far away. At the beginning of dive one, we were trying to get around this point and into this channel between two islands but the current was quite strong and was swirling, so it was kind of a big back-eddy going in the opposite direction of the main current. We tried to power through and I believe we were almost there, but our dive master gave the signal to turn around. I was working so hard against the current, in addition to being a new diver, so had I sucked down almost all of my air by that time. Katie and the two dive masters had a bit left, so after we re-grouped and got around the point on the boat, they had another segment. I ended up just doing some snorkeling until dive 2.
Dive two was a lot better and I really enjoyed seeing all the sea life. Tons of starfish and crab (many dungeness well over eating size), but the highlight were these huge annemies in large pockets together like miniature forests. They were large, some about two feet tall, with huge white cauliflower tops and thick stalks. Really cool to check out and when you were in a large group of them together, the effect was surreal.
More to come on my other adventures. Lots to catch you all up on!