Port Hardy 2009 - Day One - Diving Hussar Point
Posted on 29. Aug, 2009 by Greg Mossfeldt in West Coast
DAY ONE (HUSSAR POINT AND BROWNING WALL)
Luckily I escaped the night unscathed after a long night of restless sleep wondering if the Sasquatch would come and take advantage of us during our sleep on homosexual Fridays. Unfortunately I believe Greg did not. I can’t say for sure but I heard some strange noises (snorts/squeals) and the faint sound of a banjo over the gentle crashing of waves on the hull of the boat. Needless to say I slept with one eye open and my back to the wall for the duration of the night.
After a seemingly long evening, and with Greg somewhat hobbling in the morning we were up and ready for some diving. The plan place ourselves at approximately 100 feet for twenty minutes and come back up with some simulated failures, bottle rotations, etc., to make sure we were ready for the deeper diving that we had came for.
The first dive was at Hussar Pt. which was an inlet/bay that meandered over to Browning Wall in the pass. The dive started off relatively easy with a nice leisurely swim to get us around the corner of the point so we could start to gain some depth and to really open up the new Dive - Xtra Cudas, unfortunately one of the group who will remain nameless (think a can of soup) had a scooter that was not quite adequate to keep up with the Ferraris we were riding. We dropped down to our slowest gear to avoid leaving him behind in our prop wash and avoid separation.
After completing our twenty minute dive at 100’ we slowly ascended using the wall and suddenly things began to go south. Greg McCuaig had a valve failure that was taken care of and fixed. The ascent to the surface was than continued and the bottle rotations were complete. Well … the bottle rotations were completed but they were not the most graceful things in the world. Dealing with current, the added stress of being watched, just being excited, everything really makes things interesting. Regardless we completed the bottle switches and switched gases at 70 feet, to 50 % mix, and continued on up the wall.
Shortly after switching gases we shot a bag to the surface that seemed to deflate and fall back down on its own. After seeing this I grabbed the bag and shot it myself but not before conducting a shoulder check which was apparently unnoticed by the resident sea lion swimming above us and it to was not allowed to the surface until I rotated around to see what was up. The bag then was allowed to go free and continue its long awaited journey to the surface. Our spent bottom gas bottles were sent up the line to keep the gear to a minimum but not before more failures were induced on the group.
During the gas switch to our oxygen, I mysteriously ran out of air and singled my buddy who donated me his oxygen bottle. During the process he was tangled in the kelp along the wall. He was not able to free himself so rather than wait and sort it out and risk getting myself entangled I pulled out my knife and cut the kelp off of him. During this process he lost a bit of buoyancy and went up about 4 feet which is more than what is available on the reg so I let it go and switched back to my back gas. This brought our first dive at Port Hardy to an end.
After a decent little lunch and video review of the dive we continued on with our second dive of the trip out to Browning wall. The plan was again to go to 100 feet and check out the wall and come up with simulated deco and again some failures. This time the dive went a bit smoother with the bottle rotations, although they were not perfect by any means. Practice will be needed on these skills to make them fast, and efficient, although being a bunch of new techies I believe the skills were performed as well as could be expected. After the bottle rotations and switching to the 50% bottle a bag was shot and the spent bottom gas and scooters were shot up the line. The goal here was to simulate being on an expedition dive to take the spent gear away from the divers so they would have less to manage. Plus it was a lot of fun watching the scooters and bottles make there way to the surface.
The dive progressed from here and up to 20’ we went. Again I had an o-ring problem on my reg that was fixed by securing, talk about bad luck. No valve failures were induced and the deco was completed although it was a bit longer than I expected, but we made it back safe and sound to the Mamro.
After eating a good supper it was brought to our attention that we would be diving deeper the next morning and the gas blending should begin soon. 21/35 was selected for the depth so Greg McCuaig and I began our night of blending gases. Talk about a time consuming process, I now see the benefit of the rebreather route. Three hours later yes three hours later, we finished up the blending of the tanks, little did we know that there was barely enough drive gas on the boat to aid in the blending of the mixes using Greg’s booster, but that was rectified the following day.
After the blending was completed and the deco plan scrutinized for the planned morning dive, we were entertained by Captain Dan’s embellished reminiscing. entertaining stories especially about I especially remember one of the She-P in line with running glue. Needless to say our Bullshit meter was in the red but it was entertaining and took our focus away from the Banjo strumming from Clam Cove heard gently in the ocean breeze.
Soon after story time we were again back in the bunks to await our dive in the morning.
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