Stolt November 2005

Had a very nice couple of dives yesterday, aboard the independence again. Seas were relatively flat, the occassional roller but nothing of consequence. There were 7 of us including crew, three ccr divers, four open circuit, one wetsuit diver (props to Patty, that takes, um, guts!) Viz was fairly unremarkable, probably in the 15' range, but how much do you really need to have fun? I splashed with Art and went to the bottom, and was delighted to see a half dozen scallops waiting right there for us. On the down side, that was it, 10 minutes later we hadn't found any more. On the up side, Art doesn't eat scallops. My kind of buddy! We had a nice leisurely tour through the engine room, until Art signalled he was going up. He was OC, so we had prearranged that he would head up to the anchor line after 30 minutes. I continued poking around, enjoying the abundant sea life. I think I must be part fish, since every time I saw the cunner scatter my first thought was "Oh shit what's out there!" Oh yeah, just me. Apparently the no bubble diver is ok but the hunkin' chunkin' halcyon light is totally whack. What really freaks me out is when you see a school of fish fleeing towards you, makes you wonder what is so scary on the other side that you seem tame by comparison. I had that experience in cape ann moments before a seal got in my face, tripped me out and had my buddy screaming through his reg like a little girl (you reading this, unnamed buddy?) I finished the dive out at 75 minutes, stayed toasty the whole time in 57 degree water top to bottom. Dive 2 I splashed 15 minutes early to go play the crazy shopper picking up scallops. I went about 100' out, managed to bag another dozen more. Maybe its a consequence of the fact I don't drink/whatever anymore, but I must say I do enjoy that buzzy narc'd feeling. What better than getting high from going diving, and then getting high from being diving? The plan was to return to 100 feet to meet Art, right on the money I felt a tap on my shoulder and there he was. We toured around a bit more, then started stuffing mussels in on top of the scallops. I had a laugh when we had room for maybe one more handful, so I reached down to grab a couple and came up with an enormous soccer ball size lump. Art did a very nice pantomime of stomping them all in the bag, and then in an even nicer gesture took the bag up with him when he ascended. I spent the rest of my time lazily swimming around and cruising down passageways. I had about 25 minutes of deco showing, which interestingly never went up after I ascended to 80 or so, and dropped off rapidly once I got to my deco stop and told the computer what I was actually breathing. I ascended off the wreck at 58 minutes for a run time of 75 minutes, including a long, leisurely, very conservative hang. For those trimix certified, Captain Dan's passion is for getting out to the deeper stuff, the oil wreck, u869, carolina etc., on overnighters. He'll be running those trips starting around June. He also really likes to go for original exploration, if folks here are game for that. The only drawback is the boat is too fast, my mussels got all busted up when I dragged the bag! That is a problem I can live with.