Northwest Dive Club

Oh, thank you, John! I WISH I were cave qualified. One of the things that GUE does that I think is cool is offer a class to the single tank recreational diver, with no aspirations beyond that, that improves skills, teaches gas management, and emphasizes situational awareness. You can get that from a...

What it comes down to is that we all find a way to dive that pleases us and gets us what we want out of diving (or we quit doing it). I personally think that all of us should try very hard to dive in a way that leaves the dive site in good condition for the next party (eg. no silting). We should try...

Well, there's a fair amount of prejudice out there (and it may well have been earned, for all I know!) I vividly remember saying something about DIR in front of the owner of a local tech-oriented shop and having him look at me in consternation and say, "You're not DIR , are you?" I don't k...

We dove with Aldora, and they did right by us. We stayed at the Villa Aldora, which was very pleasant, and gave us the convenience of being picked up right at the villa dock. For all but one day, we had an excellent guide by the name of Mateo (and he did one of our days of cenote diving, too). He's ...

You can pretty clearly see the damage from the storms in the shallow reefs. The deeper areas seemed pretty intact, although I don't know what they looked like before. But the shallow areas have extensive patches of broken coral, and sections dusted or covered with sand. We saw very few small things ...

I know Pelagia Scuba offers periodic classes in tides and currents. http://www.dairiki.org/tides/daily.php/sea/2007-04-02 is a site (that's today's output) that gives you tides and current information, based on certain sampling sites. What you need to know then is what the time correction is for the...

Only problem is, it's got to be THREE scooters, right? For the team? Otherwise you either don't get to ride in the boat, or you don't get to stay in the condo. Fair's fair.

I like this -- True team diving. One with the boat, one with the condo at the caves, and the third with the scooters. They didn't cover this in Rec Triox :-)

Looks like I'll have to make $3500 playing poker locally and then go to Vegas for a weekend to double it. That can be done . . . I should probably just buy two anyways . . . You're going to have to buy two of them if you want to keep a certain dive buddy, because OUR money is being saved for a cond...

Don't give up -- give it another try later in the year. It's well worth doing.

It always makes me shake my head when one of these cancels, although I'll admit nobody makes much of an effort to publicize them.

Doug's polysyllabic lalorrhea is even more fun in person . . .

I've got a singles rig (Oxycheq plate, DSS wing) that I'll lend to somebody who wants to go out for a dive with me and find out if they like this kind of gear. That's one of the really cool things about the BP/W/Hog harness setup -- You can adjust it for people ranging from my size (small) to Bob's ...

I think there are people who believe that spending time with high O2 tensions retards aging. (Wasn't there a rumor that Michael Jackson slept in a hyperbaric chamber?)

Which is funny, since another theory of aging is free radicals, which are generated by oxidation . . .

This class was probably the single best thing I've done for my diving. It made me more comfortable, more stable, more maneuverable, and a better dive buddy. Steve's a great teacher, and I obviously believe that, because I just subjected myself to three more days in the pressure cooker, doing Rec Tri...

Amazingly, our group was almost completely alone at Keystone yesterday. There was one pair of brand new divers (got their cards last week) who had braved the weather in wetsuits (brrr!) and that was all. A van pulled up as we were packing to leave. I was very surprised that they would want to dive t...

Just a comment to say that it's not difficult to miss the wall altogether. My one attempt at this site resulted in two teams, diving separately, both missing it completely. And if you miss it, you see a lot of clam siphons and sea pens.

Yeah, Keystone is the best shore dive I've done in the Sound. I think you could honestly spend a whole hour on about ten feet of the rocks, and not have seen everything that was there to be seen. I'm glad conditions cooperated with us today. At the end of the Langley dive, I had come to a conclusion...

My husband and I spent ten days in Indonesia last year, five of them at Kungkungen Bay Resort, and I simply can't say enough good things about them -- the resort, the dive op, or the diving. The resort is beautiful, built of trees that were felled to clear the land, and rock that was blasted to make...

Thanks, Jan (I'm part of this Keystone expedition, too).

What are the chances you'll be there? I'd love to meet you in person and thank you for all those lovely pictures and artwork you have posted.

Doug, I told you you should have come to Cozumel and warm, clear water with us . . . It's the only cure for the cold green pea soup blues.

And while diving isn't an aerobic activity

You could have fooled me, as I schlepped my double 85s up and down and up and down the low-tide expanse of slippery round rocks at Cove 2 for three days this weekend.

NWSD has been my shop for the last year, and those guys are great. Plus the Aquaholic program, with all the nitrox you can eat for a year, is one of the best unsung deals out there. Ask Matt about it!

Lovely photographs -- I wish you had gotten one of the little octopus crawling around on my dive buddy's head

It was a very select fraternity that was willing to brave the weather and enjoy Cove 2 last night. There weren't many of us!

When we were up in Nanaimo in January, I noticed this behavior in multiple sites. Always ocher stars; the other starfish were found scattered singly as one usually finds them. I wondered about it at the time. I haven't seen it happening down here further south.