Northwest Dive Club

Adding nothing to the discussion but the zombie Diving Concepts site has been hacked and has a decidedly NSFW link on the homepage. Although the hack is more subtle than most I've seen.

China Wall (West) and Shangri-La (East) are great dives but in my limited diving experience the East reef is one of the best dives in the Sound. Ohopdiver posted about his experience with a mooring bouy on China Wall. So they do break while you're using them. Not fun if it happens when you're not on...

That is great about the bouys. I'll need to get out there before they go away again. Anchoring isn't that difficult but I'm a lazy wuss and would rather grab a buoy. I tell whoever asks that Shangri-La is my favorite Puget Sound dive site. I got my fins yanked from behind by an octo there once and i...

On a different note, I learned yesterday that the Swell ... has recently been sold. This is the last year it will be operating as a diving boat. So if you want to see Port Hardy that way, this is your last chance to do so. This deserves a thread of its own. The Swell has basically been the highligh...

Nice video. Thank you.

I would note for others that this is the Fox Island West Wall dive site. My dive buddy and I usually do one at slack on the East Wall and then do the West Wall after the surface interval. We just throw towels over the car seats for the 6 minute drive across the island.

Thanks. I will get a new anchor setup. Not to derail the thread even further but my research puts 3/8" chain at 1.5 lbs per foot rather than 5/8 at 3+ lbs. Should my short length of really heavy chain be 3/8"?

For the Blakely Rock East reef bottom we use a 5 lb folding grapple with 5-6ft of small chain. We check the set on the way down and fold it up on the way back. I'm all ears for a better methodology but we haven't anchored much in the past because we fear losing the boat. Now that we're being more ad...

Slick. If I had an inflatable like that I wouldn't have got my current boat. The only thing we're missing is a head but who wants to deal with that.

The link in the thread isn't working for me. It may just be me but if not hopefully you archived the pics somewhere.

I don't have any public pictures of the boat but my dive buddy has a bit of footage from our Agate Pass dive which shows the rig. And a Blakely Rock dive as well (although this has the old crappy rear bench.)

This is basically what we do except we leave the boat unattended so we've been paranoid about setting the anchor really well and then returning to the anchor and removing it from whatever crevice we wedged it in. When there was a buoy on China Wall we used to swim up into the shallows for the safety...

I'd really like a bouy on the East reef but am not really qualified to for that kind of work. I'd be willing to contribute though.

Yeah, not my best moment being clever. But if you're going to dive the Diamond Knot being placed right on the highest point by the guy that wrote the book isn't too bad. Not sure I'm ready to broadcast my boating ineptitude to the greater dive community just yet. Just kidding. My buddy and I learn m...

Yes, Silent-World for the win! And we never successfully dove the Diamond Knot off kayaks. Probably for the best. We did get to it off my inflatable. I'm now on an old 22' Boston Whaler Parks Department boat with a dive door in the side. It works great but I'm much more paranoid about anchoring it v...

Does anyone know who was maintaining the buoys at Blakely until recently? It is definitely much easier to dive the East wall without having to anchor and I've never dove the West wall without anchoring to a buoy. I've told my dive buddy we should just put something out there as we go quite often. I ...

Certified in 2010 and only up to 190-ish cold water dives but each dive is still an adventure. Recent tragedy has prompted me to create an account and motivated me to learn how to be a better, more safe diver. I had thought I was paranoid enough but I guess I can go a bit further.