Northwest Dive Club

As an FYI, Hoodsport and Dive's contract with Mr Sund expired as of today. The dive shop was unable to come to terms with the Sund family due to their desire to raise the price per diver to utilize Sund Rock. So until further notice, if divers wish to dive Sund Rock, they must contact the Sund family as Hoodsport and Dive shop at this point is unable to facilitate this.

Oooo! That is bad for everybody.

Wow crazy!
Thanks for the update Gdog.
Hope you got to dive after that long road trip!?

ScubaJess wrote:Wow crazy!
Thanks for the update Gdog.
Hope you got to dive after that long road trip!?

Well, Hoodsport is only maybe 45-50 minutes for me to drive. And Alex, aka Hoodsport Diver, took me for a dive right in front of his house!
Grabbed a shot of one of your little buddies too Jess....

or dive from a boat?

The DNR owned public access is still available. It is 2.4 miles from Hoodpsort with plenty of parking. The trail is a bit of a hike to a very nice beach and a swim to the south end of the wall. The south end is not dove as much due to its distance from the pay site. The south end is where the cloud sponges are :O) .
This access is FREE, no passes required.

Dive Often,

Jerry

really adorable squat snaps Gdog!! Thanks!
I miss those cuties! I wish we had them at Redondo.

Well we can all boycott Sund rock and that would show a message to mister Sund that he doesn't make good decisions , and that if he's going to be greedy we can remove the income from his bank account by not showing up.... Octopus hole is right up the road also so is Mike Beach

jerryehrlich wrote:The DNR owned public access is still available. It is 2.4 miles from Hoodpsort with plenty of parking. The trail is a bit of a hike to a very nice beach and a swim to the south end of the wall. The south end is not dove as much due to its distance from the pay site. The south end is where the cloud sponges are :O) .
This access is FREE, no passes required.

Dive Often,

Jerry

Thanks for bringing that up Jerry! That makes the Rock still dive able.
In the mean time, there are other dive sites in the Canal that are good, and this is a great time to dive the canal. The vis at depth is really good right now, yesterday it had to be close to 50' at 65 fsw. Much preferred to the soup that the sound is experiencing right now. So head for Hood Canal, and please, remember to stop in at Hoodsport and Dive to show your support!

Gdog wrote:As an FYI, Hoodsport and Dive's contract with Mr Sund expired as of today. The dive shop was unable to come to terms with the Sund family due to their desire to raise the price per diver to utilize Sund Rock. So until further notice, if divers wish to dive Sund Rock, they must contact the Sund family as Hoodsport and Dive shop at this point is unable to facilitate this.

Oh no....

This is not good news. The price was steadily going up in any case, somewhat understandably as so many great improvements are made to the site.

But still sad.

Not sure that a boycott would be helpful (they aren't generally, in any case), however my sense is that this will greatly decrease the number of divers coming to Sund Rock. As has been mentioned, there are other dive opportunities.

If this is inappropriate, please ignore or delete or whatever, but is the Sund Family taking steps to publicize the change and a way to contact them personally? They are actually going to manage this out of their house? Lots of questions....

Every time the price has gone up, a large percentage of divers have said "That's it! I'm not going any more!", and then some do, some don't. Perhaps the price has reached the tipping point? It's the shop that takes the brunt of the anger and frustration, I don't blame them at all for not wanting to be a part of that.

I agree with Tom, though - participation tends to decrease when costs (both time and effort) increase. I'm curious to see how this turns out.

We have been there once in the past three years because of the price. These days we take one or two trips a year to Mike's and have a great time diving there instead.

Hopefully the sund family should build a website and collect payments online or have a payment box at the site.

I had planned to take some students to Sund this weekend ... now I will look for options.

That's pretty much basically my same thoughts there's a lot of dive shops and dive groups and dive people that love to book that place out for the day for large groups of diving and now pretty much I don't think that's going to happen

Here are some photos of how to find the walk in and the swim involved, will post trail pictures after we have cleaned it up.

jerryehrlich wrote:Here are some photos of how to find the walk in and the swim involved, will post trail pictures after we have cleaned it up.

Thanks for posting this. Will definitely do this route a time or three.

I'm with you Tom. I'll do the walk and swim. I think it's pretty cool the shop is working to clear the path and help give divers an option.

Well that's a bummer. And a long swim. I've only ever dove at Sund Rock once and had planned on going a few times this year.

Making the free trail easier/safer would be pretty cool so I hope that gets done.

With a mass of divers swimming in front of their private beach maybe they will work hard to find away to open the parking lot

FlyinV wrote:Making the free trail easier/safer would be pretty cool so I hope that gets done.

With a mass of divers swimming in front of their private beach maybe they will work hard to find away to open the parking lot

big +1 on that

WELL!! I’ll just use my $3000 scooter to avoid the swim and after 150 visits to Sund Rock it will be like diving for free...

I was able to contact Cindy Sund about access to Sund Rock going forward.
Here are the details.
They will open the gate on Saturday and Sunday with registration from 9-4.
Weekday, off hours, night dives or group reservations can be made with Cindy personally at cindy.sund@alderbrookresort.com
Access is now $15 PP PD and includes taxes
From Cindy, “ I’ll make every effort for divers go get access if the process is respectful and the property is cared for”

Sounds like they have some other things in the works that could be really good for divers going forward as well, but will let that come out from them.

It's been a couple of years since I've dove Sund Rock, but isn't $15 less expensive that it was in the past?

I'm not sure I'd hold any animosity towards the Sund family. It costs money to keep the site open to the public....
- Porta-poty maintenance costs money
- Liability insurance is expensive (there are at least a couple of diver related incidents there every year)
- Keeping the road drivable, picking up garbage and maintaining the site isn't cheap

If a $15/day fee to access a divesite is breaking the bank you should probably find a less expensive hobby. Sund Rock is the only open to the public private access site I can think of in Washington and it would be a bummer if the Sund family closed the site down.

Bill, I don't think the issue is that there is a fee to dive the site. For all the reasons you mentioned for starters. I think most divers recognize that. Although the upkeep was provided by the dive shop. I'm not sure the Sund family, who we are all thankful that we are able to dive their site, grasps the size of the task they have undertaken in terms of just daily management. But time will tell. I think as they get into this they will discover all the nuances that the dive shop simply handled for them, and the costs associated with that. I just hope that when they arrive at that point, which shouldn't take too long, that they don't just close it for the hassle. Having the dive shop manage it for them makes it much easier for everyone involved from the divers traveling to the site up to the Sund family themselves. But hey, it's their property, they can certainly do with it what they want.

I've only done sund rock once (at the club dive) and it's a pretty good spot with easy access and lots to see. $15 is what I paid to do flagpole out of Mike's Beach a few years ago (no idea what they charge now) so that's not all that out of line.

For me the bigger issue than the cost of access is the cost in time of going somewhere to get the permits, and the timing involved in that. If it's convenient, (as mentioned earlier a way to pay online and print a permit?) then the additional cost in accessing the site wouldn't keep me away.

Honestly, being able to print a permit the night before and show up to dive at 7:00am to dive would be a plus for me. Hopefully the family can work out the logistics.