At about 10PM last night my dive buddy Mari sent me a txt asking if I had a tank. I spent the whole day excited to dive skipping on rainbows and riding the unicorn express and forgot to think about a tank. Of all the bottles in my garage none were filled. Thankfully she works in a dive shop and was able to grab one for me early this morning. (look for her this summer at the usual puget sound watering holes once she moves back to Portland)
Before I became a victim of my ongoing amateur hour I combed through my dive gear to ensure I would not forget anything essential. What I found was a crazy mold situation at the bottom of the tub I haul my gear around in. My wetsuit and hooded vest were put away wet and are now cast in the shape of my tub bounded together with stinky mold. I wanted to get my gloves and backup light from under the grossness but I elected to deal with it another day. After all it was nearly 11PM and I already had a few Sierra Torpedo hop bombs in me. I left the crusty neoprene in the tub and dug out one of the blue rubbermaid bins that Kate was always laughing at.
I've had a brand new pinnacle 5mm suit I bought on sale on the interweb hanging around since before xmas. Today was my first dive in it.
Between playing with the baby and life in general I was late heading down the hill to meet Mari. Thankfully she was running late too because I was in charge of her wakeup call. I rang her 30 minutes after she asked me to. In addition I realized that the mask I had packed was my backup which is somewhat broken. I thought my primary mask was at work. I stopped by the office but couldn't find it, so I grabbed a coworker's mask. I like his better than mine.
The winter swell was down but there was a slight surge at Paniau (our cove2). Nothing that would stop us from getting in the water. If hadn't been dry for so long this dive would have sucked... but under the circumstances it was an A+ experience.
This is the list of stuff I would normally complain about:
- New booties made my feet hurt and fall asleep. I had to take my fins off for a break.
- I didn't bring a hood and my head was cold. Water temp down to 77F.
- The viz was sucky (I know I know. I'll promptly go F myself after I'm done writing this)
- I hit my head in one of the caves from the surge
- My new 5mm wetsuit is more buoyant than the 2 pieces of 3mm I once wore. The extra 4 lbs I wore was not enough.
- I carried a rock with me for the last 1/4 of the dive (for the record finding a heavy rock out of all the porous lava isn't easy)
- Two monster ulua flew right over Mari's head in the cave and out a skylight.
- Mari found a really nice looking leaf scorpion fish (still cool even tho its prob there all the time)
- My new wetsuit is really warm. Wool rules.
- The whales were REALLY loud.
- One whale seemed to be laughing like Jabba the Hutt. "It's too late for that Sockmonkey. You may have been a good diver but now you're bantha fodder Hooh hoh hoh hoh."
- Mari's handsignal for I just peed in my wetsuit is instantly understandable.
- I was underwater for over an hour.
Aloha hard bitches,
-Eric
