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A week of deep diving in Nanaimo

Posted: Mon May 13, 2019 5:56 pm
by Jeff Pack
Jeff and I finished a weeks diving in Nanaimo with Sundown Diving. Ed,(owner), Captains Mark (3 days) and Chris (1 day). were awesome. We dove the Breton Monday (viz and weather sucked), waited out tuesday, tried Gabriola Bluffs Wed (still bad weather), Thursday Gabriola (finally), Snake Island Friday and Saturday.

Monday, wwent first to Snake Island, but were getting swamped with 3 foot wind waves, so moved to leeward side. Didnt seem bad, so we splashed. Viz Sucked. We had maybe 5ft viz on the wreck, and current. We lost the wreck about 45m in when current moved us off, and lost it. We surfaced about 100 yards from the boat, and scootered over. Wonderful, now we're fighting 2ft wind waves here too. Not a fun dive to finish.

After Monday, we bagged Tuesday, weather was still bad.

Wed tried again, got all the way to Gabriola Bluffs, wind waves were bad. We moved south towards the log booms, found one spot that looked really good to splash, and 2 mionutes later it was 2ft waves there. :(

Thursday, finally the weather god smiled, with calm seas. SO we dove Gabriola. Man alive, those walls are sheer. Viz in the shallows descending was really good, 40-50ft. Deeper got worse. I think we hit like 280'ish, with a lot of hanging algae snot in the water. Was still quite diveable by Puget Sound Standards. Deco was a challenge finding spots on the wall to deco out on. Great dive though, but abit short at 2 hours.

Friday dove Snake Island Wall. Awesome doesnt come close to this days dive. Viz sucked (less than 3ft) until you get below 90ft and begins to open. At 310ft, we had 50-60ft of clear viz. I can see why people rave about Snake Island Wall The structure, the life, its go something for everyone. Best dive of the week at 3 hours, with 75m of fun deco.(that was sarcasm btw)

Saturday, did Snake Island again, but stayed around 200ft. Viz improved the shallows to a whopping 5ft, but lost abit down deeper. Abit shorter dive too than planned at 2 hours. On Thursday, we came up right next to the boat. As we'd deco'd out at 24ft, cuz we found a good spot, rather than fight crappy viz shallower. For Saturday, we thought we foudn the same spot, and deco'd at at 18ft. Turns out theres a small pinnacle out there, some boats have hit it on low tides. But easy deco at 18ft. We came up around another 100 yards from the boat, so Chris came over and picked us up. And that ended our trip.

If we'd been a week early, we'd have had better weather, and 50-60ft viz, but our timing sucked. Ah well.

I can see another trip up there, so both wrecks, do Snake Island again, not sure I'd want to do Gabriola again.

Having just the 2 of us in the boat was really nice, as with bail outs, scooters, etc, there wasnt really any room lef

Re: A week of deep diving in Nanaimo

Posted: Tue May 14, 2019 4:30 pm
by H20doctor
thanks for sharing Jeff... good to hear the trip report

Re: A week of deep diving in Nanaimo

Posted: Wed May 15, 2019 7:32 am
by Cetacea
Wow. That’s some great bottom times. Guess I need to get on board with a rebreather. What’s your best practice for staying warm?

Re: A week of deep diving in Nanaimo

Posted: Wed May 15, 2019 10:32 am
by Jeff Pack
Argon and heated vests.