God's Pocket May 14-18

[johndo88]

Twelve of us from the Marker Buoy Dive Club made the trek up to God’s Pocket. We were up there for five days, most of us got in three dives a day. It’s safe to say we all had a great time. If you haven’t heard about God’s Pocket, read on.

The resort is on Hurst Island; a 45-minute boat ride NE of Port Hardy. There is no infrastructure on the island. The resort is completely self-sufficient. The have two generators for power, water comes from a well, from rain, and from a desalination plant when needed. The ground water has lots of tannins in it, they use bottled water for the guests and for cooking. Bill and Annie Weeks do an amazing job building an infrastructure to keep the place running. They have backups for most everything.

The remote location offers amazing scenery and an unexpected serenity. No cell service at the resort meant no cell phone distractions. (There is limited internet access for checking emails if you want). For five days, no cars, no car horns, no emergency vehicle sirens, no city scenes or noise, just peace. The food is truly excellent. Bill and Annie go out to their way to meet any dietary requirements you might have.

The dive boat, the Hurst Isle is a great dive platform. They have seating for 12 with good tank placement for getting geared up. They have TWO exit points on the starboard side of the boat to make deployment quick. Getting back on board is a treat; they have an elevator you stand on that quickly lifts you up the deck. (See my video on Vimeo at the link below). The boat has two motors on board (again, redundancy) which push it along at 18 knots. The majority of dive sites are 10-15 minutes away. They have a bank of air and Nitrox onboard the boat to fill your tanks in between dives. You only need to bring ONE TANK with you on this trip.

Bill and Annie have been running this site for 18 years, they know their dive sites very well. You get good briefings and with their experience, they were able to take us to sites that didn’t tax us. Every briefing was spot on, no surprises. Every dive is a live boat dive, they come pick you up where ever you surface wherever you want. This makes many dives customizable. For example, you can stay deep along the wall, or part way through you can ascend to the top of the reef and check out the shallows. Doesn’t matter, wherever you surface, they come get you.

The highlight for me was Nakwakto Rapids. This is an extremely current sensitive site; you can only dive it once or twice a month. It’s about an hour away from the resort so weather dictates if you can get there or not. We were fortunate that the weather cooperated. This site is a narrow channel with a small island in the middle. The current can run 20 knots (approximate). There really is no slack here. At the appropriate time, you get dropped off at one end of the island and you stay up against the shore in a small cove. Bill evaluates the conditions and gives you the go ahead to descend. You drop down between 10 – 40 feet and go clockwise to the other end of the island. You are diving in a pocket of slack current. The pocket moves slowly clockwise around the island. As the dive progresses, the pocket gets smaller and smaller. If you hold you position and let the trailing edge of the pocket catch up to you, you fell a tug on your fins. You think someone might be tugging on your fins, but it’s just the current. Kick forward a bit and you’re back in calm water. Bill warned us that if you get totally absorbed in taking a picture, you might get caught by surprise and end up surfacing early. Our group consisted of avid photographers, but we had no problems. About 40 minutes later, you arrive at the other end of the island and which point you exit. If you stay long enough (about 56 minutes), the pocket of calm collapses and you are in a washing machine. I have some video of that in the link below.

This time of year was not great for visibility. On some of the dives, the viz was only a few feet in the shallows, but usually got to 20 – 40 feet once you got below 50fsw. In the end, we did 15 great dives in five days, and in between great food, and great nights of sleep in a very peaceful setting.

Video at https://vimeo.com/167381433

[Echo]

I'm definitely jumping on this next year. I wanted to go this year but booked fast! So glad you guys had a blast, looked like fun!

[YellowEye]

So cool!
Those are some cool looking barnacles for sure!

[ScubaJess]

I love Gods Pocket! I cannot wait to go back in October.
Thanks for sharing this excellent report!
I'm so glad you had a wonderful trip!