Diving in Hoodsport this weekend (4/3-4/4)

[-Aaron-]

My friend and I are planning on diving in Hoodsport this weekend, so if you see a couple of bleary eyed Oregonians in a big red van please come over and say hello :biggrin: .

We will be leaving here on Friday afternoon and doing a few late night dives and then diving around Hoodsport on Saturday. I was planning on hitting the usual spots: Sund Rock, North Wall, Octopus Hole, etc., but if anyone has suggestions for places we should check out I would love to hear them.

It looks like a chance of snow today and rain this week, but clearing off by Saturday, so hopefully the we get some decent visibility. Has anyone dove in Hood Canal recently? How was the vis?

[selkie]

The last report was 23 March by Zen Diver 2 “Sund Rock 15 feet or so”
Check the Hoodsportndive's web site for the latest conditions. Other places to try on the Canal are Pt. Whitney Shellfish Lab and Jorstad Creek.

[BillZ]

Loretta, Cindy and I dove Sund Rock last Friday. The visibility was about 10ft with alot of floating gunk in the water. It was a super low tide so that could have been the issue.

Give Hoodsport & Dive a ring and they can give you the most recent report.

Bill

[-Aaron-]

Thanks for the tips and reports .

It looks like the Hoodsport & Dive website got updated today and they are reporting 15-20 foot visibility. Hopefully that holds through the weekend.

BillZ, yeah I had a similar situation a month ago when I was up there. For most of our dives the visibility was 20-30 feet, but we did a low tide night dive at Octopus Hole and the vis dropped to <10 feet with lots of particulates in the water.

I don't have that much experience with predicting visibility based on tidal conditions. In general do you get the best Vis during high tide? The protected nature of Hood Canal makes it easy to just dive when its convenient and not worry about currents, but I hadn't bothered to try and work out best visibility times before.

[Biodiversity_Guy]

I dove the Yellowhouse last Sunday evening, at a high/rising tide and the viz was less than 10 feet, with lots of large particulates.

Even at depth (108') viz was not remarkably improved.

Here's hoping it has cleared up for this upcoming weekend!

PS: the blue barred pricklebacks continue to elude me...

[-Aaron-]

Biodiversity_Guy,

It was great meeting you. Glad you found the fish you were looking for

We had some really nice dives. The first dive we did at low tide on North Wall has similar visibility to what you experienced about 5-10 feet throughout. Some nice life was found through the murk and I was happy with my navigation skills as we were able to come off the North end of the wall and loop back to the plumose anemone rocks at the "middle wall" on the way back. We finished up around dark.

For the second night dive we got in the water out around 11. We decided to do the wreck to the north of North Wall. We planned on surface swiming out to the marker buoy and dropping to the wreck from there. It was a beautiful night with some interesting thin cloud cover illuminated by a bright moon. We were laughing to each other that with air temps in the low 30s and water temps in the low 40s we were floating along peacefully comfortable in our dry suits out in the ocean at near midnight. It was peaceful enough to almost fall asleep as we paddled the few hundred yards on our backs. We spotted an otter swimming around us on the edge of our lights. We made it out to the marker and did our decent. Initially the water was pretty murky and we thought we would have similar visibility to our first dive. We descended down, seeing only the next few feet of life encrusted chain in front of us. Then at about 40 foot depth the ocean opened up and we started to see the wrecked fishing ship come in to view. With the incoming tide visibility increased to over 25 feet at depth. We had a great time drifting around the wreck checking out the large groups of rockfish and several massive resident ling cod. We also spotted the tentacles of an octopus near midship and he was large enough that when we rotated around to the stern we could see his exposed head. We did a loop around the lower section at about 60 feet and then rose up and swam around the upper deck and peered in to a side breach in the hull. We navigated back towards the beach and had a short surface swim back to the exit point. As we were kicking back I noticed our otter friend again, he swam towards us under the cover of dark and got within five feet of our fins. I shined the light towards him and he dropped beneath the waves. We slept in the van and got up around 8:00 AM on Saturday.

We filled up our tanks at Hoodsport & Dive and had a nice day of diving. The sun was out and we had some great surface intervals lounging on our camp chairs and eating cheap grocery store food. The vis never got back to what it was the night before, but it was getting close to 20 feet at depth, so overall we couldn't complain. We spotted the otter a few more times on Saturday, but he wasn't quite as playful as he was at night. We did another dive on the wreck and two more dives on the southern Sund Rock Point then head back to Oregon. On the way out of town I tried on the demo 2XL/3XL Fusion at the dive shop. Overall the flexibility felt great but it seemed a bit snug around my calves and ankles. Its like they made the whole suit with a certain size range and then made the lower legs a size smaller. It was snug with no undergarment and didn't seem to have much more room for flex. I'm kind of curious about the next size up, if it gets more leg room while still being able to keep the upper body snug then it would work better I think. Its a bummer they wouldn't just make the legs match the upper body sizing more. It seems like divers would be a demographic that has more muscular than average legs, so some extra room would be nice and with the compression of the outer suit it doesn't seem like you are adding more air leg pocket issues.

Overall I was a great trip. Both of us had picked up some new gear since our last dives, so it was nice getting a chance to try it out. I was really happy with my DSS BP/W and Hogarthian harness. It fit well and the water positioning was nice. It takes a bit to get used to on the surface as it wanted to push me forward a bit when you put a decent amount of air in the wing. I also need to re-arrange my weighting a bit as well. I had the bulk of my weight on a heavy belt and it was making me a bit fin heavy. Next time I will try shifting some weigh forward. Does anyone have a recommendation for a good tank trim weight system? I was thinking about trying to move 10 lbs from my belt and putting it on top of my tank or on my backplate (I already have the DSS weight plates installed).

[Sockmonkey]

I have a couple of these XS scuba pockets slipped around my tank bands to get weight more toward my head. Turned out it was too much weight that forward for me but it might work for you.

And thanks for sharing the report

-Eric

[-Aaron-]

Eric,

Thanks for the tip on the weight pockets, that looks like it could work well. I am thinking one of those on each side of my upper tank band would be perfect and it its too head heavy I can always move it to my lower band.