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This is by far overdue but with a new baby and everything else, I haven’t had a lot of time to update these dive blogs. Below is my summary of the class, and details of the weekend in general.

Jeff, Cliff and I were going to drive down the day before we were supposed to dive so that we all could be well rested and ready to dive. I am glad we did this because while it would have been possible to make it work out they picked me up at my house around 4/4:30 am and we didn’t get to San Diego until just about 1:00 pm. On the way down Cliff supplied us with the audio book of Shadow Divers to listen to. I must say thats a good book, and technically accurate.

The next afternoon we went down to the marina for our first two dives of the class. I had my scopolamine(sp?) patch on and was hoping that it would help prevent my sea sickness. Sadly, it was a fairly rough day and the patch only lasted so long. Our first dive we tied off to the mooring line off the comm tower IIRC and dropped down there. We did our swims around the Yukon looking at entry and exit points and making our “map” of the site. I was awestruck, this ship just looked so surreal covered in all the sea life! Its hard to imagine that before it was an artificial reef, it was a Canadian warship. Sadly since this was a class dive and we had probably 8-12 people in our group the dive was short. Shorter than I would have liked at least. Back on the boat I learned a valuable lesson. The moving of dive sites between surface intervals is key to reducing sea sickness. Sitting on the boat for 45 minutes to an hour while rocking and rolling in somewhat big seas is what makes you sicker. Which it did in the end, for me and some others. Even with the patch it wasn’t enough for me, and I had to sit out the second dive. I almost made it though… being that I was feeling like horrible, I wanted in the water badly. Well I rushed so much that I forgot my weight belt. When I got back on the boat to get it, the feeling of being in the double and strapped to the boat did me in. I ended up not making it back in that day.

Day two however I took some more preventative measures. Mainly eating more before going out on the boat as well as a new patch. This did prove to help, but I still sadly got sick on the SI. However these dives were even better than the day before since it was just buddy teams. My buddy and I on the first dive did some reel drills. We tied off and clipped the line off on various points outside the ship just to practice the had movements. After doing enough of that we spent the rest of the dive touring around the top side of the ship. There were all kinds of holes to peer into, plaques to read, and life to enjoy looking at and watching. I did notice on this dive while ascending something ive never known could happen. Bull Kelp that managed to grow probably 50-60 feet if not higher up. While around 35 fsw doing a stop I saw these huge bulbs and kelp trailing off them coming up from the ship. Thought that was very cool!

Dive two this day was the one that I was waiting for. While the SI was rough on me I was determined to make it back in as this was our penetration dive. We were the last of all the teams to do our penetration dive. I really wasn’t nervous about entering the ship, more anxious and excited than anything. Once in I had that same feeling I had from my first dive… WHOA! This is a whole other world! Even though we didn’t penetrate as far as we could have since we were all time limited so the instructors didnt get too high of a deco. obligation we still went in a decent way. 21w HID’s inside of wrecks are the only way to go also! I wasn’t the reel diver on this dive and I did have difficulties with the line. My buddy had been running them high over head and when id go through a bulkhead it got tangled on my manifold twice, but after the dive the instructor told me I managed and cleared the entanglement appropriately. I was sad when we were told we had to turn and head out, as I wanted to keep exploring.

Sadly on the third day the group had decided that they were going to take the hour and a half boat ride down to Mexico to dive and I decided against the trip. While I regret it now, I don’t know if id have gotten sick and I just didn’t want to be stuck with that far of a ride if I did. Since then I’ve done more research and have a whole regimen of things to do prior to stepping on the boat to try and eliminate the sea sickness all together. I have yet to test it though, but if it doesn’t work I’ve still got a few more options. I did get to hear about and see pictures from the dives though so it wasn’t a total loss.

In the end this was an amazing class, and a logistical feat that took many hours of careful planning and communication with the charter operator. Big kudos to Paul Miller and his staff of Instructors and assistants as well as Waterhorse Charters out of Mission Bay.