New England Diving ... Part 2 of 2

Saturday was magnificent! The sun was blazing, and the air temp was a good 15 degrees better than it was on Friday. I was much happier to be headed to Cape Ann, and this time I brought my wife Rhonda to watch my bubbles. Set out on the river @ 11AM, and at 11:15 I had one of those "oh shit" moments. I had brought my wife, but left my mask at home on the table!!! For those of you who are reading this who don't dive let me explain. No mask = No diving. So back to the dock to allow my ignorant ass to run to Cape Ann divers for a mask. While I was there I got some info on where the bugs were along with a chart to help us find the spots. The first dive happened @ 1PM, and this time we were on the bugs! The vis was 7-10', not good but compared to Friday significantly better. Our first dive had us dropping to 60', and I found this to be a bit disconcerting. It kept getting darker and darker, and I couldn't see the surface or the bottom. If you've never been in a situation like this let me tell you, it's a bit stressful. One of the things diving teaches you is emotional control. Panic kills when you're underwater. Once on the bottom I saw the world I remembered ... full of life! Sea peaches, frilled anemones, tons of green sea urchins ... oh yeah, and lobstahs! It was cold and the current was bit stiff, but I was happy to be diving again. This dive yielded some keepers (a 3lb one as well!), and after 45 minutes we were back on the boat and loving life. Dive #2 of the day exposed me to my first dive emergency. We had lollygagged around on our surface interval and let high tide pass us by. We anchored right off Folly Point in 20' of water, and jumped in to find a strong outgoing current. Decending down the bow line I found that our boat was directly above a giant boulder. The true bottom was at least 40', but we had found the habitat for the lobsters. Cracks and shelfs were everywhere. Whereas on the previous dives I had to look long and hard for a bug this time I grabbed a keeper before my computer showed 2 minutes elapsed. Greg and I went on to pickup a good number of really nice ones, and everything seemed to be going swimmingly. We were getting low on air and I found myself wicked cold, so we decided to surface. That's when I noticed that Greg's BC inflator was leaking out a ton of air. Everytime he put a shot of air in his vest it would immediately leak out. He had just switched to a HP 100 ft^3 tank, and he hadn't adjusted his ballast properly. In layman's terms, he was an anchor. Try as he did to swim up to our safety stop, it wasn't happening. So we crawled along the bottom until we found a large rock which he climbed to 20'. We did 5 minutes on top of the rock for a safety stop then we made a swim for the surface. I'm still unsure of how he got above water without ditching his weight, but he made it! When we surfaced it was apparent how strong the current was. The boat was anchored (HARD) about 30' off the craggy coast. We found ourselves a good 100' out to sea, and being pulled ever farther. Try as we might to swim for the boat, we couldn't make any headway. We asked Greg's son Nick to pick us up. Nick couldn't weigh anchor, and Greg was getting ever more desperate as he struggled to stay on the surface. I asked Nick to tie the anchors off to a boat bumper and pick us up ... we'll deal with the anchors once we're both safely on board. Greg's desparation led him to start yelling at his son, and this led his son to gun the engine and completely entangle the prop in a line that was trailing off the stern. Now we are in some deep shit. The boat can't move, and we're going to have to swim for it. I fully inflated my BC and pulled up close to my dive buddy. After a concerted 10 minutes of swimming we were close enough for a line to be thrown to us. I don't think I've ever been so happy to have a rope in my hands. A few moments later, a very exhausted, very relieved pair of divers were on the boat. We got the prop untangled, and Greg did 2 bounce dives to unstick the anchors. All's well that ends well. Final count, 7 keepers (2 well over 2 lbs!). I live to dive another day. Rhonda took some pics of the bugs we cooked up at our apt. I'll post these here when I get back from the office today.

New England Diving Not for Wimps! Part 1 of 2

Like all other blogs in existance, this one doesn't get the ongoing attention it deserves. Partially this is due to my schedule, but really I seldom find much to be blogworthy. Memorial Day weekend activities were blogworthy, and now I'm getting around to blogging them. Aqua Shack, the local dive shop, put me in touch with a gentleman looking for a fellow diving lobsterman. He and I setup a meeting time for Friday, and we were off in his 18' Glastron to pickup some ocean roaches. It's been a while since I had been underwater (and the first time I'd done any "spring" diving in New England.) I was a bit hesitant about going out, the previous four days had seen the worst nor'easter in nearly four decades. I knew vis was going to be poor, and checking the buoy data out of Gloucester harbor I could tell it was going to be C-O-L-D (46-ish degrees.) Friday morning was a gloomy, fifty-something degree day (hey, it's truly *New* England,) and this only served to dampen my spirit even more. In spite of that, I loaded my gear onboard, and we were off. Up the Annisquam River into the Atlantic Ocean right off the northwestern most point of Cape Ann. Our first site was just south of Lane's Cove, and after a backroll off the starboard gunwale I found myself in a brisk 48 degree aquatic environment. On the way down I realized that vis was worse than I expected ... I honestly couldn't see my hand at the end of my outstretched arm. If I was going to stay with my dive buddy, we were going to have to stay right on top of one another. With this vis, the only lobsters I'm going to get are the ones which walk up and pinch me in the ass. The first spot was my buddy's "lucky spot", but once on the bottom all I found was sand. For those of you unfamiliar with the habits of Homarus Americanus, let me tell you, they don't live in sand. These guys are only found in rocky caves, cracks, and crevises. So after a short 20 minutes of swimming around at 30' in 46 degree water I signalled that I was ready to surface, and Greg had no objections. Surfaced with 2000lbs still in the tank, and ready to find a spot which has a chance at producing some lobster. The second dive was better. We found a spot heavily populated with pots (a good sign!) between Plum Cove and Lane's Cove. This spot was all rock which helped the vis improve to about 5 feet. Didn't switch tanks during the server interval, but was doing well enough on my consumption to squeeze a 30 minute dive out of my remaining air. I hadn't warmed up during the surface interval, and about 20 minutes in I found that I had gotten hypothermic (when I stopped shivering I knew I was in trouble.) We surfaced from this second dive with no keepers. Lobsters 1, Divers 0 ... but there's always tomorrow.