Cedric, Anissa, Tam and I decided to go diving at Whytecliff park.
Seeing as we don't have equipment, and our quarterly dives don't justify the rather large capital investment to buy our own equipment, let along the storage space, we rented gear.
We've had pretty good luck with The BC Dive and Kayak Centre. Good service, reasonable rates. Although, this time we had some trouble renting dry suits, even though we did our open water tickets with them. Apparently PADI does not let you combine certifications, so even though we did the required training, and pool session, we don't get the dry suit certification. Oh well.
Once we picked up our gear, and were driving over the burrard bridge to the park, there were wavesets and whitecaps at Sunset Beach in English Bay. I think that's the first time I've ever seen that. I came very, very, very close to not going diving, and instead taking an OC1 (solo outrigger canoe) out surfing.
We arrived at 1130h, just as the park was getting busy. So we managed to get a good parking spot. Whytecliff Park gets really busy in summer, and carrying full scuba gear an extra 100 meters really takes away from the experience. Especially after you've had to carry it all up the hill.
Our first dive was at 50 feet on the north wall. The entire wall is covered in starfish.
Our second dive was again on the north wall to about 45 feet, just a bit farther out.
Things I am reminded of while diving:
- long swims suck
- walking up a hill with 42 pounds of weights, and 30 pounds of SCUBA gear makes me glad I'm not overweight
- there is different world very close, yet unseen