Egmont Marina/Jervis Inlet, British Columbia, Canada

Author: Jack Connick

Short: I put together a trip for my dive club (Marker Buoy) north from Seattle to Egmont on the Sunshine Coast area of British Columbia, Canada. This is north of Vancouver on the Sechelt Peninsula and has access to many great dive sites. We stayed at the Egmont Marina/Resort and had 2 days of 2 tank boat dives. Cost was only $155 all inclusive of meals, diving (unlimited air) and accommodations.

We all had a good time, but there were mis-representations of some things from the resort operator, John, and other communication problems between him and the dive operator (Egmont Water Taxi ­Robb) that presented surprises.

Good: Beautiful sunny, warm weather in spectacular scenery. Good food. Friendly people. Cheap. Fairly easy drive from Seattle. Dive operator who was flexible, safe and worked very hard for the group. Huge, very comfortable boat the second day. Very interesting sites; the wreck of the HCMS Chaudierre destroyer and the Skoocumchuck and Tzoonie Narrows. Unlimited air.

Bad: Accommodations were way too small, and had inadequate hot water. No promised Jacuzzi, etc. Very slow meal service due to inadequate staff for meals. Bad viz; after being told to expect 90¹, we had 15-20¹ at best. The boats were too small for 6-8 divers the first day.

Long: After an easy drive north and a ferry ride from Horseshoe Bay to Langdale we got to the resort at around 6:30. Most of the people had come a little earlier and a few had tried a shore dive with very disappointing results due to bad viz.

The resort cabins were mis-represented as having a bedroom, sleeping loft and pull-out couch, able to hold 5 in a pinch and quite comfortable for 2 couples. Wrong. They were tiny cabins with one decent bed and one small one in the loft and a futon in the "living room" all in about 150 sq¹! A tiny hot water heater that gave one person a warm shower completed the accommodations.

I had booked the whole resort of 6 cabins 2.5 months ago and paid for 18 people a few weeks before, telling him the we would add a few more before we came. We added 3 to fill out the trip, thinking we would be spread comfortably amongst the 6 cabins holding 24. Upon arrival I found he had sold out the 6th cabin and we were crammed into 5. My girlfriend being the champion negotiator that she is, got him to move us into a nicer new motel room that he failed to tell me about when I complained.

Food was pretty good, better than I have had at some small Canadian resorts, but we only had one waitress, who was new for 21 people! They have a ways to go before knowing how to serve a crowd; the barmaid said 6 people are a crowd most of the time.

So having met with Robb Friday night, we all gathered on the dock at 10 to run down to the nearby Skoocumchuck Narrows for the first drift dive. I know Jammer has waxed on about this site, and some of our group had good dives, but I never got into the narrows!

I should add that there was another operator there and we had a total of 5 boats working together to drop and pick up divers. The whole operation was very well done, and showed a good, safe and professional atmosphere that relaxed the divers. The boats we were one were a bit too small to get a string of 8 divers off of though. We could really only have two people donning gear at a time. Apparently John hadn¹t booked the boats soon enough, as there is a lot of interest on the slack tide days to do this dive.

My buddy Denny and I started out fine and found the Glory Hole with the huge house rock at around 80¹ down at the entrance to the narrows. Our instructions were that when we had gotten there the current would change and carry us down the narrows. But I found the current was slack and was confused by the very poor 12-15¹ viz. We ended up going with the current and drifting right back into the back eddy to the boat. My buddy had used up his air due to an earlier reg problem, and so we got out more than a bit disappointed. 17 mins at max 79 feet.

Other divers had more or less the same problems (Nydia; chime in here!); others had swum further into the current and had a good dive along the eastern wall.

Back to the resort for lunch. I quizzed Robb hard for some better sites and he ran up and down to 3 or 4 places and reported they all were pretty mediocre. It seemed that the warmer spring weather had brought out an algae bloom and the small tides that weekend hadn¹t cleared it out. So we went across the channel to drift dive an island there.

Robb squarely screwed up this one as he mis-read the current (easy to do as it was low volume and there really isn¹t a current book for the area) and it was flowing the other way around the island. We dropped into the back-eddy and went to dive, but Denny couldn¹t clear his ears, so we surfaced and I joined up with another buddy pair, Steve and Matt.

We dropped into around 71¹ and swam out around the wall and I found myself clinging to the rocks! I message Matt on my slate as to swimming upstream and he agreed to blow it off and go the other way. Of course Steve thought he was a salmon and could just slowly work our way up-steam. Great. A disagreement at 70¹S At this point I got tired of pedaling up current and Matt and I just were swept back. Steve reluctantly following. Good reason to have a buddy team of 3! Anyway we actually found the wall pretty cool and the viz was a bit better than the morning so it was ok. Saw a cool couple of patches of white soft coral and some other critters. 38 mins at max 71 feet.

Had a great dinner after some of the folks ran up on one of the boats for a sight seeing tour of a 300¹ waterfall. Tried to eat one of the famous humungous Skoocumchuck burgers and fully stuffed we sat around a campfire and talked with Robb about the wreck dive in the morning.

The next day we took off in a huge comfy party boat that a friend of Robb had chartered to him for the day. Went off to the wreck in about 45 mins and we all nervously suited up and discussed various profiles for the Chaudierre. It¹ a fairly deep dive, 80¹-120 (for recreational divers in cold water) and the 20¹ viz on the bottom and 1¹ viz on the top made it a bit harder.

My buddy had screwed up and left his top at the resort, so I buddied up with Matt. We discussed his counter idea of diving the bottom of the stern, which was at 85¹, and moving horizontally forward to the wheelhouse/gun area in the middle, sort of a square profile. Most of the others were going the opposite way; diving a standard, deep to shallow profile.

And it worked very well. Pulled ourselves down the mooring chain to 77¹ through the blinding algae on the top to fairly clear, water on the stern, then dropped down to see the shafts and the bottom of the ship at 83¹ or so. A whole lotta metal down there! Awesome to see that large a ship up close under water. Unfortunately, the viz was just around 20¹ and the algae on top cut the light, so it was pretty dark.

We swam along with our lights, Matt taking a few shots, then swam over the side (top) of the wreck to the deck. Lots more cool stuff there, and I pulled my way along the chain handrails to the deckhouse where Matt shot me sitting on it at 90¹. We continued to the wheelhouse and shined our lights inside to see all the various stairs and hatches inside. Made me want to get more training to be a wreck diver! Definitely a thrill.

Running low on air, Matt and I were exactly at the middle mooring rope and decided to ascend after around 22 mins bottom time. Doing our safety stop at 15¹ was pretty hard due to blinding algae and surface swells. When we got to the top the boat had to reposition itself after we had swum most of the way to itSBut felt really good, as we dove a disciplined profile and had just the right amount of air at the end. 24 mins max 89 feet.

As we had lunch we motored up to the Tzoonie Narrows to do another drift dive. Maybe the third time would be a charmS and sure enough it was! Robb had radioed to the other boat that was joining up on us to get someone to find Denny¹s wetsuit and there it was for him in the boat. Nice thing to do and saved his day.

We dropped into the opening and swam to the back eddy at the entrance, then dropped down to around 41¹. The current was running pretty fast and it swept us along like leaves, as we popped up from along behind large sections of wall. Saw a really nice selection of bright starfish, colonial tunicates, small crabs and fish amongst the short kelp anchored to the rocks. Also some 4¹ ling cod and even one small wolf eel hiding in it¹s hole. Nice dive and a good way to end the weekend at a spectacularly scenic site (snow covered peaks soaring 3,000¹ above us!). Max 48¹ for 38 mins.

We did have a slight scare as one of our divers had a bad shoulder cramp after the dive. Nydia evaluated her and we put her on O2 while calling DAN on the celphone. Since the cramp had started at 40¹, the DAN doc didn¹t think it was DCS, but just a cramp. But nice to know we had all the options running and smoothly handled her discomfort.

All in all we had a fun time. Some of our group didn¹t care about the shore comfort and just wanted a cheap trip, others, myself included, would have paid a bit more for better accommodations. I do wish the owner of the Egmont Marina had been a bit more forthcoming as to the "real world" size of the cabins and their lack of hot water, and I can¹t recommend them to a large group. I like Robb and he promised us a free night dive on the first night of our next trip to make up for the poor call on the currents on the second dive on Sat.

Jack Connick OWC NAUI, LA County 1969