Port Hardy by Shep Griswold

Port Hardy, 1999
Author: Shep Griswold

This was a trip taken last week, Friday, through Tuesday this week.

A NED START: Wayne and Rita McKenzie's:

Thursday afternoon I started out from Seattle and raced north on highway I-5 trying to make the 5:45 Tsawwassen Ferry to Vancouver Island so that I'd have time to visit with NED's Wayne and Rita in Nanaimo, BC, Canada. Since there is the saying ,We have two seasons here in Washington state .... winter and road construction, I was lucky to just make the ferry. Thanks to great instructions I even made it to their warm home in time for some of Rita's just caught halibut (Wayne cooked it). Wayne gave me a tour of the compressor, inflatable-boat rig, and other assorted scuba stuff, while my eyes were really drawn to the Bottles. ....... We weren't drinking.... (we had lots of work and driving to do the next day, darn it) , but you should see Wayne and Rita McKenzie's collection of bottles. It was VERY extensive, and they had alot of really rare and beautiful bottles that they have collected over the years . I won't say anymore, except .... these two know where to look ! Anyway, the next morning these nice people fed me and I headed north while they went off to work. The drive from Nanaimo to Port Hardy is a very long drive, about 6 hours. I actually stretched it out so as to check out some of the camp grounds that Wayne had told me about.

PORT HARDY: I must say this is a very welcome place to arrive at after driving hours through the woods (and nothing BUT woods) in a 11 year old truck ! The weather was just awful when I arrived and the locals kept swearing at this lady named Gale, while I was all over town getting supplies (beer). The town is what you would expect this far north, in fact it reminded me of Petersberg or Wrangle, Alaska. Cutting trees and fishing are THE industries here.

SIDE NOTE: While I was checking out where I was to get on the live-aboard (after six that evening), I noticed some divers getting off and walking up the dock with sparse equipment. I mean they had some Pelican cases and dry suits but no tanks, weights, or BC's. Hmmmm, well it turns out that these peoplehad just left the boat that I was to get on (later that day), and they had been intimately involved with this Gale. The boat name is Sea Venture and it is operated by Exta Sea Charters out of Nanaimo BC. The people getting off had just had a sea adventure<G>. While on their way back to Port Hardy they had had a major run in with gale winds .... and the boat that is used as a tender for diving off of had flipped while being towed. When it flipped it had everyone on boards dive gear on it. It was very rough out there. They had to cut the rope to the boat when it turtled, after that they thought that they had seen all their scuba gear for the last time .... it had been loaded with all their dive gear and now it was gone. The funny thing here was that from what I heard the passengers on Sea Venture were so sea-sick at this point in the journey that they missed the whole event. ( I wasn't there ). Anyway, more of this tale is bound to be reported on http://diver.ocean.washington.edu/ because one of those passengers on the trip turned out to be Michael Parker from a very popular local web page. He's at: http://diver.ocean.washington.edu/parkershistory.html Parker and the rest of them were just turning in their insurance papers (honest I had 2 rebreathers !), when (after our morning dive) we recovered the boat ! It still (after being towed by a fishing boat that found it) had 7 of 9 scuba rigs still attached ! They were recovered .... That they were still on the boat was attributed to the weight belts that they used (instead of bungy cords) to attached the rigs to the boat gunnel.

DIVING: Anyway, on to the diving ...... even with the crappy weather we had the whole time we were there, Port Hardy still had world class diving. There is so much to be seen in Port Hardy. Things like whales, sixgill sharks, dolphins, wolfeels, octopus and other things you would expect, but also they have just a plethora of all sea life there. We even saw a large sunfish (thanks to El Nino).The currents that you may have heard about are very obvious. Some of them are unbelievably fast. We had a catch phrase the whole time we were there, it was .... go with the flow !.

These currents feed fantastic amounts of soft coral and so many other things . The walls that we dove had life in so many places that we had a hard time putting even a finger on a rock somewhere that wasn't covered. Trying to fend off where the currents sometimes pushed us was difficult, because we didn't want to touch any living thing.

The best known spot we dove was Browning Wall, it had the most current, but what a WALL ! We then dove Tree Island and Snowball which were also very close to, or part of Browning wall. We dove an old wreck called Thimbus which was great fun .... the wreck was all broken up but itwent on forever ! We played with 4 wolfeels here .... one of them was all over us, begging for food, for at least half an hour. On another dive we dove a rock referred to as Vernon Rock that was a nice dive but had reallyhigh current so we stayed in the lee of the rock most of the dive. We did nine dives over three days, normally we would have done four (counting nightdives) dives a day. But the weather was so snotty that we didn't want to push it. Most dives were in the 70 to 90 foot max depth range .

A LESSON: We only had one problem on one of the dives ..... when Chris had dropped us on Browning wall the second time, he had told us "See, no waves, that's because the wind and current are both headed the same way.... that way" while pointing south. The current WAS pretty stiff ....but after being dropped in a small cove above the wall we found that it actually was headed the OTHER way, north. We watched the couple in front of us kicking hard into it, stop, look at each other, shrug and "go with the flow" the other way .... They looked like the Blue Angels when they went by, they even dipped their wings :). This was fine with us as well, so we went with the flow and left. The only problem is, as I'm sure is apparent to most of you , the boat and the divers were going rapidly in opposite directions. Also, since the current was really stiff, other divers behind and in front of us had some nasty experiences with some major downdraft currents . Two divers (the couple that had gone before us) had such a bad time that they called an end to the dive and surfaced. Only to find themselves alone. They say that they were there for 20 minutes (I think that was an exaggeration). Meanwhile they lady I was diving with hadn't put any of this disparity of direction in her head as a worry, but I had. So 35 minutes into the dive I started signaling her to go up so I could look around, she kept looking at my gauge and at hers and trying to question why, but that was solved when we talked at the surface. Usually I hear the boat baby sitting us above and since I hadn't I wanted to look around to see where we were. When we surfaced there was no boat in sight, and we were at the end of the wall and the island the wall is on. I should also tell you that it was now almost dark and my buddies light had quit during the dive. So since we didn't want to push out to far from shore trying to locate the boat we instead started to swim to a nearby point figuring that if we had to we could get out there and signal boats with my light. Before we got to the point we spotted the boat way down the shore from us, they saw my light and came for us. So, happy ending. But .... I've thought about taking a strobe on live aboards before and I think that from now on I will do that . This kind of thing has happened to me before, and it always seems to happen on the last dive of the day just before nightfall. We had some diving grandma's on this trip who have carried one with them ever since they were lost for two hours in the Galapagos two years ago. When the surface is rough and your bubbles are difficult to follow this could happen anywhere.

THE BOAT: Sea Venture is a solid boat, it sleeps 10 to 11 divers and has the ability to keep you fat and happy with what comes from the kitchen. There are 4 bunks in the bow, a small room with 2 more bunks and the head further aft of the bow, and in front of the salon. Behind the salon on the starboard side are 2 more private (well....curtains for doors) rooms one for a couple and one for a single. Then on the port side there are two more bunks and the other head. The crew sleeps up top near the helm. We had 2 crew ..... Chris and Dan . Both of them could and did run the boat but Dan cooked all the meals. They leave all the assembled kits in the boat tender and fill them there , so you don't have to lug them back and forth. They also have Nitrox and we were all diving the same mix. (32). If you want to see a picture of the Sea Venture then go to their web page : http://www.extasea.com/ They also charter the boats Mamro and Lady Goodiver (seen at http://www.extasea.com/boats.html)

Questions or comments ? e-mail me at grizzy@nwlink.com

Shep Griswold
grizzy@nwlink.com
Kirkland,Wa,USA