It's All Good

I have had only two bad days diving and this was not one of them. The day ended in the most fitting manner with me putting a one inch gash on my head.

Our plan was to meet at the Alki Boat Launch at 11:00am to dive Waterman's Wall during the slack opportunity which presented itself. At 9:00am both of my dive buddies called me to tell me that the road to the boat launch was going to be closed starting at 10:00am. We diverted Shilshole Marina. This would only increase the boat ride by a few minutes so it was not a big deal.

When I arrived at the boat with my first load of gear I thought the boat didn't look right sitting in the water. I asked if the plug was in but was assured everything was all right. When I got back with my second load of gear I realized something was not right. One of my buddies was hanging from his thighs over the back of the boat while another buddy was frantically donning his dry suit. The boat was sitting much deeper in the water and listing to one side. The plug was not on the boat and the only thing that was going to save it from sinking was a finger in the drain plug hole. We managed to wrestle a boat full of water with three sets of doubles back on the trailer.

Once on dry land we went to West Marine 1/2 a mile down the road to get some plugs. The boat drained for almost an hour. We lost the opportunity to dive Waterman's Wall. But this is the Puget Sound, we had a boat and there were lots of other diving opportunities. We headed to Blakley Harbor to dive Fingers.

After our dive at Fingers we headed off to the West Point Barges. The first problem was the we did not have coordinates. One of my buddies called his wife and was trying to instruct her over the phone on how to get GPS coordinates off their boat's GPS. The GPS unit on the boat we were on showed some form of obstruction right where the West Point Barges should have been. We made several passes over the area with the depth sounder and were pretty certain we were right on them.

We dropped anchor in 100ft of water with 200ft of line. The wind was too strong for the amount of scope on the anchor and we dragged. We pulled the anchor, attached another 200ft of line, redropped over where we thought the barges were and waited for the line to get taught. We were still dragging and had to pull the anchor up a second time.

We were determined to get the dive in so we decided to run the dive as a live boat instead of anchored. We took out the extra 200ft of line and attached a couple of fenders to the end of the 200ft anchor line. We dropped again and hoped we were close enough.

The dive on the West Point Barges went smoothly. The anchor landed about 30ft from the deepest barge and the visibility was good enough that we could see a line of plumose anemones along the gunwale of the barge from the anchor.

At 6:00pm we were safely back ashore, or so we thought. We unloaded the boat and left all our double tanks on the dock. I sat on the ground to put my tanks on my back. I managed to sit the tanks on my back while on my hands and knees. I was about to stand up when I lost my balance forward, the tanks slipped of my back and the backplate put a one inch gash on the back of my head, but my dive gear was still OK.

Furtunately one of my buddies is an ER doctor and she knew exactly how to fix me. We went to the local 7/11 to get some Crazy Glue and she glued head back together. I will not be able to dive for 48 to 72 hours :-(

So you may be wondering why this was not a bad day diving. It is really very simple, no one died.