RECREATION IN THE SAN JUAN ISLANDS

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Recreation in the San Juan Islands: Scuba Diving

Thought for the day: "If I was any happier, I'd be two people."

posted 05/09/2008
I find myself living in the middle of a place that other people make a concerted effort to get to for vacation. My job is taking care of a lovely little bit of that area, including a small marina, a pool, some roads and a brand new house, all of which are mine to use as well. The people that I work for are great, and treat me like family. Talk about fat, dumb, and happy - and these are not three of Snow White's little people to whom I refer. This is me, myself and I.

Not long after moving here I found this online resource wherein YOU have found this article. Having built and maintained a few websites, I thought it was marvelously current and well done. Several of the columnists were very entertaining, and I struck up a conversation with one of them online. Before I knew it, I had my own column! OK, so now I was REALLY happy about life here in the San Juans. A wonderful partner, a great job, and now a custom SOAPBOX from which to pontificate. This is pretty much the Leo/Dragon dream. It couldn't really get any better, could it? Well, I'm glad you asked – and yes, it can.

Sharon recently asked me to consider writing a Friday article about "things to do in the area", with an emphasis on the outdoors. "Cool!" I immediately replied. "What kinds of things?" "Well, how about hiking and biking and outdoor stuff?" and to that I replied "OK, and what about scuba diving and whale watching and motorcycle riding?" "Sure', she replied. "and don't forget to visit the market and check out the parks and...." Well, you get the idea. So here it comes.

First stop: Scuba Diving! Hollie and I have done a fair amount of scuba diving in the Caribbean; Warm water, amazing visibility, incredible sea life population and variety. Still, we know that just about anyone can dive where it is warm and clear and easy. You don't even have to wear a wetsuit for a single tank dive in most places. But we didn't want to remain warm-water-wimps. We also wanted to experience the unique flora and fauna that lives within waters we have sat beside or boated on or driven around ALL of our lives.

Enter Kurt Long of Naknek Charters, right here at the Spring street dock in Friday Harbor. Kurt is captain of Naknek moored here, and can take as many as 14 divers for charter scuba dives around the area. He also offers instruction and certifications for new and experienced divers. Hollie and I approached Kurt and admitted our combined fascination and trepidation about diving in the local waters. Kurt was great and completely understood. We planned to meet at 10 am on Wednesday for a "Cold Water Refresher" class. This is a regular class that Kurt teaches, so I guess we weren't the only folks to have only warm water dive experience.

We met Kurt at the shop and he quickly got us outfitted with gear. The first thing a warm-water diver notices is that there is a lot more "stuff" involved. We both have lightweight wetsuits that are 1-3 mm thick. For our Friday Harbor dive, we would be wearing 7 mm. For the first time we would also wear a neoprene hood to insulate our head and neck. Gloves were noticeably thicker than any we had worn before as well. The good news about this is that all this neoprene provides a LOT of insulation from the 48 degree water of the Sound. The bad new about all this is that you now feel a little bit like the Michelin man. Or maybe the little brother in his snowsuit from “A Christmas Story” – the one whose brother wanted the Daisy Red Rider BB gun. If I fall over at this point, I am going to need serious help getting back up.

Since we had not dived with Kurt before, and our time was limited and our primary interest was not initially what we would SEE, but how we would FEEL, we decided not to fire up Naknek to head out anywhere more exotic, but to drop in right off the Spring Street Dock. Wearing our heavy wetsuits and carting the rest of our gear, we made our way like zombie-rubber-people down to the pier. Once there we began the semi-familiar ritual of donning our buoyancy compensators (BCs) and tanks, masks and fins, and getting all our regulators and gauges in "just the right spots" before taking the literal plunge. Oh yes, I forgot one very important bit of equipment – the weight belt and added weights in our BCs.

Remember how I mentioned that there was good news about neoprene? Insulation and all that? Well, it's true. But since it makes you "thicker", you displace much more water than you would if you were not wearing it. So if you hope to do anything other than thrash around on the surface, you need to add weight so you can sink a bit. Of course the ideal state in scuba diving is called "neutral buoyancy", and it is one of the coolest things of all the cool things about scuba diving. When you have achieved a state of neutral buoyancy, you are truly weightless. You glide in the water like a seal, and it feels as if you have to expend little more than the desire to drift downward to do it. Same goes for gliding back up or hovering in place.

To achieve easy neutral buoyancy in a very thin wetsuit or just a pair of swim trunks in the tropical 80 degree water of the Caribbean, I wear 12 pounds of weight. Walking around in swim trunks with a 12 pound weight belt is not hard to do. To achieve neutral buoyancy in a 7mm wetsuit, I get to wear 34 pounds. Walking around impersonating the Michelin man while wearing a 34-pound belt is not easy. Add the air tank and the clown flippers, and let's just say it's a good thing we are jumping in the water soon. On the dock, I am a danger to myself and others. It is currently about 50 degrees outside, and inside my wetsuit it is about, say, 120. The only thing wet about my wetsuit at this point is the sweat trickling down my back. But it's OK because it is time to get in the water.

Kurt gets in first. This is for a couple of reasons. The first is that he is a conscientious instructor and dive-master. He wants to be close by if either of his “students” has a problem on entry. The second is because HE is wearing a DRY-suit. The drysuit has seals around his neck and has integrated or sealed boots and gloves that allow the diver to stay almost completely dry while diving. Under this drysuit, the diver also wears an insulating garment made out of something cozy like polar-fleece. So Kurt is not cold. Kurt is not going to GET cold! This is the ultimate way to dive in cold water, and Hollie and I will eventually get dry suits. But anyway, Kurt is in the water, so Hol and I do a giant stride entry off the dock.

The first thing you notice, and it's a GOOD thing, is that even with all this stuff on, you still mostly float! So after we give each other the sign that all is well and nobody is having any equipment issues, we begin our descent. You DO notice that the water is cold, but mostly just around your mouth at first. It takes a while for a bit of water to being its inevitable journey into your wetsuit. That IS why they call it a wetsuit, after all. Soon the thin trapped layer of water that leaks in is warmed up by your body heat, and it's all pretty comfortable. So what the heck is there to see down here, anyway? Well, quite a bit actually!

There is a real abundance of sea life all around us. The first thing you notice is that the visibility is really quite good! At this point we are only about 25 feet down, so the natural light from the surface is still quite adequate to see very well. The pilings of the dock are literally covered in life. In addition to the seaweeds and kelps, there are lots of little critters. At this point it is probably no longer necessary to admit that I am not a marine biologist. My usual description of sea life after diving is something like "Did you see that big brown chunky-looking fish?", or "What was that spangly thing-a-ma-jig that disappeared into that hole?" So I don't know the names of all the little barnacle things on the pilings, but I think some are chitons and periwinkles.

We find two different nudibranchs, which are very cool looking little slug-like creatures, but MUCH more colorful. These two are white and orange. There are also lots of dock shrimp and a few little sculpin-type fish. There are a pretty amazing variety of sea-stars (Ro-Dog's favorites!) including some with a WHOLE bunch of legs. We point out these creatures to one another, and Kurt gently takes a many-rayed star and places it on his mask and flails his arms and legs about as if he is being attacked.

We don't know Kurt personally, and he has seemed very business-like and serious up until now. (Frankly, I want the guy who is in charge of the dive to be business-like to a point!) But this is funny! If you have never laughed with a scuba regulator in your mouth, it is kinda weird. But laughing is laughing!

We have been tooling around under the docks for a while now. My check of my gauges shows that I have LOTS of air left, and that we are about 40 feet down. This is a very easy depth – no stress, still plenty of light. Now in addition to the pilings, we are snooping around on the bottom and looking at things. The bottom is very soft and mooshy, so we all try not to stir it up too much. I am having just a little bit of fuss with my buoyancy. With a thick wetsuit on that gets compressed as you dive deeper, your buoyancy changes a bit, and you have to adjust the air in your BC a bit now and then. In the tropics you don't deal with this, and "perfect buoyancy" is much easier. This is no big deal, but it reminds me that there are things to learn about cold water diving.

So I am playing with my BC a bit when I look up and see that Kurt is “talking” on a cell phone he has found on the bottom. He has his other hand over his ear so he can “hear”. Killer.

All of us are beginning to notice that the human influence on the ecosystem is pretty much what you would expect: there is junk everywhere. Some of it is cool junk. I find an old square-ish bottle that was once sealed with a cork. Hollie finds a somewhat newer bottle, that I would bet used to hold Miller Genuine Draft. Here is an old starter off an outboard motor. Over there is a plastic laminated “menu” from a local tour operator. There are also larger things, like a bicycle and a shopping cart.

I am reminded that for everything we can SEE, there are probably three or eight or 50 things that are covered by the silt or buried in the mud. We humans own lots of “stuff” and we are obviously fumble-fingered and/or environmentally cavalier. But it does make for some interesting browsing.

We have been down for 25 minutes or so, and Kurt asks with hand signals if we are OK. We both signal yes. He asks if we are cold, by hugging himself with both arms. I notice that I AM a bit cold, and give him the wide-spread hand signal that means "not good but not bad". My core is still very comfortable, but it is obvious now that I am paying attention that my toes and fingers are quite chilled. My fingers are a bit stupid. I could not play the piano down here. (And yes, I CAN play a bit on the surface). So we begin a lazy circle back to the place of entry.

It is at this point that I realize what a lazy diver I have become since we have done ALL of our diving with guides and dive-masters. I am completely disoriented as to which way is "back". This is not a good thing when diving literally under a marina next to a ferry dock. In fact, we have heard the ferry come and go while down on this dive. But fortunately Kurt has not only been being responsible, but knows this area well, so he leads us back to the dock where we entered, and we slowly surface near one of the safety ladders.

Kurt bails first and heads up the ladder. To an inexperienced person this might look selfish, but we both know it is so he can help us with our gear as we get out of the water. No one helps Kurt. It is pretty easy to get out of the BC and tank, as we have added air to be extra buoyant now that we WANT to stay on the surface. You just slip out of it like taking off a jacket – though admittedly this jacket is a bit clunky and has some heavy buckles. After that off comes the weight belt which is a pretty heavy one-armed lift up to the pier. Then it is time to remove the flippers.

Here is where I find out how cold my hands have become. My fingers aren't working very well. As I hang onto the ladder, which is a shorty, I can't get the buckles undone. Kurt just says "lay back", and I pop my feet out of the water one at a time and he releases the heel straps. Nice. Now I just climb the ladder and we're out of the water. Hollie follows. Up on the pier we chat a bit about our experience and strip out of our wetsuits so they can be rinsed with fresh water. I realize that I am shivering a bit and I can't talk well because my lower jaw is pretty much numb. This is OK, because the only thing I really want to say is "towel!" and maybe "hot shower!" Fortunately we have the towels, and so we are able to get a LITTLE bit warmer. It occurs to me that I am standing outside on a 50-degree morning with a light breeze in wet swim trunks. Even if I had NOT been pre-chilled, this would be COLD! But it is not long before we are dry and back in our clothes.

We help Kurt get the gear back into the shop, and leave him all the cleanup and re-fills and sorting. This would DEFINITELY not happen if we were diving in our own gear, but this is part of the service that Kurt provides with the rental gear he has allowed us to use as part of the cost of our refresher class. If we had our own gear, we would have paid for the air and filled our tanks and taken care of all our own stuff. Once you own your equipment, the sport is not very expensive. Of course like any other sport, there is always new stuff that you simply MUST have, and other places to go visit and see and dive, whether it is Vancouver Island or Australia or Indonesia.

If you have never dived before, and are thinking about it as a hobby, I would encourage you to learn to dive here in our local waters. Not only is it a beautiful place to dive, but you have a very good shop right here in town to get you going. Then when you go on vacation and visit places like Mexico or Australia or Indonesia, you will not only get to see a completely different collection of sea life in much more comfortable conditions, but you will realize that you are a REAL diver. As Kurt says: "If you learn to dive here, you can dive anywhere in the world." You might want to check it out. Naknek Charters can be reached at 360.378.9297 or www.naknekcharters.com.

Jim Carroll and Hollie Swanson are native northwesterners. They moved here last year from Whidbey Island to take new positions as island caretakers on Brown (Friday) Island. They are enjoying life on a "real" island and have been exploring the San Juans in their little tug "Shulala." Jim can be reached at shu@sanjuanislander.com.