6.7 The 2003 Northwest Treasure Hunt dive day miscellanea

At the 2003 NW Treasure Hunt dive event I met Mr. Terkel of Terkel Dive Equipment showing off his new canister light. It looked very nice. The body is one piece of molded (not machined) poly-urethane that has the belt loop for DIR-style mounting built-in to the canister. The head is Delrin. Nimh, 10 watt HID, strain-reliefs on the cord, etc.

I didn’t dive with the whole catastrophe at the hunt. There were about 100 divers all lined up on shore and most made it underwater when they said to "go." It was the kind of scene I try to avoid, generally. I do know that the guy who won the Viper is a nice guy. That’s about all.

I did however go to nearby Les Davis straight away afterward to finally dive my brand spanking new Halcyon wing.

Not to be (yet another) commercial for Halcyon, but I did like the thing. I have to say that my air consumption was way down (really noticeable) and I felt a bit over weighted, which I have read is common when going from a jacket to a wing (yes, I took 6 lbs off the belt first). Less air trapping from the wing, I gather. Anyway, I sure did like it.

Buddy was diving a new can light, too. She has a jacket BC and we couldn’t for the life of us figure out a graceful way to belt-mount the thing, so we ended up threading the tank cam band through. Guess that’s the best we can come up with for the moment. She hates not being able to turn it on and off when it’s on the tank. I don’t blame her. I think we will try mounting it upside-down, so maybe that way she will be able to reach the switch. I’ll just try to convince her to get a wing too, and then it won’t be an issue.

Les Davis was awesome. Lot’s of Painted Greenlings. Tons and tons of that leafy green stuff that sits on the bottom in the shallows. I’ve never been to Les Davis—someone I asked said it is a total not-to-worry site where currents are concerned. Seemed true, as we went in in the middle of what I think was a huge exchange and there was only a bit of current. A bit more than I would have liked to swim against on the surface, but okay on the bottom. I wonder if it was a really unusual current for Les Davis, because there were just gobbs and gobbs of that leafy kelp stuff in the water. As we came up from about 60 feet we saw huge surreal cascades of the stuff coming down over the sunken concrete blocks. It was like being surrounded by green slow-motion waterfalls. In some places it was so thick you couldn’t see more than a couple feet.

So all-in-all, it was a good day.

2003.5.12
Based on a post to rec.scuba