Date: Thursday, Oct. 25, 2007
Location: Yukon, Wreck Alley, Mission Beach
Dive Type: Recreational
Time: 7:30: pm
Max Depth: 102 ft. [brought shovel]
Conditions: flat, glassy/air still smoky
Viz: a murky 3-5 ft. above 30 ft. [mostly ash floating particles in the water], opening up to a respectable 20 ft. on the Yukon.
Mix: 32%
Critters Seen: Barred Sand Bass, Surfperch, White Medtridia, Strawberry Anemones, Painted Greenlings, CA Sea Cucumbers
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Well, after the week from hell [literally], we decided it was time to blow off some and do some serious diving.
A PADI Instructor friend of ours, Lori, was visiting from Florida and we had planned to take her out anyway several months ago. Her first reaction was: “You’re not going to let ‘a couple little fires’ stop you from diving, are you?” And, of course, our immediate reply [in chorus] was: “OF COURSE NOT!”, so we met
at the dock at 6 pm and motored out under smoky/hazy skies to Wreck Alley.
Lori had been a member of an earlier dive group we had formed in San Diego a few years ago for diving Scripps Canyon, whose motto had been: “The Few…….the Proud……the COMPLETELY INSANE.” [Apologies to the US Marine Corps.]
Note: one reason it was so relatively easy to do was we had already packed all our dive gear and tanks and loaded them into Barb’s truck a couple days earlier, thinking we’d be living on the boat for a few days, so we were ready to rock!
Since our friend Lori hadn’t been in a dry suit in a while, it was decided that the girls [Barb, Lori and Kathy] would dive together and me and Jarrod would buddy up and jump in first, which we did.
Viz was a bit murky on the way down, since there was still a lot of ash and particulate matter in the water, but once we got on the Yukon itself, it opened up to around 15-20 ft. or so.
We had moored on the Stern line, so we quickly found ourselves crawling along the bottom under the Mortar Bay, towards the Rear Guns.
Lady Yuke glowed pink and white in the beams of our lights from the ubiquitous White Medtridia and Strawberry Anemones and dark shadows loomed spookily up ahead in the gloom.
The usual assortment of bored looking Sand Bass gazed up at us from the sand, as if wondering who the hell we were, visiting at the ship at this time of night.
We swam under the ship in front of the Rear Guns, sending Spiny Lobster scuttling out of the way of our lights. The occasional Surf Perch could be seen
flitting about between the railings of the ship.
We had agreed that we would turn around when we got past the Radio Tower, which we did.
I could see Jerrod’s flash going off at regular intervals in the gloom and he took pictures here and there.
We glided up to that one large entrance in front of the Radio Tower, not a cut out, but some sort of natural ventilation shaft, and darted in for a quick look.
It’s the one where you go in about 4 ft. and then it takes a sharp turn to the right, leading deeper into the ship.
We went in, in single file, being careful not to stir up any silt, until we came to the right hand turn, then we slowly turned around and made our way back out, being careful not to knock off the Warty Sea Cucumbers clinging to the walls on either side and causing Sea Cucumbers to rain down all around us, as I have done in the past; inconveniencing ourselves and causing them to hate us with a passion.
We glided out and made our way towards the Mortar Bay, where we planned to linger, play around and take some more pictures.
I found a small Masking Crab clinging to the edge of a metal flange, and got him up on my hand and gestured for Jerrod to come on over to take a shot.
But, he hastily crawled off my hand, back onto the metal flange, obviously not wanting to avail himself of this opportunity for fame and fortune as one of Jerrod’s subjects, and scuttled off into the bowels of the ship.
I noticed a little bit of a current had picked up, so we ducked into the Bay itself to get our of it.
I dropped down into the Lobster Trap hole to inspect any changes since I had been here last and Jerrod busied himself taking pictures around the sides of the Bay.
Ascending back up out of the Lobster Trap Hole, I thought I’d show Jerrod the ‘Roof Hatch’ of the Mortar Bay and how to glide up through it, into the Kelp Forest above.
I circled it with my light to indicate that I was going through it, if he’d like to follow, which he did, right behind me.
I began slowly adjusting my buoyancy with breath control until I was gradually gliding up through the large cutout in the top, until I was in the little room just above it, and and then up through the top, into the Macrocystis Forest on the Starboard side.
I was halfway out of the hole, with Kelp fronds slapping my face from either side in the current, when I felt a violent tugging on my right ankle.
I thought: “Ah, Jerrod, stop horsing around–this is the Yukon, at NIGHT, remember?”
Another violent tug on my ankle. I gradually repositioned myself so I could look down into the hole I had emerged from, which was a bit difficult with all the Kelp slapping me in the face and the current picking up even more now.
As I peered down into the hole, at first I couldn’t see anything. I thought, “Where the hell is Jerrod?–he was right behind me–tugging on my foot!”
Then, as I peered more closely, I could see his bubbles coming out of the cutout, but NO LIGHT.
When he finally came out of the hole, I could see quite clearly that he HAD NO LIGHT.
Ah…..primary light failure on the Yukon at night–how interesting!
Not knowing if his backup light was accessible to him, I immediately reached up into my reserve BC pocket for my back up to give to him and naturally the damn thing was positioned about 2 inches under my left armpit, making it a bit difficult to reach–with either hand–but, I finally got it out and started to hand it to Jerrod, as the current picked up even more now and we were being rock and rolled back and forth about 3 ft. in either direction, which didn’t make things any easier.
With Kelp fronds slapping us from either side, I handed it to him, but he kept refusing it. He kept pointing to the back of his tank–huh?
Oh, yeah: I had forgotten: he was using a Nigh Rider light, with a battery pack and the ON/OFF switch conveniently located right on the back of his tank.
Ah, now the light was beginning to dawn: he had accidentally tripped his ON/OFF switch on a flange while coming up through the Roof Hatch!
See? All that ‘college ejukation’ didn’t go to waste after all!
Reaching over the top of his tank while the current flung us back and forth and Kelp fronds kept wrapping themselves around my face, I managed to find the little switch and turn it on and…….Hallelujah! LIGHT!
Breathing not a small sigh of relief, I turned around to face a greatly relieved Jerrod, who no longer faced the possibility of ascending from the Yukon in the dark, without his light.
Deciding that that had been enough excitement for one evening, we mutually agreed that this might be a good time to begin our ascent, which we did.
We ascended slowly up through the layer of ash near the surface and popped to the surface just as the girls were getting ready to descend.
Once back on board, we had a great time reliving our little fiasco, exchanging high fives on how brilliantly we had handled it, laughing and scratching……but also agreeing that perhaps next time, he might want to position his battery pack a little off to the side of his strap, instead of right on the back, where the switch is more vulnerable to getting tripped like that on a wreck dive.
The girls popped up about 40 mins later, shrieking about what a great dive they had had, and we all put away our gear and motored merrily back to the Marina, everyone in agreement that it had been a good night and joking about our new motto: “What happens on the Scuba Do, stays on the Scuba Do!”
