PINK were the sunsets, the endless stretches of strawberry anemones, the color of the skinny dippers’ cheeks as they scrambled out of the frigid water. Wow what a weekend, we’re going back. The first dive? Seymour Narrows. A current ravished area loaded with life. Just the day before it was undivable due to winds blowing through Discovery Passage. The water was smooth when DynaMike nosed out into the Pass, he kept on going ’til we got to the spot. You should have seen the look on B’s face when she realized where we were headed.
If the weather and dive weren’t blissful enough, we came upon an explosion of white-sided dolphins flying back and forth in the rip. Captain Mike circled around and they played a little game called ’surf the wake’. Now we had planned on concocting stories to make JR jealous (his back was bothering him so he skipped the first dive) but with the white grunt sculpin, the fortune of diving the Narrows, and an encounter with dolphins, we were hard pressed to come up with a tall tale. Randy suggested, “Albino Orcas?”
We had come to Quadra the night before. B&E picked up live crab in Campbell River. We were told of a fisherman who sold prawns at the dock at Herriot Bay, we made one more stop and had a seafood feast at our temporary paradise on April Point. Saturday, while we were out doing our 2nd dive at Steep Island Wall, E and Ernie kayaked around making friends as they went. They were told to help themselves to as many oysters as they wanted in the private cove ahead. The bounty continued. A few people were converted that night. Mike had never liked oysters before, Randy firmly believed that he would only eat ’sters raw, Jeff even learned how to shuck them. As I recall everyone thoroughly enjoyed dinner. The view, the company and the amazing events of the day may have had something to do with it. Oh yeah, the diving… Steep Island wall is a dive full of color, but most notable are undercuts in the rock with clusters of feather dusters the size of a VW Bug attached to them. Hot pink brooding anemones clinging below plumes of rich purple and maroon. Tiny crab and fish mingled in. And then the typical walls of strawberry anemones with yellow and orange sponge popping out. Sounds like it clashes, but the beauty is indescribable.
Over the weekend we dived (dove, duved ; ) Middle of the Road (Mikey’s favorite), did a night dive just outside the cove, and <sigh> Row and be Damned. We finished on the latter with its male Puget Sound King Crab dueling for their girls. The rock structure: walls with many crevices to explore and an area with giant boulders to drift through- every inch (centimetre) covered in life and brilliant colors. Mmmmm hmmmm.
