Sunday, November 04 – 2007
11:15 – 12:36
Dive Number 124
Start: 11:00
Roads: Dry / clear
Visibility: 24km
Temp: +12C
Water Temp: +8C
Area: East Main Street Bridge, Welland, Ontario
Vehicle: Gold Chevy Cobolt AYTK-941
Weather: Mostly Cloudy
Visibility: 10m
Divers: Wolf, Chuck
Dive Wench(es): Tori, Thomas
Maximum Depth: 10m
Plan: Cold Water Dive
We arrived at the King and Division Street intersection which was filled with cars to do church still being in session across the street at 11:00hrs. We found a single spot and parked the rental gold Chevy Cobalt 4-door we have as the Niva is still in for repair after the accident it was involved in a few weeks back. We started kitting up just as a friend Thomas from work arrived with his dog Eowyn. I wore my DUI Dry Suit, Aga mask, and black Luxfer Aluminum 12L tank. We entered the water by the steel dock and noticed that the steel pots we moved for the city on Oct. 14th (Dive 123) were still where we moved them and had not been recovered. As we descended the sharp cold stabbed at my unprotected head. Even with the dry suit I felt cold. Chuck completely froze in his rental we suit. With the low tempratures and great visibility we saw a lot od debris like bicycles, skateboards, scooters, etc. I even found a silver Samsung flip mobile phone from Telus! I found a long, thick cable running across the bottom off the canal system, we followed it for a while but could not find the end of it. At one point during the dive Chuck decided to break surface to find our position. As he ascended I looked at the ascent line. The sight was very humorous to behold. There in the clear water, was a long yellow line with all kinds of stuff attached to it – a skateboard, a cup, and other “treasures” we had decided to find and bring back to shore with us. We ended the dive when I reached 30 bar in my tank and returned to the shore. I had a catastophic wrist seal failure on my right wrist on my drysuit. A few months ago the left wrist seal suffered a catastophic failure on September 1st on Dive 111 in Lake Erie.
Next time I go diving this year, I will wear my thermal hood and thermal skivies under my drysuit. We will also bring a large heater to stand infront of as we doff our equipment.
We went to our local coffee shop to relax, warm up, and discuss the dive and future explorations in the frigid waters of Canada.