11:00 – 13:50
Dive Number 112
Start: 11:00
Roads: Dry / clear
Visibility: 24km
Temp: +28C
Water Temp: +16C
Area: Chippawa, Ontario
Vehicle: Niva, Black Sunfire
Weather: Clear and Sunny
Visibility: 6m
Divers: Wolf, Chuck
Dive Wench(es): Tori
Maximum Depth: 12m
Plan: Bottle Dive
We kitted up at the boat ramp and there were only a few boats in the area. As soon as we descended off the end of the boat ramp we discovered a red single cap Dodge Dakota pickup truck with Ontario Plates 608-8AG with a valtag expiry of January 2008!
We surfaced to tell Tori to call the police. The rear plate was very loose and Chuck removed it to bring it up for Tori to call the Police.
After Tori had called the Police we decided to head back out for the dive. We packed the license plate into the dive float to turn it into the police later. Chuck had a problem with Brian's aga mask leaking again and had to go out and change to his normal regulator set.
While he did that I went back to the truck and wrote my name on the bonnet with a dive flag underneath. I started to hear someones regulator breathing and thought "that was fast" and looked over to see two other divers! They were just finishing up their drift dive and getting ready to exit. I wrote Chuck's name on the passenger door with a dive flag as well. The other divers wrote "Wash Me" on the other side of the bonnet of the truck. I surfaced again to find a supervisor in a 'ute had arrived and was talking to Chuck and Tori about the truck, then we descended and started our dive.
As soon as we got to the bottom we saw lots of mailboxes, tons of bottles as this site was once a bottle factory, even pieces of wood, etc. At one point I got separated from Chuck who was experiencing some difficulties when his dive float somehow got filled with water and joined him on the bottom of the river. His float line got caught on a rock and he had to go and free the rock, at the same time seriously binding himself up in the float rope.
I surfaced, being unable to find Chuck and felt somewhat distressed at the fact that I could not see Chuck *or* the dive float for a while!
Eventually I saw Chuck surface and he blew his whistle to let me know he was all right. We joined up to exchange stories and laugh very hard at what happened. We drifted out to our exit point with about 100 bar in my tank. Chuck exited the water and I stayed to burn off the last little bit of air in my tank. I followed the bridge pylons out into the 9m deep water and saw all kinds of debris. Old road marker cones, boat bumpers, computers, televisions and other discarded equipment.
We went to a local Tim Hortons coffee shop afterward and laughed hard about all the adventure. Chuck then turned in the license plate from the pickup truck to the local Niagara Regional Police station on his way home.
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