am-aquess

Notes: Another two very nice dives at Sund Rock. North wall on first dive. Having explored this fairly thoroughly before, we went to try and find the wreck to the north after the wall ends. We swam north from the end of the wall a few hundred feet, perhaps, at about 70 ft and didn’t find it. Turned around and swam back south at about 50 ft and ran straight into it, bigger than I expected and crumbling, lots of life. Short enough dive to conserve air (we had 1 full and 2 partly full sets of doubles between us for the two dives). Mask was a bit leaky.

Second dive on the South wall. The primary goal was to find a biggish octopus that we’d been told about. Look for crab shells and other remains at about 50 ft, we were told. There it was. Probably the biggest octopus I’ve ever seen happily hanging out under a rock, an impassive eye looking out. Lots of big eels too and other fish. The wall is impressive and there were some lovely vistas, watching it disappear up into the green gloom. Jeremy F was buzzing around on a scooter with another guy. My primary light gave out about 2/3 of the way into the dive. I assumed it was the battery and moved to a backup (actually I took one of Doug’s backups because mine was woefully ineffective). I spent a small bit of the dive swimming with one hand hanging on to my tank valve (a good exercise, I’m told). Need to do more of this.

Equipment: As previous dive but used Doug’s spare doubles for second dive to have more gas. I found later that the primary light battery was not dead. It just goes went off for no apparent reason. When cleaning later I turned it on again and left it submerged. It turned itself off again. Need to look into this. Still should shorten bungee a shade. Otherwise, gear was pretty good.

Accumulated time underwater: 5 days, 0 hours and 28 minutes.