Following is the story of Doug Sitter and me (both members of Freedive Toronto) and our weekend of freediving in beautiful, albiet cold, Tobermory along with Doug's friends John and Steve. The condensed version will be available shortly!
Doug and I arrived at Cyprus Lake campground in Tobermory around 9 pm Friday and while setting up camp, Steve and Kelly were talking excitedly about the adult black bear they had seen just before we arrived! It's nice to see the bears making a comeback on the Bruce penninsula.
John arrived and after sitting around the fire for a few hours we decided to go for a midnight hike to the shore. The stream out of Cyprus lake was rushing more than I'd seen before, and in the moonlight you could see the mist hanging on the water of the lake. All 5 of us arrived on the shore around 12:30, to find the water an absolute sheet of glass. It was so clear and smooth that you could see fish swimming around several feet below the surface. With the surface that smooth, I almost stepped onto a rock that appeared to be dry, but was actually 12-14 inches under water! There were more fish than I'd ever seen in Tobermory before. Literally hundreds of fish along the shoreline of Indian Head Cove appearing to hover above the rocky bottom in the perfectly translucent water.
We headed for the Grotto after deciding that it would be fun to go into the cave at night. Doug and I remembered pulling several candles in glass bowls out of the bottom of the cave last time we were diving there and as I had a lighter, we thought that if we could still find them it would be fun to light the candles and put them up on the ledges of the cave. We climbed down through the Chimney Rock passage into the grotto, me leading the way and helping the others down the initial vertical portion. We reached the cave without incident, and proceeded to search for the candles. We couldn't find any but Doug said that he remembered exactly where there were more of them on the bottom of the cave... under 19 feet of 4 degree celcius water. He said that if he used my waterproof flashlight (his was back at camp) he thought he could find them... in the dark... inside a cave... without a mask... or a wetsuit... I analyzed the situation as accurately as I could, and promptly told him he was insane. He was determined however, and after I promised him legendary status and his own freediving planet in the afterlife, his mind was made up. He changed into some shorts, prepared a fleece sweater to substitute as a towel upon his undoubted triumphant exit from the water and took my light. He stepped into the water, and much to my surprise, did not start screaming like a 12 year old schoolgirl, but remarked rather calmly (not to my surprise) that the water was indeed cold. After stepping off the ledge, he began to tread water and prepare for his dive. We floodlit the water's surface the best we could with our lights, then he dove. First one, then another strong stroke down, then suddenly he turned about halfway to the bottom and in one mighty stroke upwards came blasting out of the surface of the water. Now I've never seen a missile launched from a submarine, but let's say it can't be much more spectacular! He gasped and started stuttering something about lights and the shore. Of course with his jaw and vocal cords mostly frozen, speaking was difficult. Understanding him was even more difficult. I was simply trying to make sure it was a clean recovery by shining my light into his eyes and looking for any LMC symptoms. I'm sorry to say that fine motor control was not one of the things possesed by Doug upon surfacing. :rcard
From his viewpoint, he dove and made for the bottom. At around 10 feet he opened his eyes and realized that he couldn't really see anything. Suddenly the vision of swimming up under one of the underwater ledges made it through the hypothermic haze, and he decided against searching around the bottom for the candles. At that point he aborted the dive and upon surfacing, was met by 4 beams of light in the eyes. He couldn't see the shore! In fact he couldn't see much of anything. He attempted to say "shine the lights on the shore!" but all that managed to come out was a very garbled "uuuuulights uhuhuhuuuuuushore." We couldn't figure out what he meant, so we continued shining our lights as helpfully as we could right in his eyes. He eventually made it to shore and although we thought we'd have to drag him out of the cave and back to camp, he made a complete recovery. After awhile even his speech lost that hypothermic slur.
On Saturday morning we headed for Indian Head Cove and the grotto. Steve and John decided to leave their scuba equipment at the campsite and try out freediving rather than haul their stuff over a kilometer to the shore. We arrived at the shore under brilliant sunshine and barely a ripple on the water. We suited up and jumped in. The vis was more than 50 feet, in fact in 50 feet of water you could still see the bottom clearly! From 60 feet below looking up, the surface was perfectly clear.
Doug and I headed for the long entrance to the cave because we wanted to get a picture of a freediver sillouetted against the blue backdrop of the the water from inside the passageway. I did a quick breatheup and dove. I swam halfway through the passage and stopped and waited for Doug. Because I was only about 10 feet or less below the surface there, I was quite bouyant, so I put an hand against the rock above to steady myself for the picture. Doug headed for the entrance, and I snapped a couple of pictures. Due to the fact that it was the first dive of the day, I was already feeling a bit low on air, so I headed into the cave... or so I thought. That passage into the grotto is mostly about 8-10 feet underwater, and is only about 3-4 feet high inside. That's plenty of room for a freediver, or even a scubadiver for sure. Also, heading outside from the cave is easy because you have the light to swim towards, however swimming inwards it's alot harder to see. There are also several side passages that lead back to the bay, but they are so narrow (like 14-18 inches high) that of course I've never tried them. Well as I headed along I kicked the ceiling and lost some momentum causing me to float up even more. Then I realized that the way ahead although wide enough to fit through wasn't wide enough to use my fins, but I could see ahead into what I thought was the cave. I grabbed the rocks and gave a couple pulls to get through the small spot and drifted out into... not the cave! I suddenly realized that now I was in the big passage out to the bay not the cave. I was equidistant from the cave and the bay, so I headed towards the light. I surfaced fine in the bay, and suddenly realized what I'd done wrong. In my stop and turn after the pictures I had headed in the wrong direction, something that I didn't imagine possible let alone likely! I had come through a passageway that I didn't even know existed and ended up in the bay not the cave. Suddenly I realized that Doug had been following me and that I had barely fit through that passageway... and If I had barely fit I wondered with horror if he would fit I quickly dove through the front entrance to the cave. I surfaced inside the cave to see Steve and John (they had walked in the land entrance) but no Doug. I headed for the other passageway (my intended entrance the first time) and there was Doug, much to my relief slowly making his way along probably a minute later, in great freediver style... no hurry, lots of air left. He hadn't even seen me head in the wrong direction. I told Doug what I'd done, and I'm going to be pretty careful heading into the cave in the future! Good thing there arn't passageways leading to nowhere...
After that we did some diving inside the cave. Doug recovered the candles the he had failed to retreive the night before ;-) and put them on a ledge where we can find them next time. Steve decided he wanted to try swimming out of the main entrance, about 5 feet down and about 15 feet across. I dove first and waited in the middle, and about 10-15 seconds later Steve dove, with Doug right beside him. He made it just fine, flashing me an ok and a smile as he went past! We all regrouped in the bay and headed slowly for a mooring bouy that was nearby, making lots of dives to inspect the rocky bottom thirty feet below or the occasional fish. We arrived at the bouy, and the line dissapeared into the blue below. Doug said he thought the bottom was around 60-70 feet there and headed down to check it out. I can't remember exactly how deep it was, about 60-65 though. You could see the bottom almost immediatly after leaving the surface. As I hadn't been deeper than 50 feet since my squeeze in Morisson's quarry a month or so ago, I decided to take it really slow, and pack to near max for every dive at first. We had fun doing some pulldowns on the mooring line and some CB dives as well. Steve and John left after a bit to explore some more of the rocky shoreline.
The rest of the story to follow in the next post...
Doug and I arrived at Cyprus Lake campground in Tobermory around 9 pm Friday and while setting up camp, Steve and Kelly were talking excitedly about the adult black bear they had seen just before we arrived! It's nice to see the bears making a comeback on the Bruce penninsula.
John arrived and after sitting around the fire for a few hours we decided to go for a midnight hike to the shore. The stream out of Cyprus lake was rushing more than I'd seen before, and in the moonlight you could see the mist hanging on the water of the lake. All 5 of us arrived on the shore around 12:30, to find the water an absolute sheet of glass. It was so clear and smooth that you could see fish swimming around several feet below the surface. With the surface that smooth, I almost stepped onto a rock that appeared to be dry, but was actually 12-14 inches under water! There were more fish than I'd ever seen in Tobermory before. Literally hundreds of fish along the shoreline of Indian Head Cove appearing to hover above the rocky bottom in the perfectly translucent water.
We headed for the Grotto after deciding that it would be fun to go into the cave at night. Doug and I remembered pulling several candles in glass bowls out of the bottom of the cave last time we were diving there and as I had a lighter, we thought that if we could still find them it would be fun to light the candles and put them up on the ledges of the cave. We climbed down through the Chimney Rock passage into the grotto, me leading the way and helping the others down the initial vertical portion. We reached the cave without incident, and proceeded to search for the candles. We couldn't find any but Doug said that he remembered exactly where there were more of them on the bottom of the cave... under 19 feet of 4 degree celcius water. He said that if he used my waterproof flashlight (his was back at camp) he thought he could find them... in the dark... inside a cave... without a mask... or a wetsuit... I analyzed the situation as accurately as I could, and promptly told him he was insane. He was determined however, and after I promised him legendary status and his own freediving planet in the afterlife, his mind was made up. He changed into some shorts, prepared a fleece sweater to substitute as a towel upon his undoubted triumphant exit from the water and took my light. He stepped into the water, and much to my surprise, did not start screaming like a 12 year old schoolgirl, but remarked rather calmly (not to my surprise) that the water was indeed cold. After stepping off the ledge, he began to tread water and prepare for his dive. We floodlit the water's surface the best we could with our lights, then he dove. First one, then another strong stroke down, then suddenly he turned about halfway to the bottom and in one mighty stroke upwards came blasting out of the surface of the water. Now I've never seen a missile launched from a submarine, but let's say it can't be much more spectacular! He gasped and started stuttering something about lights and the shore. Of course with his jaw and vocal cords mostly frozen, speaking was difficult. Understanding him was even more difficult. I was simply trying to make sure it was a clean recovery by shining my light into his eyes and looking for any LMC symptoms. I'm sorry to say that fine motor control was not one of the things possesed by Doug upon surfacing. :rcard
From his viewpoint, he dove and made for the bottom. At around 10 feet he opened his eyes and realized that he couldn't really see anything. Suddenly the vision of swimming up under one of the underwater ledges made it through the hypothermic haze, and he decided against searching around the bottom for the candles. At that point he aborted the dive and upon surfacing, was met by 4 beams of light in the eyes. He couldn't see the shore! In fact he couldn't see much of anything. He attempted to say "shine the lights on the shore!" but all that managed to come out was a very garbled "uuuuulights uhuhuhuuuuuushore." We couldn't figure out what he meant, so we continued shining our lights as helpfully as we could right in his eyes. He eventually made it to shore and although we thought we'd have to drag him out of the cave and back to camp, he made a complete recovery. After awhile even his speech lost that hypothermic slur.
On Saturday morning we headed for Indian Head Cove and the grotto. Steve and John decided to leave their scuba equipment at the campsite and try out freediving rather than haul their stuff over a kilometer to the shore. We arrived at the shore under brilliant sunshine and barely a ripple on the water. We suited up and jumped in. The vis was more than 50 feet, in fact in 50 feet of water you could still see the bottom clearly! From 60 feet below looking up, the surface was perfectly clear.
Doug and I headed for the long entrance to the cave because we wanted to get a picture of a freediver sillouetted against the blue backdrop of the the water from inside the passageway. I did a quick breatheup and dove. I swam halfway through the passage and stopped and waited for Doug. Because I was only about 10 feet or less below the surface there, I was quite bouyant, so I put an hand against the rock above to steady myself for the picture. Doug headed for the entrance, and I snapped a couple of pictures. Due to the fact that it was the first dive of the day, I was already feeling a bit low on air, so I headed into the cave... or so I thought. That passage into the grotto is mostly about 8-10 feet underwater, and is only about 3-4 feet high inside. That's plenty of room for a freediver, or even a scubadiver for sure. Also, heading outside from the cave is easy because you have the light to swim towards, however swimming inwards it's alot harder to see. There are also several side passages that lead back to the bay, but they are so narrow (like 14-18 inches high) that of course I've never tried them. Well as I headed along I kicked the ceiling and lost some momentum causing me to float up even more. Then I realized that the way ahead although wide enough to fit through wasn't wide enough to use my fins, but I could see ahead into what I thought was the cave. I grabbed the rocks and gave a couple pulls to get through the small spot and drifted out into... not the cave! I suddenly realized that now I was in the big passage out to the bay not the cave. I was equidistant from the cave and the bay, so I headed towards the light. I surfaced fine in the bay, and suddenly realized what I'd done wrong. In my stop and turn after the pictures I had headed in the wrong direction, something that I didn't imagine possible let alone likely! I had come through a passageway that I didn't even know existed and ended up in the bay not the cave. Suddenly I realized that Doug had been following me and that I had barely fit through that passageway... and If I had barely fit I wondered with horror if he would fit I quickly dove through the front entrance to the cave. I surfaced inside the cave to see Steve and John (they had walked in the land entrance) but no Doug. I headed for the other passageway (my intended entrance the first time) and there was Doug, much to my relief slowly making his way along probably a minute later, in great freediver style... no hurry, lots of air left. He hadn't even seen me head in the wrong direction. I told Doug what I'd done, and I'm going to be pretty careful heading into the cave in the future! Good thing there arn't passageways leading to nowhere...
After that we did some diving inside the cave. Doug recovered the candles the he had failed to retreive the night before ;-) and put them on a ledge where we can find them next time. Steve decided he wanted to try swimming out of the main entrance, about 5 feet down and about 15 feet across. I dove first and waited in the middle, and about 10-15 seconds later Steve dove, with Doug right beside him. He made it just fine, flashing me an ok and a smile as he went past! We all regrouped in the bay and headed slowly for a mooring bouy that was nearby, making lots of dives to inspect the rocky bottom thirty feet below or the occasional fish. We arrived at the bouy, and the line dissapeared into the blue below. Doug said he thought the bottom was around 60-70 feet there and headed down to check it out. I can't remember exactly how deep it was, about 60-65 though. You could see the bottom almost immediatly after leaving the surface. As I hadn't been deeper than 50 feet since my squeeze in Morisson's quarry a month or so ago, I decided to take it really slow, and pack to near max for every dive at first. We had fun doing some pulldowns on the mooring line and some CB dives as well. Steve and John left after a bit to explore some more of the rocky shoreline.
The rest of the story to follow in the next post...