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MARCH 5TH - 11TH - 2010
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Join Advanced Diver Magazine’s photojournalist John Rawlings and Curt Bowen for a week of remote dive adventure within the majestic waters of the Pacific Northwest. |
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Our adventure includes 6 days and 5 nights within the Queen Charlotte Strait at the HideAway lodge - a rustic collection of unique cabins, isolated and surrounded by wilderness.
Our hosts will provide 5 full days of diving, hiking, and boating excursions within the Brownings pass ecosystem.
Wake up each morning to the smell of fresh eggs and return back to the lodge in the evening for some of the Pacific Northwest’s best home cooking. Wind down each evening with a favorite cocktail and the surrounding sounds of nature.
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The Pacific Northwest is ranked as some of the world’s best scuba diving with its astonishing collidescope of colors, marine life, and sea mammals. Astonishing macro and wide-angle imagery makes Browning Pass an underwater photographers dream |
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Price: 6 days & 5 nights, including up to 19 great boat-dives, and all of the below…
C$1195 including taxes per person
US$1150 including all taxes per person.
Space is limited to 10 guests
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ALUM 80 tanks and also provide pouch weights, Sea Softs, and block weights.
Guests are also welcome to bring their own personal tanks & weights if preferred, plus rebreathers, ponys, bail-out bottles etc.
BC Ferries has some paperwork & storage restrictions & requirements regarding carrying scuba cylinders, rebreathers & compressed gas on the ferries.
Please review the “Dangerous Cargo” section on the www.BCFerries.com website.
Guests are responsible for maintaining and caring for all their own personal equipment during trips with us, so please make sure your gear is working well and bring any necessary spares. We have some spares on-site but not everything!
Nitrox & O2 fills are available. Custom gas orders can be arranged.
24 hour 110 V AC circuits are available for charging.
You are welcome to use our kayaks, canoes or rowboats between dives!
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HideAway's professional crew are fun, safe, experienced, and love to take people diving!
We will attend to your needs for good information on sites, and for the best tide and current info available. We find giant Pacific octopus, visit friendly wolfeels at their dens, and maybe interact with Pacific white-sided dolphins in the wild. Our staff's orca (killer whale) observations work has led to the discovery of orcas' travel patterns in areas not previously well known, giving you the opportunity to see and photograph these amazing mammals in pristine wilderness areas. Experienced divemasters will put you in the right spots at precisely calculated slack tides, so you can enjoy your dives at every site. Enjoy time with our crew between-dives, who are pretty knowledgeable on marine life, marine ecology, currents, tides, sasquatches and lots of other stuff. We love to recount stories about unusual behaviours of marine life, whales & dolphins, local history, our attemps at protecting Browning Pass and other coastal area from abuse, and, with permission, we might visit ancient First Nation sites, possibly with elders recounting their history! |
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Marine life in this area includes rare soft corals and sponges, several "friendly" wolf-eels, plus phenonemal concentrations of almost every other species of common and unusual vertebrate and invertebrate life found in B.C.'s temperate waters. We see dolphins regularly, during late summer and fall!
Visibility in March, April & from Sept.to Dec. is 50'-100' with water temperatures of 6C (43F) to 10C (50F), while from May to August visibility ranges from 20'-70', with water temperatures from 6C(45F) to 12C (54F). Late summer and fall Pacific White-sided dolphins come in in groups to several hundred, and well over 100 resident orcas call this area "home". Regular sightings of Dall's porpoise, harbour porpoise, Minke whales, Stellar sealions and harbour seals make this "marine mammal heaven"! Regular summer and fall sightings of Humpback and Grey whales, and hundreds of marine birds including eagles, puffins, auklets, shearwaters and dozens more species keep us busy looking between dives. Beach walks, forest hikes, old native villages and chains of untouched islands round our days out.
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Contact Toll Free (877) 725 2835 ...or Email hideaway@vancouverislanddive.com
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WHO IS ATTENDING (last updated on Feb 1st, 20010)
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| 1. John Rawlings |
2. Curt Bowen |
3. Bob Bailey |
4. Cheng (Bob’s buddy) |
5. Bric Martin |
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| 6. Lynne Flaherty |
7. Peter Rothschild |
8. Kathy Collison |
9, Larry Collison |
10. Open |
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Here is the schedule:
Friday, March 5th:
Travel on your own across the Canadian border and then take the Tsawwassen Ferry to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. This is the Tsawwassen to Duke Point Run. Here is a link to the BC Ferries home page, which includes detailed information on sailing times and fares:
http://www.bcferries.com/schedules/mainland/tsdp-current.html
Arrive at Nanaimo and stay overnight. Curt and I will be staying at the Buccaneer Inn, and I heartily recommend that you do so as well. The Buccaneer Inn has been informed to expect us, and I am told that a few of you have already reserved a room for Friday the 5th. It is inexpensive, clean as if your Mom cleaned it, and specifically caters to scuba divers! Here is the link to the Buccaneer Inn website:
http://www.buccaneerinn.com/
6:00 PM – Meet at the “Muddy Waters” Pub, located across the street from the Buccaneer Inn. This is a really delightful pub that serves some fantastic Halibut fish-n-chips and a variety of beverages. Having a Friday night get together for all of us will enable our entire ADM team to get acquainted and have a nice rollicking good time together before we get serious and start diving the next day. There is no set end point for this, but I suppose that this “Meet-n-Greet” will end when the last person decides to head on back to the Buccaneer and hit the rack!
Here’s a write up of Muddy Waters Pub:
http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/85/1448281/restaurant/British-Columbia/Muddy-Waters-Pub-Nanaimo
Saturday, March 6th:
We’ll all depart together in a “convoy” for Port Hardy so that we will all arrive simultaneously. The plan is to meet our host, John deBoeck, and his crew at or around noon at the Quarterdeck Restaurant and Pub.
About 1:00 PM we’ll start loading all of the gear aboard the boats. By about 2:30 we’ll be at the Hideaway! By about 3:30 or 4:00, we’ll be getting the skiff loaded up for our first dive….then head back to the Hideaway for supper, followed by an evening/night dive…then away we go!
Sunday, March 7th, through Wednesday, March 10th:
Dive our butts off!
Thursday, March 11th:
Probably one dive in the morning, because getting the team back to Port Hardy by 1:00 PM works with the ferries – that schedule will enable you to catch a 5:45 PM (optimum) or 8:15 PM ferry from Duke Point. So, John DeBoeck told me that he is thinking -breakfast, a dive, then a snack lunch and pack up the boats, then leave by 11:30 AM or so for Port Hardy.
As an alternative, you can choose to spend another night somewhere on Vancouver Island and dive some more! If you stay at the Buccaneer Inn again, you can enjoy diving the artificial reef “wrecks” at Nanaimo with “Divers’ Choice” Dive Charters, or perhaps you could stay at Campbell River and dive with “Abyssal” Dive Charters…..or do whatever you want, wherever you want!
Diver’s Choice Charters: http://www.divingbccanada.com/
Abyssal Dive Charters: http://www.abyssal.com/
We are looking forward to diving with all of you, and are thinking that this will be a trip of a lifetime! |
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