Monday, June 18, 2007

Gloucester, Pefect Storm, Chester Poling, and Paddock Rock

So this weekend was a busy one!

Friday after work I ended up going home. I needed to get everything packed up for our big adventure. On Saturday morning, Emily and I headed south around 8:30 AM. We were off to Gloucester, MA for a weekend of Diving for me. We stopped in Augusta around 10AM and got gas and hung out at a Barnes and Nobles until Mike and Lynne caught up to us around 25 minutes later. From Augusta, we continued south to Portland. In Portland, we stopped to do some shopping at the local dive store there. We actually spent 1.5 hours there. Emily was getting frustrated by now... you see, she's a non-diver. After shopping, we ate lunch at Becky's Diner, right next door to the dive shop. We continued our drive after lunch to Gloucester.

We arrived in Gloucester around 5PM. We got checked in to our room and got everything unloaded. Everyone had a couple of drinks and then we went out on the town. Gloucester is where they filmed The Perfect Storm. So, because of that... we did the Perfect Storm walking tour. We saw all of the areas that were used in the filming of this movie. Took lots of photos, drank at some of the bars, and then went to dinner. WE got back to the room around 10:30PM, had some more drinks and went to sleep.

Sunday morning came way to quickly. We called Diver Ed and made arrangements for all of us to go eat breakfast. We met at the dive shop, got checked in for our dives and then headed out for food before the charter. We ate at Lee's... this place was small but it had awesome food! After that the crew headed over to the Dive boat to get ready for the day. The Dive boat left early... which was good. The League of Underwater Superheroes controlled the boat! Our first dive... the Chester Poling,

The Chester Poling was a huge oil tanker that sank back in 1977. She broke into 2 and we were diving the stern section. The water was 75' - 100' deep. I initally had some issues with my new mask, but after 10 minutes they were fixed. Because of those issues, I had a shortened bottom time because of air quantity. Mike and I were on the wreck for about 10 minutes. Got some pics and then back up we went. It was a fun dive, just wished we could have stayed down longer. Once back on the surface, Emily wasn't feeling so good. So we ate some lunch and moved on to dive spot number 2.

Paddock Rock was the second dive spot for our day. It was an underwater pinacle that started at 25' and went all the way down to 90'. This was another spectacular dive. There was this huge under water canyon with a sand bottom, saw a skate in there and some flounder too. Mike and I returned to the surface after going down to 83'. The boat ride back was uneventful.

We left Gloucester around 5 PM and started our journey back to Maine. The crew made a dinner stop in Portland and continued on. We got back to my house around midnight. It was almost 1:30AM when I went to bed after cleaning up my gear.

Today is going to drag on because I am so tired. Stay tuned... I will upload some pics after this post.

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