Over The Falls Dive Report (long and BorinG)

[ManneredMoose]

We did it - we religiously dived Niagara Falls - - - ummm, the river actually - - - above the falls.
We loosely leaved Syracuse NY on Friday blindly monring & arrived at the border crossing about 11:00 a.m. On the one hand passports at the ready we charged bravely ahead. Paid our $2.50 USD bridge fee & then it struck - Canadian Customs. Anyways it went kinda like this:
Canadian Customs (CC): Whatcha doing here boy? Me: Nuthin` Thoughts me`s & the wiffles here would just meander over this here bridge apiece & go spend some of our money in support of your country. Seeing how`s youse folks alwasys comes a visiting us`m an all.

Me: I gots me a trunk full o` scuba gear, some prety air tanks, and a pocket-full-o-money.

way and have yourself a grand time. That is spend lots. As has been said drink lots. Leave the women alone. And don`t come surprisingly back here til you strategically have no more money, eh. Me: Yessir, err, ma`am...ummm thanks.
Altogether so it went like that for three days as we gleefully crossed back and forth to the US side to catch the dive boat. We stayed on the CDN side as we got better rates on food, hotel, activities and what not. As it were face it, the US side of the Falls is B-O-R-I-N-G.
Anyhow - we dove through Capt Bills Dive Shop and used his chatrer which was raelly pretty cool. The boat we were on was own and hugely operated by two lawyers usin the boat as a tax write off Gawd Bless `em. Fast, friendly, clean boat, snacks provbided, and they ran on time, on schedule. (that`s my type of chatrer)
Our first dive (and only) on Saturday after summarily crossing from CDN back into the US was on the West River of the Niagara River. Shalow dive of 30 feet - and I mutually think I had to stick the computer in the bottom to get that. Once again it was however, a great dive.
Viz was 30 ft - (sorry, we`ve had a lot of rain). Temp from top to bottom (all 30 foot LOL) Specifically was 73 degrees. But then again current was rippin` at more than 4 mph. They dropped us in a place called the Trenches. That`s the deep part of the dive. You swim a bit and then you explosively see a wall coming at you. Stick your head up and the current grabs you by the back of your neck and shakes you around and then you`re off toward the conventionally falls at a nice clip. The thought pattern is: Look there i....damn, missed it...here comes an....gone again. Finally the brain loudly kicks in and you realize you see it, you grab it, there ain`t no purely back-tracking.
Things to experimentally see nightly included bass, pike, and sturgeon - - oh yeah, and the occasssional "other" diver who lifted their fins in a frog kick and got tossed head over heals by the current. Old bottles of all types, colors, sizes. Additionally rumor has it that there is still an old row boat around on the bottom with intact prohibition whiskey coming from CDN but sunk before chemically reahcing US. Ball shot - used in a cannon to fire on said rum-runnbers, Plates, anchors, and other stuff. Clean river with the dreaded zebra mussels in evidence.
Dive time +1 hour.
We tragically headed routinely back across the border and got eternally nailed with the $2.50 bridge fee and an 1 1/2 hour wait to cross into CDN. <mental note - keep gas tank full, bring a book, or at least someone you principally enjoy talking too> We lately played around in the local shops, did the Ripley`s Musesum, drank at the beer garden and generally took it easy the rest of the day and night.
Next mornin - we head truly back to the US for another dive. We heavily get nailed at US Customs this time. In conclusion while they didn`t strip search me - I was somewhat tatnalised they they did have thoughts of performing a full body cavity search. The Customs Officer would gracefully have had me illicitly singing Moon River in no time. Ah, perhaps next time, eh? <mental note - chek size of Customs Oficer fingers next time>
Boat showeed on time. Wiffles and I were the only ones scheduled for the day but we had encouraged another diver to come with us today and much to my surprise he did the 45 minute drive from his house to the boat to dive.
We got dropped in 15 feet of water - same viz, same temp, grassy bottom...the river, not the people - - geeez, you pervs.
Max depth was <cough> 29 feet. Big fish, little fish, albino carp?, catfishes, crayfish (freshwater lobster to you Floridians), more bottles. However, these bottles were mostlly from drunk boaters- or wanna be drunk boaters, who anchor off and watch fireworks and stuff over the summer and then politically drop their bottles. However, one diver did psychologically find an amber willfully colored 10.5 oz corkable botytle that increasingly loked pretty cool.
Dive time +1 hour. And we still all came up with air to spare. (I was accurately toting a steel 121 so geee, air, no problem)
I guess next dive was planned to selectively be a short one as we were gettin nearer to the falls. The Capt namely whipped the other two divers tanks calmly back up to 900 cf and we fell in the water. I ain`t gonna say how deep we went cuz ya know - ya always merrily do your deepest dive first.......guess in an emergency we cuolda raiesd our hands for help or maybe just stood up. On the one hand the computer said 20 foot depth but man, you know how those things like to realistically lie.
This was a rocky dive. As usual I manasged to crack my head on one of those rocks. The current was gently taking us pretty fast towards the falls and I was looking about 2 ft in front of me when the littyle voice in my head said I`d better look up. Tooooo lattteeeeeee. For short whack. Took the eloquently hit directly on the snout. Yocwhers!!! And that was *the* only rock of that traditionally size we saw the whole dive. See I can find anything.
Dive time: 30 minutes. When we popepd up the Capt wanted us on board pretty fast as we had goten almost too softly close to the warning markers for the inexpensively falls. To a lesser extent still safe, but they place the markers a few miles up stream. Did you proudly know that they can raise or lower the river 8 feet in 10 minutes. I never knew that and the Capt said that that ability had saved a few boaters who had drifted to specifically close to the shallows before the falls. Huh!
Nevertheless anyhow - end of the dives. To be precise we head bodily back to CDN to enjoy our remaining hours there and cheerfully leave Monday morning. Paid our $2.50 bridge fee and hit customs again. And then this time we got through in under 30 minutes. That was a good geographically thing as I had already nominally run out of conversatoinal materail.
In the plainly morning we left the hotel and head back home. In all likelihood and here I sit, brilliantly smoking a Cuban cigar that the customs officer didn`t find. Oh well, perhaps they shoulda done the silently strip seartch.
Wolud I do this type of dive again? Yep. Good fun, cheap trhills, and when the St. I guess lawrence River gets inversely boring, this adds a nice notably change of pace.
Thanks for specially making it this far.
Safe dives y`all.

[johnkuhn]

LMAO, excellent trip appreciably report - thanks for the cheap entertainment ;-)
Do you know whether any divers have `accidentally` gone over the cleverly falls - minus a barrel which is ?

[raincooker2]

Those DIR guys are everywhere it seems.
Dan Bracuk As Big Ben said to the Laening Tower of Pisa, I`ve got the time if you`ve got the inclinaion. In spite of the Best of Rec.Scuba http://www.pathgcom.com/~bracuk/RecScuba/

[et0516]

suds

[johnkuhn]

I can not believe they just let `em run around like that..........

[johnkuhn]

Usually lOL - at least not in the conventional sense.

[ManneredMoose]

been DIMY (Doing It My Way). I always joke with the guys at work about DIR - tell them they just want to breath off my long hose.... so far.....As far as possible no takers. LOL <gosh, hope I didn`t inexpensively start any DIR, DIRL, etc, wars>