Port Hardy

Description

Part Hardy sits a top Vancouver Island, Canada. The surrounding diving can easily be boasted as some of the best cold water diving the world. If Port Hardy had warm waters, we'd be looking at a Grand Caymans, Cozumel or the Red Sea.

There are not too many places in the world where you can easily expect 100+ vizibility, colorful living walls, friendly playful wolfeels, intense invertebrate life, and maybe top off the day by diving with the Pacific white-sided dolphins or boating with a pod of killer whales. If you look at the below picture, you'll see two killer whales!

These are the dive sites that Parker visited:

Location

Directions from Seattle donated by Jeff Rosenfeld

Basically, you take I-5 to the border. I-5 then turns into Canadian Highway 1. You take it for about 10-15 miles, excuse me 20km (you're in Canada now...) and get off at the exit for the Tsawassen Ferry. I think it's exit 20, but just follow the signs to the Tsawassen Ferry Terminal. Check out their page at http://www.bcferries.bc.ca/index.html for schedules, rates, and other info.

You'll want to take the Ferry to Namaimo (Duke Point Ferry Terminal). It's a 2 hour crossing. You'll want to arrive at least 30-45 minutes early.

Once you're on Vancouver Island, you just follow Hwy. 19 North to Port Hardy. Hwy. 19 is basically the only Island Highway, you're on it tight out of the Duke Point Terminal, and all the signs for it mention Port Hardy. It'll take about 5 hours from Nanaimo to Port Hardy, depending on traffic.

Once in Port Hardy, you want to go to the Public Dock right near I.V.'s Pub. You'll have to get directions from ExtaSea since I don't know the street names.

Comments

I had 4 nice diving days with Exta Sea Charters. I stayed on the boat, the Sea Venturer. The crew was very relaxed, and the acommodations acceptable. The boat is the featured picture on this page.

You arrive in Port Hardy the night before you set sail. You'll check-in with the boat crew than proceed to I.V's for some fairwell grub n booze. I.V's has a great menu and good selection of beers/boozes to choose from. Hop on the boat that evening and away you go in the morning. All dive gear was kept on a 22' skiff, the Dive BC, pictured below.

As diving goes, it doesn't get any easier than this. You toss your drysuit on in the big boat, hop on the skiff and into your gear. The skiff takes you to the sight and than "YOU GO NOW". After the dive, you waddle on up to the side of the boat where the crew takes off your weight belt and fins and you motate on up the ladder on into the skiff. Repeat this process 3-4 times a day. Ahhhh, what a life!

Oh, I forgot to mention Day 5.......

The day started nice enough. Everyone got up nice and ealy in anticipation for the day's dives plus the added bonus of returning back to Port Hardy. A week on a boat will do that to a person. The weather was little brisk that morning, but wasn't too bad. We all donned our suits, hoped in the skiff, and did a dive on Dillon Rock.

Upon surfacing and getting back into the skiff, the winds and seas had picked up. There were 3-4' seas a brewin' out in the channel. We picked everyone up after the dive and headed for the boat. Breakfast of Eggs Benedict was promptly served when we got back to the main boat. It was decided at this time to start heading up the channel and back towards Port Hardy. I had just finished my first Egg Benedict when *the* waves hit us. The Sea Venturer started to rock n roll with the waves. Food, plates, people and everything else in the galley went flying! For some odd reason, I quickly lost my appetite and prepared myself for the long voyage home. You can start singing the theme song to Gilligans Island now. "The weather started getting rough. The tiny ship was tossed.....

An hour or so into our little cruise, the weather got worse and the waves got bigger. We were now in the middle of the channel, bobbing around in 10-12' waves. Half the passengers were puking at this time, including my wife, Micaela. Here's a nice picture of her after we had reached Port Hardy safe and sound. This is what one looks like after having puked for 5 hours. Poor Micaela!

I was smart and decided to spend my time up in the wheel house with a nice view of the up and down horizon. Because the weather was getting worse, we decided not to do the planned next dive and head straight for Port Hardy.

An hour or so later the weather and waves got even worse! We're now battling 15-20' waves with rogue waves somewhere around 22' or so. Every item on the Sea Venture that wasn't nailed down was tossed to the floor. I was sitting up in the wheel house when one of the passengers came on up and told the crew that the Dive BC skiff was taking on water.

Sure enough, we looked behind us at the skiff and the stern of the skiff was dang near at water level! Immediate action was taken and the crew decided to head towards the nearest island to pull in the boat.

I swear it took less than 5 seconds, but right after the guy told us that the skiff was taking on water, the skiff flipped over in the high seas and went down like a rock! A general panicked call for a knife was given and in no time flat, the skiff was cut free! 3 or 4 of us sat on the stern and watched the skiff, upside down, sink out of sight in 600' deep water. There were 11 sets of scuba gear on the skiff when it sank. Mine and Micaela's included.

It didn't stop there.

We spent the next couple of hours battling the wind and high seas until we finally made it in to Port Hardy. The crew was exhausted and the passengers were more than happy to still be alive.

We left Exta Sea with a brief list of what was lost, said our goodbyes, and headed South for Seattle.

Since all of the dive sites in Port Hardy are far better than anything availabe in the Puget Sound, I'll have to modify the Parker Scale a bit. On the current scale, each site would easily get Two Thumps Up plus at least a Big Toe and some smaller digits. To make things fair, I'll rate them according to Parker's Port Hardy Scale.

Port Hardy Charters

All of the diving in Port Hardy is offered via liveaboards. I went on a week long trip through Exta Sea Charters.

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