The Dive Evangelist

Diving off the New Jersey/New York coast in the fall is absolutely perfect. The water is at its warmest of the year. The air temperature is also just right, warm enough to be comfortable, but cool enough that you don’t go into heatstroke in your wet/dry suit. For some reason beyond my non-oceanographic mind the visibility is reliably fantastic in October.

Most superbly for someone who gets seasick as easily as I, the seas at this time of year really only have two possible states: dead-calm and don’t-even-think-about-it. The latter is perfectly easily known as soon as you step out your front door in the morning, so you often don’t even have to waste the time driving to the dock.

Dead-calm is what we had this last weekend. We also had visibility nearly as best I’ve ever seen it. From 40 feet over the wreck of the Stolt one could make out nearly the entire wreck and clearly see for at least 50 feet in every direction. I was especially pleased with the mild water temperature at the end of the second dive, after the bastard shipwreck ripped a gash into the knee of my drysuit and my left leg started filling with ocean.

“Well,” I thought hanging on the up-line, “At least it isn’t cold.”

It was there, on that line, I began this reverie of how nice it is to dive around here in the autumn. And it was there even that the reverie started to turn gothic. For all the boons there are to diving Jersey this time of year, there’s one major drag looming right behind them all in the form of a dark, whipping wind.

Dive season is almost over.

There’s a ton of good diving through October, but I ain’t going to see it. My every weekend from now through Mid-November is spoken for.

In late November the boats will all say they’re going out, but getting enough people to justify the trip will be a chore. What’s more, by that time of the year the Gulf Stream will have moved way offshore again and the waters will have started to cool. The offshore winds will feel cold even in any thermal protection, especially after it’s gotten wet. Those winds will also kick up tempestuous seas that may or may not be diveable as well as knocking the boat around like a cork as you try to walk with gear or try to climb the ladder.

It’s not the most fun diving, but us stubborn few will keep going out to get our butts handed to us, jaws clenched onto the distant hope of “just one more weekend.” Then even these will need to let go.

December and January will come. Perhaps there will be a dive, but probably there won’t. We’ll overhaul gear and tinker with it. We’ll buy new gear. We’ll talk about diving on the interweb. We’ll watch the snow and shiver in the cold and the darkness of winter, and we’ll patiently wait out those long, dry months for the new season to start.

Or, I guess we could hop a flight to the Caribbean.