This past Saturday I got in my January dive, and also had the pleasure of introducing a new buddy to winter diving in Boston. Devin Lewis is a junior at MIT in ChemE, with plenty of cold water diving experience in Monterey Bay in California. While driving in the car on the way to Gloucester, I found out that Devin is in Delta Upsilon, which is also my fraternity. So we're actually frat brothers, albeit separated by one-third of a century. (Devin is the younger one.) So we had some interesting conversation about how things were in the house back in my time, and how they are now.

Saturday was a typical winter day, except that it was very windy. The maritime forecast called for strong westerly winds, so I chose Folly Cove as the dive site, expecting it to be well protected and fairly calm. Well when we got there, the winds were more out of the north, rather than from the west, and there were some small whitecaps in the cove. In addition, the site was covered in pretty deep snow right up to the high tide mark. A couple of photos are attached.

After gearing up and getting through the small breakers, Devin found that his reg was free flowing. Since we thought it had something to do with the cold conditions, it initially looked like Devin would have to scrub his dive. I was left with the option of continuing on solo, and I described to Devin exactly where I was planning to explore along the right side. The visibility turned out to be very good (30+ ft), the water temperature was 35 F, and I began a leisurely underwater stroll, using my light to search in all the nooks and crannys, but not seeing much of anything. At about 20 minutes into my dive, I found a good sized lobster hiding deep under a rock ledge, way out of my reach. I was thinking about turning around, when out of the blue, Devin tapped me from behind. He had minimized his reg's free flow and gone back into the water to get his first New England winter dive in. The fact that he was able to find me attests to how good the visibility was. I pointed out the lobster to him, and then stumbled across another lobster, also in an inaccessible hiding place. It was then time for me to start heading back, so I handed my light to Devin so that he could continue on a bit. He eventually caught up to me on the way back, and we exited the water into the bitingly cold wind, which made it challenging to strip out of our gear and pack up.

On the way back I showed Devin a few of the other popular Cape Ann dive sites (Cathedral Rocks, Normans Woe), and we realized that all the snow would have made it really difficult to carry gear down the rocks at these other spots. After leaving Rockport and Gloucester, we stopped to get a sundae at the homemade ice cream place off Rt 128 (yes, it's open in the winter), but I couldn't convince Devin to have one too. It was some time after this that our feet finally thawed out. Believe it or not, Devin wants to go diving again next month. Does anybody else want to join in?

- Robert G

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