The Grey Nato - Ep 35 - From Clipperton With Love
Published on Tue, 30 May 2017 09:01:47 -0400
Synopsis
The podcast covers two recent dive trips - one by James to the remote Clipperton Island and Socorro Island in the Pacific Ocean, and another by Jason to the shipwreck of Prince Willem V in Lake Michigan and to the Florida Keys. James shares his experience of being part of the Clipperton Expedition, including details about the remote island, diving conditions, marine life encountered, and the Oris watches he wore during the trip. Jason discusses diving the Prince Willem V shipwreck in Milwaukee while wearing a Zinn U1 Professional watch, and diving in the Florida Keys while testing the new Bell & Ross BR03-92 dive watch.
Links
Transcript
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| James | Welcome to episode 35 of the Grey Nado, a loose discussion of travel, adventure, diving gear, and most certainly watches. Thanks so much for listening. We're back at our respective home bases after quite a bit of travel, right, Jason? Yeah, it sure seems that way. We haven't talked in a long time. And yeah, it feels like it's been a while because the last, actually we preloaded two episodes, so it does actually feel like it's been Well, it's definitely been over a month since we actually did a recording. Yeah. And, uh, and yeah, I'm not going to apologize, but obviously the, the Q and a episode is one that we use to kind of fill in a blank in our schedule. It was not in any way possible for us to record another full episode. Um, I thought the Q and a episode turned out really well and it seems to be super popular. So that's, uh, that's super, but we're back with a full episode and it's all about some recent dive trips, like I mentioned Jason's been to a couple very different spots within the US, and I absconded to not quite the South Pacific, but we made it to 10 degrees, which is pretty far south for a Canadian. And yeah, so I'm back from San Jose del Cabo, where I'd been out of there off the base of the peninsula there to Clipperton and Socorro for a big trip. And Jason, where have you been? |
| Jason Heaton | Well, uh, two weeks ago I was in Milwaukee doing some diving in Lake Michigan and then, uh, I just got back. Gosh, what's today? Tuesday. I got back, uh, yesterday. Yeah. Just last night from a trip to the Florida Keys where I was diving for a couple of days there as well. So. It feels good to be home. Yeah, it really does. It feels good. I mean, you did a fair amount of diving in your trip as well. I kind of came home feeling a little waterlogged. I need a little, little topside time, I think. |
| James | Yeah, my ears needed the break. I've never done that much kind of back-to-back diving and it seems like my ears were very fine doing three dives a day. Yeah. But the few times I did the fourth dive, by then your level of comfort's very high so you're pushing it. Yeah, yeah. In terms of how quickly you descend, or at least I do, and you already know the site typically. So my My right ear doesn't seem to appreciate four dives a day, so that's something I'll have to note if I ever do another big sort of liveaboard. You had a couple of really cool watches. I had a couple of really cool watches. We can get into that, but first we have some mail we wanted to get to. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, just before we jump in, we kind of want to mention, you know, we get a lot of emails come through. James, you know, admirably mans the mailbox, the TGN mailbox, and we get some really inspiring emails from listeners and certainly a lot of questions. Uh, but there was one recently that came in from a listener named Sam, who's from Salt Lake City, Utah. And, uh, it was, I guess it really struck a chord with, with James and myself. And, and so maybe we thought we'd, uh, we'd read out a little bit of it. Uh, he, he starts off by saying, I wanted to email and explain how much my life has changed over the past couple of years. I'm sure when you guys started the gray NATO, your main goal wasn't to help change the lives of the people listening, but this email is to explain how you changed mine. I was homeless just five years ago. It feels like an eternity. Drugs and a pack of cigarettes every day doesn't exactly make for a good body or mind. I've always loved watches, but that was the extent of my love. Strictly horology. Fast forward to a few years, and there I am. I've clawed my way out of my hole, totally sober from drugs and alcohol, stopped smoking cigarettes, and my life is all but sorted. But I had this massive void, and all this idle-handed time. Regular life is boring compared to being on the edge. I was lost. Then, boom, the great NATO comes out. And I saw how adventure could tie in with my love of watches. Since your show came out, I've backpacked more miles than I can count. I'm now open water certified and I joined a rock climbing gym here in Salt Lake called The Front. I've been hitting the Stairmaster with a weight vest on because I want to try Mount Baker next year. I'm a fan guys, but more than that, I have some direction with what I want to do with all the years of my life I've gained from becoming a better person. And then he attached some photos and says, keep up the great work and thank you. I guess people don't understand the change they're making when they're just being themselves, affecting someone all the way over here in Utah. Thanks guys. Wow. Uh, you know, Sam, um, yeah, great. I mean, really kind of, uh, you know, James forwarded that to me and I think we both had the same kind of awestruck reaction. Um, you know, we certainly can't take much credit for, for your accomplishments, but, uh, um, it's flattering. |
| James | It's flattering that you connect some of that. You know, that spirit of adventure and newfound spirit of adventure with the gray NATO. And by all means, this is the sort of a little community that we'd like to foster, but we obviously, yeah, like, like Jason said, can't take any real credit for that. Just I thought it was an interesting story. And I got the email, I was on the plane, I was in Calgary this weekend, and I was on the plane with my family coming home. And I just kind of like stared at the screen for a while and thought like, Oh, you Turn on a mic and talk about watches and you just have no idea where it's going to go. And, uh, like I said, not so much that I feel like this isn't any way from what we've done or anything, but just that we got to be part of it in some way. And, and, and that Sam was kind enough to reach out and let us know how things are for him. And he attached a handful of fantastic emails from some great adventures. And, uh, and then he replied to, uh, my email and he recently picked up a camera. So he's going to have more photos and such. And if I can, with Sam's permission, I'll try and put those in the show notes or maybe in the show notes of a later show, or we'll find if he's on Instagram or Flickr or something, and I'll include that so people can kind of tag along. But, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's kind of a strange world. And I think that in that, that little niche pocket that we find with something like a podcast about watches, which is at the surface, kind of a silly thing. It seems like, you know, we've had, we've been so blessed to meet some really interesting, fun and inspiring people and Sam nonetheless. |
| Jason Heaton | Sam's email just, it's so representative of, I think, you know, to a certain degree, how I guess those listening and you and I feel about the stuff we're doing. I mean, I think it's, it's just, it's real life. It's, it's exciting. You should kind of grab it and live it to its fullest. And that's kind of the way we go about things and glad to hear other people are doing the same. |
| James | Yeah, I was totally inspired to get out and do something big and exciting and kind of feel how big the world is. It was a good email. You know, I wasn't 100% sure that I necessarily wanted to talk about it, but Sam was game. So, you know, Sam, all the best and thanks so much for listening and please keep in touch. We're pulling for you. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, cool. And speaking of living big, you were back from, I mean, we were out of touch for, well, actually we weren't out of touch. connecting over this strange ether for like two and a half, three weeks where, um, you were off on your, on your very long trip or what seemed like a very long trip. And fortunately we were able to keep in touch over, um, what was it? WhatsApp, I guess it was. |
| James | WhatsApp. Yeah. Slack didn't like, I was getting about four or 5k a second on the boat, you know, most of the day. And then occasionally if I picked a really off hour, it would get a little faster, which is, this is a fantastic connection for how far out we were. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, it seemed like it. |
| James | So that's fine. But yeah, Slack and even Hangouts, to a certain extent, really hated the connection. Instagram hated the connection, but WhatsApp did a fairly good job managing that. So I was able to keep in touch and email worked okay, depending on what time of day you did it and what you were dealing with as far as attachments and all those sorts of things. But yeah, so for those of you who may not be aware, I was attached to be the, I guess, writer blog coverage for the Clipperton Expedition, which is called Big Migrations 2, of which Oris Watches is a primary sponsor. So as a quick level of disclosure, I think it's important. I was not paid by Oris to go on the trip, but Oris did cover like my flight and my presence on the boat. And it was myself and Oris covered one other gentleman named Michael who won a spot on the boat via their My Oris Facebook group and club. And so I think you had to submit kind of a written application as to what you would get from it and how you would kind of exist within the confines of kind of a larger super remote trip like this. But yeah, so that's basically how it came about. And I was asked by Oris if I wanted to do it. And my guess is a lot of freelancers, you know, would have trouble setting up that amount of time away from pretty much any other work. Yeah, that was a big commitment. Yeah, it was from my end, but obviously an amazing opportunity and one that I would very much thank Oris for and will continue to thank Oris for. And it was really fun to see how a watch brand like Oris, you know, we've interviewed the Reef Conservation Society out of Australia. And obviously, Jason, you know of other Oris ambassadors, Carlos Costa in the past and such. And these guys, it's kind of fun to see where The rubber meets the road where these watch brand, it's not just a big press trip with a little bit of involvement, like real money was spent to get a boat in the water and get the right people involved. And the trip is almost too big in its scope to cover ad nauseum in, in, in one episode. So I'm sure I'll get to all of the stories eventually, but the, uh, uh, basically the, the trip scope was, uh, to travel to a French claimed island called Clipperton. It's technically a coral atoll, which is, um, it's way out, uh, south of Socorro in, uh, in the Pacific. And it's, uh, it's, it's very remote. They did an expedition there last year and outside of that, nobody else has been there legally for a great, great deal of time. I mean, it was discovered in 1711. It's been uninhabited since the mid forties and, uh, and yeah, so, You have a lot of coral life that's been relatively unmolested. And then you have a pocket of land, which is essentially like a ring. It's, I think, 12 kilometers if you're able to walk the ring. And the interior of which is a lagoon, hence the atoll. And the lagoon is fresh water on top of hydrogen sulfide. So very kind of not human friendly. environment within that freshwater pool. So the island itself is west of Nicaragua or just over a thousand kilometers southwest of Mexico. It's way out there. It took us the better part of between 70 and 80 hours from San Jose del Cabo to Clipperton. And then when you get there, it just barely breaks the surface. You know, it's just some palm trees and there's one kind of rocky outcropping. And I will link to some form of photos, whether that's a big flick or deposit. I haven't quite decided where the photos are going to go, but I'll set these up. And there's kind of one rocky outcropping. And then other than that, it's a coral and kind of sand beach that basically just imagine kind of a large ring. It's actually shaped loosely, if you know the shape of like an open I think it looks like an open shark's jaw. Oh, sure. Yeah. So it's a little wider at one end. And, uh, and yeah, so there was, uh, about 18 people on the boat with crew and, uh, that included do nothings like me and, and, uh, Michael and then, uh, the expedition leaders out of Montreal, Michelle and Julie. And then there were scientists for sharks and there were scientists for general marine ecology. There was a handful of just would-be adventurers, people who were on for the experience of diving in a spot that not many people, certainly not legally, had dove. And then there was a group of French scientists that were interested in the terrestrial part of the island, not so much the underwater. So they were looking at geckos and rats. uh... mapping in in different uh... concerns of the bird population there's uh... a large colony of uh... various uh... boobies and some frigate birds and we also had uh... a couple people out of boston who were measuring and calculating various debris ocean debris studies so that included pulling the better part of uh... three point two kilometers of long line off the reef Wow. So a ton, and that was nowhere near all that was there or all that we saw on the dives. That's what could be pulled off without damaging the reef and was accessible within the confines of a dive. And all sorts of, uh, they collected an unbelievable amount of garbage off of these transects on the beach, but the beach was mostly garbage. Oh, wow. Uh, hard plastics and glass and, uh, things that you wouldn't realize and things from all over the world, Japanese, South American, And you know, is an island like this important as an island? Not so much, but it is an interesting sort of like an interesting sort of touch point to understand the reach of something that's bad. Uh, so if you got there and there was nothing on the island, no garbage and no long line, then you go, well, fishing's not an issue here. And there, you know, there's, there's obviously, if you get far enough away from something, you don't get into the garbage. But the truth is you get into the garbage anywhere. There's all sorts of high tech fishing going on there, whether it's long line or they use these kind of solar powered buoys that actually respond when there are fish nearby and send a signal out. There's a ton of different types of fishing going on on the island, all illegal because it's now within a protected area from the last expedition last year established a fishing free protected area around Clipperton. And yeah, so like I said, it was 16 days on a 96-foot boat from the Nautilus Group, which is actually a Vancouver-based company that runs trips generally to Socorro and Galapagos out of San Jose del Cabo. And there was a number of missions, many of which I got to take part in or assist on or experience kind of secondhand or in some metric firsthand. Shark tagging, we got to basically uh, sign up for one of the various roles, whether it was measuring or holding the shark or covering its eyes with a towel, or they would actually wrangle a shark using like an unbarbed hook by hand with a short line off the back of the boat. Um, just by using some bait and bring in a small Galapagos or a silver tip or, or silky, if they were around, it was usually a Galapagos or a silver tip. And then everybody would get to kind of take part in, in that tagging procedure, which is fantastic. And then aside from that kind of the main, The main things I was involved with was visiting the island, which I did three times. Each time was exceedingly treacherous due to the conditions of the waves and the breakers around the island. As you can imagine, it's not like a picturesque beach. There was seemingly no time when there wasn't four or five breakers right off the edge of the island. Oh, sure. So we flipped at least one zodiac. We ruined at least one prop. It was really hard on the boats. It was hard on a few of our bodies. A couple of us got thrown pretty hard, whether it be back onto land or full on out of the boat. Yeah. Both happened. |
| Jason Heaton | How about equipment, the cameras and stuff? Did anything get damaged or? |
| James | You know, of the people bringing cameras, everybody was either, you know, was pretty careful keeping them wrapped up. And I, you know, I would pack my 6500 in one of my boots. Oh yeah. And then when we got to the island, you know, take your wetsuit boot off, put the actual boot on and the sun was unbelievable. I got huge burns on the back of my hands, my neck, my face, despite being fully covered. Yeah. For the duration and using sunscreen, it was just more than I was used to. And certainly my super pasty Pacific Northwest-y skin just couldn't keep up. So yeah, uh, kind of visiting the island was kind of treacherous, but exciting. Tons of birds, pretty much if you weren't careful where you were walking, you would step on some of them. Oh, wow. And they're constantly shouting at you. So any of the video I shot is either useless in terms of audio or just hugely annoying. Yeah. Cause it's just, they make so much noise. Yeah. But we saw everything from the lagoon where Michelle and Julie ran an ROV and actually did a hangout. with a series of classrooms back in Canada. |
| Jason Heaton | Oh yeah, I watched that actually. I was hoping to see you in the background, but I think that was the day you flipped the Zodiac. |
| James | I went to try to help with the Zodiac just when they were getting to the questions and such. But yeah, it was pretty cool. They had like a neat system that was set up through some funding and a teacher back east where, you know, like a satellite system and mics and such. And it was pretty cool as far as tech goes. The expedition was supported by the Explorers Club, so there was some flag duties to be done on the island. They had the original flag from a very early mission to Clipperton Island, and if you know the Explorers Club, Jason, of course you do, the flags are a very big deal. You kind of have to apply for them, or I guess maybe you can be offered them, I'm not sure, and then there's a bunch of responsibilities that kind of come with that. The one you had was quite old, right? Yeah, I want to say early 1900s. I the the date escapes me I have it written down in my I bought a like a Harriet the Spy sort of you know that black and white notebook oh yeah the quintessential notebook with the weird black and white cover yeah I bought one of those in Mexico because it was the only thing I forgot at home was a pad of paper so I have all these notes and I was trying to get to some of them but I didn't want to go kind of way overboard with talking about the trip the piece I will be writing for a blog to watch will have more kind of core facts. But I wanted to give a rough idea of what it was like. The liveaboard was different than I expected. Yeah. And it turns out I'm pretty good on a boat. As long as I keep food in my stomach, I wasn't getting sick. We had unbelievable conditions coming down. I mean, I've been on small lakes that had bigger waves. Oh, yeah. And despite being in the middle of nowhere. And then it's weird when you start to think about like, oh, so it's like more than three full days just motoring. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. You did a lot of reading, right? |
| James | He did a bunch of reading and then, um, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm used to working out every day or, or running or something active. And the, the weird thing was, is as soon as my body realized that wasn't going to be happening, I tried to do some workouts, but when the boat's moving around a lot and you look ridiculous when like one pushup feels like you weigh three pounds, cause the boat's moving away from you and the next one feels like you weigh 300 and a chin ups are pretty much useless. You look like a flag, uh, all these sorts of things. So the, the, the, my body kind of, Decided it would just sleep all the time. Yeah, so I would get up and have breakfast and then go read fall asleep Get up have lunch go read fall asleep get up have dinner and you just repeat that kind of ad nauseum wondering why you're tired because you're not doing anything But I found the sea sickness for me was okay as long as I was fed. Oh sure normally I normally I don't eat anywhere near three meals at home One one and a half meals a day and if I tried to do that on the boat Then I started to feel ill Uh, so I just, just, uh, kind of buckled down, did the hard work of eating three square meals. Uh, the cook, the food was fantastic on the boat, so that was easy. And the people were really fun, which is a blessing. No big egos, no infighting, none of that kind of stuff. There was a number of people, all of whom kind of had their own expectations and hopes and missions for the trip. And they all kind of worked, uh, worked together pretty well. Which is fun. And then some of the folks that were there mostly just for taking pictures while diving, like personal divers, adventures, that sort of thing. They were all a blast. So it was really fun. And the, the, uh, the diving on Clipperton, you know, the biomass is high, but the diversity is kind of low. So you see a lot of the same fish. Oh, sure. Really territorial eels. I can't tell you the number of times that I would like, oh, there's a Clipperton damsel, which is this beautiful damsel with a white spot. |
| Unknown | Hmm. |
| James | And I would drop down closer to the reef to pull out the GoPro and take a video of one swimming around. And then you'd turn and there was an eel coming after you. They really didn't like it when you approached the reef and they'd come at you mouth open and very territorial and kind of displaying some aggression. So that was always fun. |
| Jason Heaton | Are these the big green moray eels? |
| James | Yeah, the greeny ones. And then there was the ones with the really fine spots. |
| Unknown | Oh, okay. |
| James | Yeah. Not huge, not like some of the ones I saw in, um, in Hawaii. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | But those ones, despite being, you know, bigger around than my leg in Hawaii, they just stayed in the reef with their mouth open. These ones would come off the reef and kind of chase you a bit if you were. Yeah. |
| Jason Heaton | If you were in their way. Maybe less accustomed to seeing divers, uh, since it's not visited. |
| James | Yeah. Probably. Yeah, for sure. And, and there's also not a huge number of large fish around. Yeah. Yeah. So they're kind of one of the bigger animals in the space. You didn't have a lot of sharks on the reef. We saw a few silver tips, but they were always in the blue. Yeah. Almost everybody on the trip at some point said that they saw a hammerhead. I did not, which I'm quite sad about, but the, uh, the diving in, in Clipperton was good. It was very easy, which is good because of course they were very concerned about accidents due to how remote we were. There was no way to get any sort of support. If you did something that was life threatening, you would probably just die. Yeah. Uh, so the diving was all very entry level, open water sort of dives. We did a lot of dives where I would spend, uh, the, the kind of middle, the middle half of my tank at 12 or 13 meters. So tanks would last a reasonable amount of time. Even for me, I destroy tanks. And, uh, I had a blast, uh, you know, big coral, big, hard coral that I've not kind of seen before. I've seen little pieces of it and this would just be all of it. The whole dive. Yeah. would just be these big kind of untouched. You'd find lots of, like I said, like the long line, but otherwise kind of unmolested, beautiful, big coral and just loads of fish. So we did, um, I think I did nine or 10 dives in total. You know, I lost a fair bit of diving time of visiting the island, uh, because it did take a lot of time to get people on the island and get them off. Despite the fact that like we were moored, I don't know, 300 yards off, off the shore. At times it felt like you could have just swam. And then you'd be on the island side and you'd see like literally five hard breakers. Yeah. And some of them tighter than the length of a zodiac. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | You think you're trapped. Yeah. You kind of like, well, I don't know how you get out. Not easily anyways. It was always, you know, you're always jumping something or getting thrown around a bit. I've got some GoPro footage I'm going to find a use for of a kind of semi-perilous exit on our first day. And yeah, we got to find, on the island we were able to find like the old military base where there's still a ton of old shells, like munition. |
| Unknown | Oh, cool. |
| James | And some broken down like construction, like really old 40s construction equipment, small tractors, things like that. |
| Jason Heaton | Was there an airstrip there or was it all... There is, yeah. Oh, really? Wow. So it was long enough for an airstrip. |
| James | Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah, there's an airstrip. There are probably about two places you could put an airstrip. at minimum, but they brought in a bulldozer and used the active, a small bulldozer, and used the active substrate and then added water and it essentially made its own cement. So at one time there was an airstrip there. And yeah, so we got to see some of the remnants of the people who did live there, you know, back as far as, well, World War II. And then other than that, the island's mostly been lost to birds and illegal activity. uh, whether it be, you know, largely considered to be a, a transition point for drugs, uh, certainly a safe place to hide them. And, uh, and then on top of that, all sorts of, uh, of the fishing and such. So, and then beyond that, we headed to the Riviera Ghetto archipelago, which is where Socorro is. It's a group of four islands, very popular destination for diving. And a great place to see like manta rays, hammerheads, things like that. So we made that trip, which was... That was kind of on your way back, right? Yeah, exactly. So you have to check in with the naval base in Socorro, and we skipped that on the way down because the weather was good, so we did it on our way back. And while we were there, we did a series of dives at a spot called Cabo Pierce, which is a UNESCO heritage site. And fantastic dives, a steep wall entry, very good visibility and then it kind of planes out to kind of a ridge line under the water where the UNESCO plaque is at maybe 15 meters and you just kind of chill there and give it a couple minutes and then all the mantas came in so we had three mantas for most of the day. Wow. Very cool. And very curious, seemingly kind of fun loving, likes bubbles, really liked the skiff. They were usually to pick us up when we were done diving and sometimes they would follow you up you know, if you broke away from the group to me, my tank wouldn't last as long. So I'd be ending my dive at 45 or 50 minutes, something like that. Whereas most of these guys were pushing an hour to an hour 10, which is more of the boat was saying like some of them, there were a couple of women on the trip that could have gone forever on a tank. I mean, it's just very impressive diving, uh, tiny lungs to, I suppose, help in the, uh, uh, but the, these, uh, these mantas are just unbelievable animals. We also saw. uh, tuna, like a big, uh, yellowtail tuna. They're really strange to see in the water because they're like missiles. They're moving so fast and they don't look like they're exerting any motion or effort at all. And they kind of just shot by the dive site group of them. And then we saw more at a later dive site where a whole school of, of these tuna were under me while I was doing my safety stop. And just, you know, the visibility at that safety stop, this was at, um, a spot. in, uh, in Socorro called the Canyon. And, uh, and the visibility on that safety stop wasn't great, but the guy I was with was pointing down and you look down and just, you know, 15, 20 feet below us is just a never ending line of tuna blasting by. |
| Jason Heaton | Oh, that's promising to hear because you hear such bad things about the tuna population. So it's nice to hear that they're in some numbers in some places. |
| James | Yeah. I guess in the protected areas, maybe they know. Yeah. And, uh, also a couple of periods, we saw some huge dolphins. a And from there we went to, I did two dives on the canyon. And the canyon was fun because the boat was moored right off the canyon, which again, which is kind of like a ridgeline under the water. And the boat was moored roughly on the canyon. And from there, we would go right off the back of the boat. And due to all the jacks crowding under the boat and people throwing some spare breakfast bits into the water, we had a lot of silky sharks in the water. So you do your start of your dive and the end of your dive kind of surrounded by these, you know, four or five foot sharks, maybe three foot silkies, but a group of them. And, uh, that not being anything I've ever experienced and it's open, it's blue, you can't see the bottom or anything. So that's kind of intimidating or it was the kind of the first time. Yeah. And, uh, they were fascinating sharks. And then by the second dive, I was kind of used to it and they would just kind of slowly circle you and they would stick around for pictures and they were, uh, they were fantastic. And then at depth, um, this is where we should have seen more hammerheads, I didn't, but we did see a ton of silver tips, which are beautiful, and all sorts of great fish. And then we finished the final day of diving at a spot that's fairly famous in Socorro called The Boiler, which is like a big spire, kind of like the shape of an upside down ice cream cone. Oh, okay. Yeah. And it comes right up to within three meters of the surface of the water, so you can actually see it from the back of the boat. Yeah. And it's called the boiler because the water gets really messed up in that area, right up, right at the top. Huh. Uh, and then, you know, don't, obviously don't dive in there. Don't get pulled in there. Stay out of there. Uh, was the, was, but basically, you know, drop as fast and as hard as you can, and then just circle this spire and mantas and white tips and tons of fish, huge, uh, great visibility and a huge amount of light. And, uh, the topography almost looks at times like man-made it's so straight. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | It's fantastic. Really cool dive spot. And then, uh, they did another dive on that on the last day, but my ear was making all sorts of noise and protest during the third dive and then didn't really quit after. So I, uh, I bailed out on that dive and, and then that was it. We, uh, we came home. So it was, it was a proper adventure. We were, we were out there for a long time. Uh, I think that, you know, the total trip I was gone for nearly 20 days. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | Both terrestrial and sub-aquatic, we saw some great stuff. Certainly not at all within the realm of my normal sort of diving. So I had an absolute blast. Oris provided this, one of the other sponsors of the trip was Bear Wetsuits. Oh, nice. So somebody at either Oris or Bear talked to each other. So we got these Oris branded wetsuits. And I had to learn to, not learn, but like I've never dove a new wetsuit. I used rentals when I learned, and then I just bought a dry suit. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | And a new wetsuit, I'd had to wait way down just to get like the first six feet under. And then once you get to a certain depth, it's fine. It's like any wetsuit, but at the start of every dive, it would kind of fight it. And these were seven millimeter wetsuits or? Five mil. Five mil, okay. Five mil, but they're these like really high tech bear ones that are like, they have like a semi dry cuff. Oh yeah. At the feet and the arms. And I actually like would have to force flood them, kind of like flooding a dry suit at the neck seal. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | to get it to really start to drop for the first dive of the day when it had dried out a bit. Yeah. But yeah, really fun diving. It was a fantastic kind of diving experience. But moreover, just I think anyone listening will kind of hear that I have a little bit of trouble encapsulating it as like a whole thing because it was so kind of grand. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, it sounds like it. I mean, I was kind of along for the ride just from the missives you would send from out of the blue, literally along the way. I'd suddenly get this WhatsApp message that said, mantas. And it was like, oh, okay. It's like I'm in the middle of my day here. And suddenly I'd get this message saying mantas and then nothing for half a day. And then something else. It was just amazing for one thing that you could just be in touch from the middle of nowhere. But it just sounded like a really grand, grand expedition. And it sounds great. |
| James | It was. It kind of had all the cornerstones of a good adventure. It was remote. I was with kind of like-minded adventurous types, all of them way more experienced than me. I was easily the most novice diver, probably one of the most novice photographers, certainly underwater. The camera gear that was coming out when they started to get within about a day of the, of Clipperton. Yeah. Everybody started unpacking their bags and it was everything from your basic, like a GH4 in a, you know, a standard dome, Uh, underwater case all the way up to, you know, there was a guy there with a Canon C500 giant camera set and everybody, you know, you'd, you'd go to take a photo and there'd be like video light in the background from one of the other divers and flashlight from another guy. And it was a lot, it was a lot of, uh, a lot of gear. And, uh, you know, every, everybody was kind of comparing photos after the dives after dinner, which is really fun. And I only took the GoPro. I didn't really want to. spend all my time managing a camera while I was diving and I semi regret not buying a housing for the 6500 for a trip like this. Yeah, until until at the end of the trip, everybody's like, Oh, you can just have my pictures. Oh, yeah, like, well, yeah, that's better. I wouldn't have gotten anything really special with my first outing on the 6500 and a housing I've never shot with a housing. Sure. And the GoPro got some fantastic video. So yeah, yeah, to kind of wrap this up, I would say one Huge thanks to AORUS. They've been big fans of the Graynado and obviously of Jason of the writing that you do and of my involvement with the blog to watch. So having this trip be offered to me was a real treat and one that I'm really excited to write about and kind of cover. But certainly it's not something I ever would have experienced without the support or consideration from an involved party like AORUS and it was fun to see where their money is going as far as, uh, the tagging the watches and supporting trips like this. And also, you know, they're doing the, the, um, staghorn, uh, coral growth project in the keys, as well as obviously the great barrier reef, uh, sustainment projects as well. So they're, they're well involved in something like this is kind of one of those long shots that costs a lot of money and that you may not get a lot of return on it from Orissa standpoint. So it's exciting just to see that level of involvement. at sort of a grassroots, I mean this was a project thrown by essentially two people and they spent two years, Julie and Michelle, spent over two years arranging all the various elements and then even up to a week before people were dropping out, the shark scientist that was attached for the trip got bit, so they had to find somebody else. I mean this is like, I think this is the nature of these sort of projects, these adventurous sort of projects. It's the sort of stuff you read about in books about, oh, all these problems you had going to Everest or something like that, but just condensed down to a boat. Yeah. Just to go see an island that, you know, aside from Cousteau did a video I'll put that it's on YouTube. I'll put that in the, in the show notes, but like Cousteau did a movie way back called, uh, the island that time forgot. And, uh, and, and that was on Clipperton and they dove in the lagoon and like, burned themselves and discolored all their gear in the hydrogen sulfide layer, like really crazy stuff. And, uh, and, and then, yeah, the, the only other thing to cover is that, you know, I had a couple of Oris watches. I, they were able to, uh, basically say, well, what would you like to take on a trip like this? So yeah, I suppose that's, uh, the best place to kind of wrap up at least this chapter of Clipperton. I have a ton of video and I'll try and figure out some way of building it into a log, but I'll say now, and the audiences, these are the people who might actually watch a video log of a trip like this. It's going to take me some time because it's about 180 gigs of video in relatively small clips, so to try and patch it all together and then do some sort of voiceover that explains it. But as soon as I have my piece for a blog to watch, I'll be sure to include that in the show notes of the next show. |
| Jason Heaton | What about the watches? You had the Hammerhead and then you had the Regulator, right? |
| James | Yeah, the new Regulator. I took two watches and I ended up basically sharing them with the expedition leader, Michel, and he has an Oris, the depth gauge chrono. Oh, yeah, cool. But he was worried about just chewing it up on a trip like this, especially with the entrance and exit to the island, you're getting thrown around in the coral. And I said, Oh, just, you know, Oris sent these to be worn. I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure it's fine that they're being worn. So both were on rubber. And so for most of my trip my time in Clipperton, I was wearing the Aquus Regulator Dermeister Talker, the Master Diver. And that was a watch that I saw from across the table at Basel. Yeah. And didn't even pick up. I was like, oh, a Regulator. I've seen... They've done Regulators in the past. Cool. And then I got to dinner with the Canadian Aorus guy, Mark, and He had kind of a selection of watches, you know, he can take pretty much any of these. And, uh, and when I picked it up, I was sold almost immediately. It's titanium 43 and a half millimeters. It doesn't wear or sit in your hand. Like, like being that big. And it's very light. The, uh, the regulator is really cool. Especially once your brain gets over the slight lag and reading the two hands separately. It's super legible. The loom is great ceramic bezel, great rubber strap, like bright red. really comfortable, great class with an extension that you can adjust while it's on your wrist. It's that pinch extension. I think it, I think it's maybe second to something like a Pelagos, but it involves less mechanics than a Pelagos. Like it's kind of clever in its simplicity. You just kind of pinch these two pins that kind of slide into these notches. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | So you can very easily extend it all the way, slide it over the, uh, a glove if you're wearing a glove and then you're good. And then otherwise, uh, Uh, you know, you can, you can tighten it up or you can open it one when your wrist gets a little puffy. And, uh, I really loved it. Uh, I destroyed the clasp. It's covered in scratches. Um, other than that, the, the head of the watch, I was worried about, you know, being titanium and being on that many dives. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | I was worried and there's not a mark on it. I mean, obviously the ceramic bezel is fine, but the, uh, the crystal stood up to a great deal of abuse and because of the profile of the case, it's kind of dish. Oh, sure. So that the bezel's the widest point. Yeah. It's well protected. And of course, being an Aquus, you have the proprietary lugs, which some people love, some hate. I'd say with this rubber strap, it's great. I like it a lot. But with the shape of the lugs, you don't have a lot of outer lug edge. It's all kind of tucked in under the case. And with the new Aquus shape, the watch is thinner and the lugs are kind of curled in a little bit. Yeah. So they're a little bit more protected and it fits the wrist really well. I, uh, I really liked this watch. I was surprised by it because I wasn't, it wouldn't have been originally one of the ones I was planning to take on the trip. I was going to take the Staghorn and the Hammerhead. And then, uh, unfortunately the Staghorn arrived from Switzerland to Canada as a non-running sample. Oh, sure. It's just, if you do this long enough in watches that happens, it's not actually that uncommon that what they have available is more for photography or whatever. So I was able to get the Hammerhead and the Regulator and enjoyed both quite a bit. And then once we got to Socorro, I switched up and dove a bunch with the Hammerhead. And the Hammerhead is basically like, if you like a large watch, really, really cool. The lume is unbelievable. I actually, the first night that I wore it and I went to bed, I quickly charged it with a flashlight and I never did that again because it was so bright I had to put my hand under a pillow. Because normally, you know, I kind of sleep, you know, with my wrist somewhere near my face. And it was like, you could see it on the wall. I could see things in the room just from the loom. Because if you look at a photo of it, the markers in the hands are huge. I mean, it's a big watch with a big face. It wears way better than you would assume for 45 and a half millimeters, but it's heavy. It's steel. It's really robust. Again, ceramic bezel, great black rubber strap. I really like the gray dial. Comments on Instagram are pretty hit or miss about the Day-Date, but being in Aquas, there's a bunch of other versions that are the same case size. So you could really have your pick of what you want as far as this or that, the date or not the date. And the Hammerhead is the only one with the Day-Date. And I actually think it's a nice complication, kind of gives it the Seiko vibe. And the watch, I was kind of concerned like, oh, it's the right one to take on the trip because we're tagging sharks and this is a watch made in conjunction with their support of this special type of GPS tag. Yeah. But then also it's 45.5 millimeters, like I don't wear watches that big, that's gonna be huge and I'm gonna have to wear it all, you know, you gotta wear it because you're on the trip and I'm not gonna bring other watches. And then it turns out it's super wearable, it didn't bother me at all, the rubber wasn't a problem in really hot temperatures or when it was wet or even when I wore it one day and in the process of getting in and out of the Zodiac I got a bunch of like you know, you were in the sand wash area. So your, your boots would fill up almost instantly with little bits of coral and sand and it gets under the strap. And that was fine too. Yeah. They wore really well. I mean, two great dive watches. I don't think I would really prefer to treat a dive watch any worse than I did on these trips. Yeah. And they held up really well, both super wearable. If I had my pick of the two, it would be the, uh, the regulator. I think it's that great mix of cool and wearable and different. Mm. I don't know if, you know, there aren't a lot of people making dive regulators. Yeah. And, uh, and, and I like both. I mean, both unfortunately have to go back to, uh, to Oris and I will definitely miss the regulator. And I was really pleasantly surprised by how wearable the, uh, the Hammerhead was despite the large case size and the proprietary lugs. Uh, useful, wearable, both kept great time, both put up, uh, put up a good fight against a lot of abuse. Diving's really hard, especially on a boat. Diving's pretty hard on watches. It just is. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, it seems like, you know, going back to the day-date function, it's not my favorite look on a watch. And on that one particularly, I think it's not my favorite element of it. But as you were speaking about it, I was thinking that on a trip like you took, I would actually think knowing the day would be quite handy when you kind of lose track of time when you're out for 20 days on a boat. And, you know, certainly there's plenty of Seiko dive watches that have the day and the date. a few other brands. It's less common, but I would say as kind of an expedition watch, it probably made a lot of sense. |
| James | You end up really starting to not care about your cell phone because it doesn't really do that much for you. Yeah. And it also represented like one of the only, my only connections to a workload while I was on the trip. Like I could either just appreciate the experience for what it was, or I could spend a lot of time uploading one or two images to Instagram or back to Oris or whatever. Yeah. So I would try and package all of that together. I would have lunch and there was a little bit more time before the next dive and I would try and get a couple images out and then be done with my phone. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | But then I'd want to go make notes in my journal and you want, you know, not only the day number of how many days you've been out, but also, you know, it helps to say what day of the week it was. |
| Unknown | Sure. |
| James | And that number, that concept becomes abstract when you're on a boat in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. And I'm sure that there's people listening that either work on boats or have done lots of liveaboards. This is a brand new experience for me, so I apologize if it sounds like I'm coming at it from a very basic angle, because I am. But I had an absolute blast and both watches were really fun. It's really fun to dive with dive watches and obviously I had my Zoop for the actual dives. As far as the computer goes, we were diving Nitrox the whole time, which was great. But I used quite reliably both watches and the bezels were great with or without gloves. When we got to Socorro, it was a 10, 12 degrees cooler in the water. Yeah. So, I mean, it was like a bath in Cleverton. It was 30 degrees Celsius in the water, regardless of what depth, it was just always 30. And then it was 19, 18, 20-ish in Socorro, depending on where we were. And so when you threw on a glove and I still wanted to set that bezel, because I'm a nerd, set it and have it run. And then the legibility of both, especially the hammerhead is ludicrous, pretty much all the time. You could read it on somebody else's wrist, basically. Really cool. But that's probably enough. I've definitely rambled so much. So I'm going to pass it to you. And I want to hear about your dives. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, well, you know, mine certainly were a smaller scale than what you had. So, you know, kind of in the interest of time, I'll kind of briefly talk about the dives and kind of, I bet a lot of people want to hear about the watches that I dove with because I think both, uh, both of them were really cool, uh, dive watches. And, uh, I got a lot of feedback on Instagram when I put up photos and two great watches. Yeah. And the, the, the Bell and Ross in particular, which I'll get to, uh, in a little bit here. Um, uh, I just got so much interest in that. And I think it was kind of one of the surprise sort of hits at, uh, at Basel world this year. Um, so first it was just, uh, I guess it was just last weekend. It was like the 13th of May. I drove down to Milwaukee, which is actually where I'm from, or I grew up for a good part of my life there. And, you know, it's on Lake Michigan and, you know, there's a great number of really cool wrecks just offshore there. And the one that, that, uh, I dove was, uh, the wreck of the, what's called the Prince Willem V. And to a lot of people's surprise, it's actually a Dutch ship. It's about a 250 foot long. uh, what they call it, I think it was called a canal freighter that was built in the 1930s over in the Netherlands. And, you know, it was just prior to World War II and the Dutch actually sank the ship at the beginning of World War II in the Harbor of, in the Moss River, um, to keep the Nazis from getting into Rotterdam Harbor. So they actually used this newly built ship as a sort of a navigational impediment for, against the enemy. Wow. And then after the war, they, they raised it. pumped it out, raised it, and refitted it, and then started sailing it as a package freighter across the Atlantic. And this is the 1950s when the canal systems through the Great Lakes weren't quite as well developed as they are today. And it was one of these ships that was just the right size to go from the open ocean through the St. Lawrence River and through the Great Lakes and regularly called on Milwaukee with various cargo from Europe. And, um, it was, I think it was 54, 1954 when, um, it was on a run. I think it had just left, uh, Milwaukee and was, was headed back through the lakes to go make the long trip back to Europe. And, and, um, the Prince Willem V for whatever reason, if it was a miscommunication or somebody fell asleep on the job or whatever, ended up plowing between a tow barge and a, and a barge and kind of snagged on the tow line. And the barge swung around and smashed into the side of the Willem It took a while to sink and they got all hands off in time so nobody died on it, but the ship sank in about 95 feet of water. And there was a salvage attempt made in just a few years after it went down by a very famous diver who actually had the world record for the deepest scuba dive back in the 1930s. And he had bought the salvage rights to the Prince Willem with the intent of raising it. It was an interesting story because he actually It was around that time, it was I think in 54 or 55 when the Andrea Doria sank in the Atlantic. And this guy, Max Knoll, who went on to be one of the founders of Desco, which is a diving salvage company based in Milwaukee. He had this plan that he was going to run chains or cables. He was going to trench under the wreck and run chains or long cables under the wreck and then attach these big sort of oil, empty oil barrels, um, on either side and then pump them full of compressed air, which would in theory kind of lift the wreck to the surface. And this, this was kind of a rehearsal that, that he had planned not only to salvage the, the Prince Willem, but as a rehearsal to go out and actually raise the Andrea Doria in the same, in the same manner. Oh, wow. And he, he went out and did this. He rigged this whole thing up and the media was all there with cameras and whatever else. And, uh, suddenly as the, as the, the wreck was starting to kind of move and the barrels were lifting with the compressed air in them, a couple of the barrels let go of the cables and shot, you know, 90 feet up from the bottom through the surface of the lake and like shot out like, uh, you know, like guided missiles out of the submarine or something. And, um, anyway, that kind of ended his attempt to raise the wreck. And so. Um, it's been there ever since. And it's, it's become kind of a popular dive site. It's probably the most popular, uh, shipwreck to dive out of Milwaukee. And, uh, in recent years with the kind of the influx of the zebra mussels, the lake visibility has gotten really, really good. Whereas, you know, even back in the eighties and nineties, it was pretty murky out there. And now that the zebra mussels just kind of coat every, every surface and they're because they're filter feeders, they clean out all of the. the algae and sort of, uh, uh, you know, bio matter that's floating around in the lake and you get this tremendous visibility on these shipwrecks. So, um, you know, long story short, I was at, uh, Basel world back in, in, uh, in the spring. And I met with the folks at Zinn and, you know, brand that you and I love to visit when we go. And, and I was chatting with the two guys from watch buys, which is the American North American distributor for Zinn. And they had this, watch the U1 Professional, which is a North American limited edition that was designed in part with a former New York cop who kind of approached them earlier and had some design features that he wanted to see incorporated and they complied. And I was just talking to these guys and they're like, you know, we'd love to have you dive with this watch. And I said, you know, that's great. Let's find an opportunity to do it. So, you know, they sent the watch over a few weeks ago and I cut the rubber strap down to fit and made some plans to go to Milwaukee and dive the Prince Willem. And so that's what I did last weekend. And it was great. It was a really pleasant kind of early season for the Great Lakes, early season dive. And went out on this really lovely catamaran sailboat that's kind of a friend of a friend. And he runs some dive charters there during the summer and went out and moored up. We did a couple of dry suit dives on the wreck. Nice. Yeah, it was great. It was good viz. I mean, it was cold. The water was 43 Fahrenheit, so it's about 6, I think, centigrade. It's cold enough? |
| James | Yeah, it was cold enough. You posted some photos that you would have sworn it was the Bahamas or the Keys. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, well, that's the big illusion. It lures people in there, but it was great. I mean, you know, the wreck was fun. kicked around kind of pretty much end to end. You can, you know, you swim the whole thing. It's pretty well intact lying on its side and you can drop down inside the pilot house and into the cargo holds and, um, kind of swim around back. And, and, uh, so that was fun. And, and then of course I was wearing the Zinn and, you know, just a, just a great, great dive watch. I mean, I, I think I used to own a, just a kind of a standard U1 years ago, and I think It kind of always left me a little bit cold. It's a very stark, very Germanic watch, which I think a lot of people find attractive about it. I think the Pro, because it has this black bezel and the red writing on the dial, it introduces this kind of interesting element to it that I found a little bit more attractive than kind of the standard U1. And of course, it's just such a capable watch. I mean, it's just so over-engineered. The case, it's a fully tegamented, hardened steel. submarine steel case with, um, um, you know, they, they use the, uh, the dehumidifying technology inside the case and it's, uh, anti-magnetic and, um, great strap, uh, massive class, but the fold out dive extension, um, the crown is at 10 o'clock on this one. So it worked really well, you know, on really thick gloves on my, on my left hand and have any, uh, interference issues on my back of my hand or anything like that. And, uh, perfect. |
| James | Yeah. Cool. Um, Cool watch. And your piece for Hodegi went up today, right? As we're recording this? |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, actually it went up yesterday. Oh, okay. |
| James | I got it to Feedly today. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, crazy. |
| James | Great piece, great photos. |
| Jason Heaton | The story really came together really quickly. I mean, you know, within a week, I kind of wanted to kind of hustle this one through because the watch, there were only a hundred pieces made and there were, I think the numbers were kind of dwindling. So I kind of wanted to get that up while it's still relevant. So yeah, we'll put the link in the show notes. |
| James | Yeah, for sure. Only a hundred pieces. What a cool watch. It looks great in the photos and certainly anything from Zinn, whether it's your standard bog version, U1, if you want to call it that, all the way up to something a little bit more specialized or rare. Yeah. Always really cool. And certainly about as hardcore as dive watches tend to go in terms of capability. Yeah, definitely. |
| Jason Heaton | Like I said earlier, just last night, just flew back from the Florida Keys where You know, my wife, Ghoshani and I were down for, we arrived last Friday, so it was kind of a quick trip. It was four days. And this one was to, um, kind of test and photograph the Bell & Ross, their new dive watch, which is the BR03-92, uh, which they introduced at Baselworld as well. And I think this watch, I don't know, for me, it kind of came out of nowhere. I hadn't really expected this from Bell & Ross. I, I actually used to, one of my very first kind of high-end watches that I bought many years ago was their previous dive watch, the BR-02, which had this sort of tonneau-shaped case and it had an internal bezel. Oh, that was a cool piece. The big numerals on the dial. Yeah, I really liked that watch. It was terribly un-ergonomic for diving because of that internal bezel, but loved wearing it. A fun watch. And they kind of, I don't think they sold very well. I remember I just never really saw many around. But yeah, with this new one, they've kind of embraced their kind of, I guess if you want to, I know the word iconic is overused, but you know, what they're kind of known for is that square case, that sort of instrument style watch that they use in all their pilots watches. So they've kind of embraced that for this new Diver. They kind of added this standard rotating dive bezel and did away with the kind of the loopy Zen style oversized numerals on the dial and kind of went to more of a traditional dive style markers on the dial. It really works. The watch, it wears well because it's square. I mean, it's a big watch. I think it's like 43 or 44 millimeters, but it's square and it has virtually no lugs. So it, you know, just kind of sits very symmetrically on your wrist. You know, visibility is fantastic that the date window is at four 30, but it's, it's, it's quite tiny. Um, which didn't bother me because it kind of, disappears until you really need to see the date. And so you kind of just get this almost no date looking dive dial. I thought the hands were great. Hands are great. I don't even know how to describe them. |
| James | They're very long, I think is what did it. Because I think that square case shape really accentuates when there's an out of balance element in the dial. Yeah, yeah. And I think they nailed the proportions. The minute hand's really long and they used some color there. Yeah. You were saying the lume is good? |
| Jason Heaton | Lume is decent. I mean, the Zinn had fantastic lume. The Bell and Rasta, I think it was average. You know, it certainly wouldn't have a problem, you know, for a short night dive. And anyway, you'd be carrying a light, so you don't really have to worry too much about it. But certainly nothing like the Orises you had, it sounds like. But it was passable. I think the only gripe I had, well, another great thing about it is the strap. It's got the, you know, Bell and Rasta's these really cool, really wide, rubber straps, textured, you know, big buckle. Really comfy? Really comfy. They sent a longer strap which I was tempted to put on but the short one worked just fine. I was diving in warm water so I didn't have to worry about like a thick suit. And how was the diving? The diving was great. Just one little sort of caveat about the watch. The only kind of disappointment of the watch was the, you know, the bezel's fine but it's not quite a tall enough profile. Uh, it has a coin edge for gripping, but it's not quite tall enough. So it was kind of difficult to, to grip at times. And then, uh, because I was diving in, in the Florida Keys, which is saltwater, of course, um, after dives, if I wasn't diligent about immediately kind of rinsing it and flushing it with fresh water, uh, those salt matter would kind of collect in inside that bezel and it made it virtually impossible to turn unless I just really flushed it and soaked it for for a good amount of time between almost every dive and uh i found that slightly disappointing i think if it had a taller kind of profile where you could just kind of grab it and just crank it around under some fresh water uh it would have worked a lot better but uh yeah but uh that's a good note yeah yeah cool watch the diving you know florida keys i always forget uh you know i've been there a few times and and uh the diving just it really doesn't disappoint it's it's like i don't know why people don't go there more often it's it's you don't need a At least for Americans, you don't need a passport or a visa. It's like almost like Caribbean diving conditions, 82 degree water temperature and loads of fish life and really healthy coral. Great shipwrecks. They've sunk. There are a couple of kind of, I guess, quote unquote, natural shipwrecks or shipwrecks that have sunk accidentally. And then they've got a few kind of really big ships that they've sunk intentionally to use as dive sites and artificial reefs. And we dove one of those, which is called the Spiegel Grove, which is a 510 foot long, um, I guess it was like a landing transport ship that that's sitting upright in about, I don't know, about 120 feet of water and just a fun dive. And then, and then the rest of the diving we did was all fairly shallow. Well, I guess we did two deeper kind of drift dives, but then we did some, uh, uh, three or four dives on some really, really shallow, uh, reefs. Like we're talking like, you know, between 20 and 30 foot dives, which, um, you know, when it comes to diving, I think depth is, is greatly sort of over-exaggerated. I think, uh, if you can go shallow, you get a lot more light penetration, longer, uh, bottom times and, uh, better colors, better colors. So, uh, it was, uh, it was great. And then, you know, we saw a lot of stuff, there were sharks and rays. What sort of sharks were you seeing? Uh, you get, Caribbean reef sharks and then a lot of nurse sharks, you know, pretty kind of the regular suspects or the usual suspects that you see down in the Caribbean as well. Very cool. Really healthy. A lot of barracuda, huge schools of snapper. Love barracuda. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | There's something magical about the way that a barracuda sits in the water column. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | Like it's entirely unaffected by current or... Yeah. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | Drift dive I've rambled about in Hawaii a while back, you know, you dropped in on the LCU, this dive site, this wreck dive site and ton of Barracuda at the top of the ship. And we were in a ripping current and these fish were just, they nose into the current. So that's a nice tip for your drift dive is they'll typically like a jack will face into the current as well. If you're wondering which way you're going to swim. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | And, uh, and they just, they seem unaffected, but so heavy. Yeah. It looks like if you tried to pick them up, like they would weigh like a, like a missile. Yeah. Like they would have this chunkiness to them, but otherwise they just seem entirely unaffected by water. What a great animal. |
| Jason Heaton | Oh, I know. They're so cool. They're, they're a little bit eerie too, because they have these really, I don't want to say dead eyes, but they're, they're very, um, very observant fish that you can tell they're watching you, but, but they're almost, I mean, no fish really looks emotional, I guess, but, um, they, they just seem steely eyed, very cold and they. A little menacing at times. A little menacing. Um, you know, I think the, They get big too. The tales of, you know, don't wear a shiny watch or something like that around Barracuda, I think are a little exaggerated, but, uh, you know, there, there was a moment, uh, where I had my light in motion, you know, 700 lumen solar light, and I was kind of poking around under a cave and this pretty big, you know, probably a three foot, three and a half foot Barracuda kind of comes cruising right in front of me, like within snapping distance of my light. And I kind of, I had, had, had a bit of pause there at that time, but, uh, super cool. |
| James | He's just letting you know he's around. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's great. Those sound like great dives. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, it was a good time. It was kind of tiring. We did two full days. We chartered a boat with Conch Republic, which is kind of one of the big dive operators out of Isla Mirada down there, and we had the boat to ourselves. There were like three crew and two of us, and we had to kind of take our time and pick our dive sites. And so, yeah, we got some great photos, I think. |
| James | And is that for Hoden Key or otherwise? |
| Jason Heaton | That will be in the September issue of Revolution Magazine. So that's... There you go. And I'm sure they'll put it up online at some point. So we'll link to that when the time comes. |
| James | Super. Yeah, that'll be a good one. I'm looking forward to those photos too. That'll be great. Yeah. What do you think? You think we've probably... Anyone still listening, probably tired of hearing about diving? Maybe move on to some final notes? I think that's a good idea. I love that it seems like diving season is well upon us now. and we'll see where else we end up kind of throughout the summer. Hopefully get some hikes in there too. Yeah, yeah. So you want to go first with the final note? |
| Jason Heaton | I've got kind of a relevant one, you know, good segue from what we've just been talking about. There was an article that appeared a couple of weeks ago on Outside Magazine's website, which is a site we tend to keep going back to over and over again these days, but they had an article called, The Thieves Who Steal Sunken Warships Right Down to the Bolts. And, um, we'll link that of course, in the show notes, but it was a really interesting article about these, um, sunken warships in, I think it was in the waters off of Indonesia around Indonesia that were disappearing. The, these researchers and historians were, were headed out to dive these wrecks and they would, you know, descend down to, you know, sometimes 120, 130 feet. And there would be this empty sort of bare spot on the, on the reef or in the sand where a ship was and they would find virtually nothing left of these three, four, five hundred foot warships and they couldn't figure out what was happening to them and this was the case with five, six, maybe seven of these warships from, you know, British and American warships from over the years. Wow. I guess it's this, I won't give away too much, I think you should read the article, but it's a good long read, but There's kind of a underground trade for some of the really high carbon steel that was used, the really thick, heavy steel that was used on warships back in the day. And I guess you can make a fair amount of money salvaging these things. But it still blows my mind that you could cut these things up and raise them. I mean, you'd have to have barges and cranes and multiple teams of presumably saturation divers down there with welding equipment and cutters. It'd be quite an operation. really quite an operation and it's all illegally done. I mean, this stuff isn't, it isn't legit because these are, these are war graves that, you know, still belong to the, the navies that, you know, from whom they, they belonged or, you know, when they were sunk. So, right. Yeah. Great read. Good, good, good, long read. I'm not sure the author had a real sense of, uh, of some of the nuances of diving, but I don't think it was really necessarily a diving story. It was kind of more about this, uh, this strange disappearance of these wrecks and kind of this, uh, this underground salvage trade for steel. Check that out. |
| James | That's fascinating. That must have come out while I was on the trip. I think it did, yeah. I definitely did not see that. I came back and Feedly was into four digits and I just declared bankruptcy. I marked it all as red and moved on. Thankfully, you've got my back and I'll add that one back to Pocket and give it a read. That sounds great. Speaking of something I did read, and it's both connected to boats and watches, so it worked pretty well for tonight's episode, is a book that was loaned to me by the deckhand on the Nautilus boat I was on for Clipperton, and it's called Longitude, The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. You can just go to Amazon and search Longitude, or show notes, it'll be there too. It's by an author, Dava Sobel, and it's a fantastic story about the problem of longitude. From a nautical navigation standpoint, the idea of longitude, this is the line that runs vertically across the Earth's axis, but tells you if you're east or west of a given point. The problem with that is, one, you don't have an equator to measure off of necessarily. So it's not a fixed point. The prime meridian could be placed anywhere. Eventually we would decide, or the British would decide that it was out of GMT. And this is where we do a lot of time zones as well. But the, uh, the background to the story is really unbelievable. You can buy the book on Amazon for nine bucks right now, and it'll be a fantastic $9 for anyone who's interested in the science of navigation or clock and watchmaking or you know naval history because at a certain point England and various elements within Europe that were that had business to carry out in open water were greatly concerned that they would lose so many boats due to navigational errors and some of these boats were carrying vast sums of wealth that represented the wealth of these respective nations. And this is about a British carpenter named John Harrison who applied some carpentry skills to making clocks that were way ahead of their time, some of them still running today. And he then took on the problem of longitude from a very practical, almost, well not almost, a genius standpoint of If I could build a really accurate clock and put it on the boat, then when you did your sun shot at noon from the boat, you could compare noon in your current position with whatever time the clock says, which would be from your port where you left. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | And if you knew your port or if you used your port, let's say in this case, a port in England as the prime meridian, then you could calculate depending on how far north or south you were would, would determine how far an hour meant in terms of degrees of longitude. So it sounds complicated, but it's actually quite clever. The book describes it in very simple terms, and it's an absolutely fascinating story. If you're listening to the Graynado, this is really historical Graynado sort of stuff. It's wrapped all together, and there's some great history, and then it's about this John Harrison struggle to prove his concept was the best option against myriad options of astronomy based solutions that weren't as elegant, but didn't require a very difficult and almost impossible to replicate clock at the time. Uh, so it's, it really is a science and technology story. And, and I really, really suggest everybody, uh, either go to your library and borrow it or see if a friend's got it or buy it on Amazon. Awesome story. Really, really cool. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, I think it's one of those must-reads for watch geeks. There are not a lot of books for guys like us that kind of want to geek out on timekeeping, and I think that's kind of one of the true classics of the genre. So yeah, good pick. |
| James | What do you got next? |
| Jason Heaton | My next one is actually another podcast. I stumbled upon this one because it kind of came to it kind of through the back door because I, I followed this guy on Instagram who goes by the, the, the handle abstract conformity and his name is John Dunaway. And I don't remember how I got connected with him. I think he might've done something with like Filson watches or something a few years ago or last year because he's, he's a merchant mariner. He's a, he's a ship captain, um, for these big, uh, ocean going, um, cargo ships, freighters that kind of crisscross, you know, the Indian ocean and the Pacific and the Atlantic. And he happens to be a really talented photographer and has a real eye for what's interesting on the open seas and kind of in his work, which, you know, you just don't get much of a glimpse into that, that life of, of on the high seas and, you know, you know, as captaining a cargo ship. And, and so I started following him on Instagram. And then one day, a few weeks ago, he, Mentioned on Instagram that he had been the subject of an interview By a podcaster who has a podcast strangely enough called mountain and prairie, which doesn't seem to be a good fit for for mr. Dunaway's Profession. Yeah, but I guess Dunaway. I think he's from Texas and he's kind of when he's not at sea he's he's in the mountains and the prairies apparently and so the guy who who does the mountain and prairie podcast decided to interview John and I I actually just listened to it today and it's a fairly long, it gets a little bit long-winded at certain points, but I think, you know, Dunaway's a really interesting character and he's kind of a younger guy and I think it kind of goes into his work and what it's like to kind of be captaining a ship all over the world when he's dodging, you know, everything from, you know, icebergs in certain latitudes and Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean and everything in between. And I think that and kind of how he got his start on Instagram and kind of where he heads with that and what he likes to do when he's not at sea. So give it a listen. It's also on SoundCloud and can't speak for Mountain and Prairie as a podcast itself. The hosts certainly seem You know, like an interesting guy and his topics, some of his other topics seemed fairly interesting if you're into kind of the American West and that sort of thing. But this one in particular, you know, I recommend it. Check it out and maybe give a follow to Abstract Conformity on Instagram because I think he's got a really cool feed. |
| James | Yeah, I just pulled it up while you were explaining the podcast and I agree, it's some fantastic photos. Really talented. Yeah. Yeah, so he certainly got a follow from me. That's a no-brainer. Next for me, I've got I've got two and then we'll wrap it up. It looks like it looks like that's a you had two so I'll quickly bounce through mine here. So the first one is also an Instagram account. Adpatina, A-D-P-A-T-I-N-A on Instagram. It's a side account from a well known watch account at Watchpatina. And Adpatina is specifically for selling vintage watch ads to be used as art. It's a really good follow in general, but certainly this guy is sure to get an order from me in the near future. He's got all sorts of vintage Rolex and AP ads, and it's just a matter of time until an EXP2 ad kind of strikes my fancy. It just popped up recently. I know, I believe he had some of these ads on Watchpatina in the past, and now they're on Adpatina. The account doesn't have many follows, but it definitely should. I think it's just very new. So swing over to Adpatina and give them a follow. and maybe pick something up kind of cool for your office or as a gift for another watch nerd. Lots of cool stuff there. Definitely worth checking out. Did you get a chance to see that? Do you know the guy I mean? |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, I kind of, I caught that. I don't know. I think it's a fairly recent thing, but I latched onto that as well. And I think it's really cool. I'm really tempted to pick up some of those, especially the old Rolex ones are really cool. |
| James | Yeah. I love those. If you were doing this today, you'd be wearing a Rolex. So it's like if you're, if you were flying the, Concord today, you'd be wearing a Rolex. It's like a GMT master There's a lot of a lot of really cool stuff on there And then finally, I know Jason you're a big fan of Randolph engineering sunglasses. Yeah, and and I wanted a pair of Sunglasses for Clipperton some proper polarized sunglasses and my tendency for sunglasses is like the 12 or $13 sunglasses at H&M. Yeah and I'll buy them and then I break them or I lose them or my one of my kids grabs them off my face and I just don't care. I have a couple I have a pair of Ray-Bans, but I've lost at least two Ray-Bans in the mountains. And I still have one pair left that my wife now wears. So I didn't have those Ray-Bans anymore. So I was looking around for something nicer than some of these ones I'd bought from H&M or random gas stations and such. And I came around these really on Reddit actually these really well reviewed Sunglasses called knock arounds the brand is called knock around and I ended up Buying a pair of their smoke premiums. So premiums is the style. It's a wayfarer style. So it looks a bit like a Ray-Ban It's a little bit cleaned up. It doesn't have the kind of studs at the side of the frame So it's a a simple matte black frame. It has a white logo You can get a version without the white logo, but I bought it on Amazon Canada so I didn't have as many options as is on their website I want to say they have a handful of various styles and then each style they have tons of colors. And so this is just a normal kind of wayfarer style, sunglass, plastic frames. I bought a simple black frame with a black lens. They're a little bit bigger than a Ray-Ban in terms of the north-south of the frame. And then I would say width is about the same as a Ray-Ban. Proper UV protection and real polarization and they're 20 bucks. Nice. Yeah, they look really cool. I would break them being on Clipperton, they would either fall off or I would lose them. And they survived all sorts of abuse. They did fall off. I did nearly lose them. They fell out of a boat at one point and I was able to snatch them up out of the surf. And I at times had them on, you know, those kind of croquis, like a neck strap, really comfortable, nice and dark, but not like glacier dark. Like I was going to take what I wore on Baker, but those are like the level four glacier lenses. Yeah, which is super dark if you try and do anything in a shadow on the boat. So these worked out beautifully. And if you're like me, and you're a little bit more concerned about spending real money on a decent pair of sunglasses, which I will do eventually, I'll talk myself into it. But if you want something for either a specific adventure, or you just want to have a polarized option for when you're out on the water, whatever it may be, I'm really impressed with these. And like I said, for US buyers or people who buy from their US website, 20 US bucks for a proper actually polarized lens is pretty great. And I paid 35 Canadian from Amazon all shipped. So that's relatively within range. And I've been very impressed. So I would I would fully suggest if you're looking for a new pair of summer sunglasses, something that you don't have to worry about damaging or losing or having stolen or whatever. I think this is a great option as a nice backup if you're a Randolph fan and maybe a primo one if if you're me. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, that's a really good recommendation. They look really sharp and it's really funny timing because I had been exchanging some private messages on Instagram with a guy who listens to the show and he said, I've got a suggestion for a topic for one of your shows. You guys should talk about sunglasses. And I replied to him and I said, you know, James isn't really a sunglass guy. We've kind of talked about it together. So it's really funny that you mentioned it. So hopefully he's listening. I'm not sure we'll do a whole show on sunglasses, but this is a good recommendation. |
| James | Who knows, I could go down that rabbit hole any day. I feel like I'm always on the precipice of a new rabbit hole, whether it's flashlights or backpacks or whatever. Oh, and I guess we're pretty much wrapped up for the show. So I did want to thank everyone who sent out their suggestions for a small carry bag. I got a ton of emails. So you guys are all kings in my book. I really appreciate all the suggestions. I'm still filtering through. a bunch that I got and when I eventually pick something for carrying the camera and an umbrella and a bag and all that kind of stuff around, I'll be sure to mention it. But I appreciate all of the suggestions and eventually I'll lock that down. |
| Jason Heaton | Well, I'd say it's a fitting sort of diving parlance to maybe swim to the surface with this episode and wrap things up. As always, thanks so much for listening. Hit the show notes for more details. You can follow us on Instagram. I'm at Jason Heaton. James is at jestacy. And please follow the show at TheGreyNado. If you have any questions for us, please write TheGreyNado at gmail.com and please subscribe and review wherever you find your podcasts or grab the feed from TheGreyNado.com. Music throughout is Siesta by JazzArr via the free music archive. |
| James | And until next time, we leave you with this quote from Mae West, which was kindly sent in by listener Jared. You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough. |