2008 Perfect Dive Recap

This has been a great and exciting year for The Perfect Dive website. Here’s a quick look at 2008:

• We entered a booth in the 1st annual NW Dive Expo and participated in the treasure hunt dive at Owen beach providing safety divers and support for those participating in the dive.
  
• Site contributers uploaded over 70 Pacific Northwest and Puget Sound dive sites. 
• The team took a wonderful trip to Monterey, California which opened up the first California dive sites. Monterey was as great as we had hoped – exciting underwater geography, lots of marine life and amazing kelp forests. 11 Monterey dive Sites were added to The Perfect Dive.
• One of our good contributors, GiAnn Eastman launched us into the Channel Islands and shortly we researched and uploaded 24 additional California coast dive sites. 
  
• A pair of the Perfect Dive Team headed to Vancouver Island in Canada and spent a week diving in Victoria with the dive club Sunday Divers and Ogden Point Dive Center. The diving was great and 19 new Canadian dive sites were uploaded.
  
• Launched new website features including area dive site maps, dive site ratings and photo reviews

Thanks to all who helped us make The Perfect Dive website the best dive site resource on the web.

Let's See, There's Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring, and.... My Favorite, Ling Cod Season!

Let me introduce you to my little friend! If you'll recall, back when I started the blog I told a story about my psychadelic dive where a ling cod rammed me in the boat at about 75 feet down. Well, over the past year, he's rammed me two more times. So, I'm sure you can imagine how anxious I've been for Ling Cod Season to start!

Jeremy and I went to Three Tree Point with a speargun and a hawaiian sling to go after my arch rival and nemesis in the boat. When we came to the boat, we swam around to the backside and peeked in the hole where the motor used to be mounted. Virtually every time we've come to the boat, we have seen him inside the boat through this hole. Well, as luck would have it, he's not there. Needless to say, I'm upset because I've been waiting so long to get that little sucker! So we start looking all around the boat and inside it where there lay several boards and chunks of cement. Just as I'm about to give up, I see in one of the holes of the debris the classic brown and black spots of my Ling Cod! I signal to Jeremy and he takes the shot....

Pow, right in the kisser! The fish is squirming and jerking! Direct hit! So we begin the tedious process of lifting off the debris to get to him. By the time we finally get to the fish, I have my light in one hand to help Jeremy dig and the hawaiian sling and debris being held up in my other. Jeremy gets the last board out of the way and... it's not him! It was a smaller one!

I'm ready to throw a tantrum right there when all of a sudden, BAM! That dirty son of a gun rams me upside the head. AGAIN! I reach out and try to catch him in my hands to no avail and drop everything I'm holding to go after him over the back of the boat.

Jeremy, meanwhile, is reloading his speargun (now in the dark since I left him to go after the devil fish!). I swim over the back of the boat and down to the hole in the back as I'm sure that is where he has gone. Nothing. At this point I'm screaming in rage that the little sucker rammed me again and took off! Ling Cod season only lasts two weeks and I'm sure at this point that I've missed my chance. Defeated, I decide to go back over the rear of the boat to relay to Jeremy what happened. I come up over the top just in time to see that the spawn of satan has landed right in front of Jeremy who takes the shot and nails him!

Of course, we brought him, the other Ling, and a few Greenling that we also speared home for dinner. As we're taking in the first bite of beer-battered happiness, I thought to myself, "Well, you've waited a year for this. Was it all worth it?" ABSOLUTELY! Here's to Ling Cod Season!

-Swimmer Todd-

My 100th Dive!

Well, that was a hell of a great year! It's amazing how far we've come since getting certified last April. I celebrated my 100th dive at The Wreck at Taylor Bay with Rob and Jeremy. We started our day by diving Steamboat Island Wall (AWESOME!), then went on to Taylor Bay (Also AWESOME!) and finished our Perfect Dive day at the wreck at Tolmie. That is one of my favorite wrecks in the sound and it was great to see it again.

The day went really well - you can tell because Rob had numb lips for 2 days! As you can see in the Rob Licks section, he made out with several new invertibrates. Hopefully, they won't come after him for child support at some point in the future, because he doesn't make close to enough money to cover all of his unholy unions!

So, here's to you, Perfect Dive Team, and here's to another great year of diving!

-Swimmer Todd-

Dive and Travel Expo!

What a great weekend! We spent our time representing our website http://www.theperfectdive.com/ at the first annual Dive and Travel Expo! As you can see in the picture, we don't like to do anything halfway, so we built and incredible booth. That fine looking underwater wall you see behind us with our banner in it was built over the past couple of weekends - not too shabby! We had a great showing and really did well at the expo. We received free charter trips and set up several new advertisers on our site. The best part was the exposure - thousands of people now know who we are and what we're about. I have to give a special "Thank You" to my wife, Alynn, for working the booth for us on Saturday morning while we were at the Treasure Hunt dive as safety divers. She's totally hot, so she drew a great crowd. If you didn't get a chance to make it to the Expo, we'll see you at the next one a year from now.

You'll notice how incredibly sexy our shirts are and, that's right, they have our names on the sleeve! How official can you get?! We've had so many people ask about getting one that we have decided to start working on our own line of ThePerfectDive shirts! So keep your eyes out and you'll be seeing them in public soon!

-Swimmer Todd-

Northwest Dive and Travel Expo!

May 3rd and 4th will be the first annual Dive and Travel Expo at the Tacoma Convention Center. "So, what?" you ask. I'll tell you "So What" - WE ARE GOING TO HAVE A FREAKIN' AWESOME BOOTH! That's right, you can see the creators of http://www.theperfectdive.com/ and hang out with us. We'll have cool giveaways and a large screen TV! We'll see you all there. Be sure and stop by the booth and register for the website. You can learn more about the expo at http://www.nwdiveandtravelexpo.com/

-Swimmer Todd-

It Makes A Man Proud!

My 7 year old, Elizabeth, drew this for a school assignment! There are few things that these eyes have seen that have touched my heart so! What a great kid!

-Swimmer Todd-

Rob Drew This!

Not only can he grow body hair like a freakin' sasquatch, he's also got mad skills with a sketch pad! Click on it to see close up how much work he did on this. Nice job, Rob!