After my time in Grand Cayman, I was fortunate enough to have a night back home in Houston with my mom, who had been in Spain for the past 5 weeks trekking the Camino de Santiago. It was nice to spend time catching up with her and swapping stories of our travels and adventures over the past month or so. I thought that one night at home would be sufficient time to unpack, clean clothes, organize gear and my room, repack and spend time with the family. Boy, was I wrong. After a much needed dinner and catch up time with my mom, I found myself at ten o’clock at night with an explosion of clothes and dive gear in my room. Feeling slightly panicky, I furiously folded and stuffed clothes, wetsuits, drysuit, dive gear and miscellaneous items into my suitcases. I was going on a hope and a prayer I managed to pack everything I’d need for the next two months of cold water diving.  And thus began my next adventures.

I flew out the next day to Boston, where I would be spending two weeks with Vin and Dee Malkoski, a family who has had a longstanding relationship with OWUSS and who have been the regional coordinators for the New England area. One of the big sponsors of the Rolex Scholar is DUI, a drysuit company who makes outstanding drysuits and accessories. I have no experience using a drysuit and seeing that I had planned for 6 weeks of diving in the Pacific Northwest, I was in desperate need to have a crash course in drysuit diving. So that’s what brought me to the Malkoski’s, plus the opportunity to spend a little bit of time exploring New England, an area of the US I’ve not spent much time in.

 

 

Kim, the oldest daughter, picked me up from the airport on Saturday night, and we drove to the beautiful town of Marion, where the Malkoski’s live. After a nice dinner with the family and a bit of catching up, we all called it an early night. Sunday we woke up with a fun day ahead of us. Vin and Dee had volunteered to help run the Boston Sea Rovers booth at the World Oceans Day event hosted at the New England Aquarium, so we were spending the day in the city. Kim drove me around Marion that morning, where we grabbed breakfast and then headed up to Boston. It was a beautiful day in Massachusetts, with clear skies and sunshine. We got to the aquarium and headed to the tent where all the booths were. Luckily for Kim and myself, the Sea Rovers booth was fairly well staffed, so we took it upon ourselves to explore the aquarium. It’s funny, no matter where I am or how old I get, I still LOVE aquariums. Kim and I spent a few hours wandering around the exhibits, looking at all the sea creatures and having a blast. The New England Aquarium has a huge tropical tank in the middle of the building that goes up 4 floors. They have a massive green sea turtle named Myrtle, who is easily 550 lbs and at least 50 years old, plus a plethora of tropical fish and sharks swimming around the massive tank. After walking around the entire aquarium, we headed back to the booth to enjoy a nice lunch on the harbor and get free Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. We wandered around the tent and checked out the other booths, getting our face painted and chatting with some of the folks wandering around. We hung around the booth for the rest of the afternoon, wrapping things up at 4pm and then walked a few blocks to have dinner at Durgin Park, a classic Boston restaurant, where I enjoyed a hearty meal of Boston baked beans and pot roast. Following dinner, we headed to the North End to grab cannolis at Mike’s Pastries and wander by some historic locations. All in all, it was a perfect way to start my trip to New England, and I couldn’t be more content with my introduction to the New England coast.

The following three days were relatively uneventful but much needed. I spent Monday morning sleeping in a bit then doing what I like to refer to as “office work”. I sent quite a few emails and did my expense report for May, plus tidied up my schedule a bit. I went on a run after my small hiatus from being sick (and man, was my body not happy with having to exert itself) then promptly hopped back in bed to catch up on sleep. Tuesday morning was similar to Monday morning, writing emails and catching up on business. The afternoon was definitely a bit of an adventure for me. After I went for run and lunch, Vin came home from work to help familiarize myself with all my drysuit gear and trim seals and make sure everything fit properly. So as I mentioned at the beginning, I have NO drysuit experience, so all the gear is completely foreign to me. After getting everything from DUI, I had literally just put it straight in my suitcase, not really knowing what does what. Vin helped go over all the parts with me and explained each piece and its importance. It turns out everything is relatively straightforward; it’s just a matter of learning the new process of getting it all on and ready to dive in. Another thing we needed to do was trim the seals for the wrists and neck. Once everything was trimmed to Vin’s liking, the real adventure begun. It was time for me to try on the drysuit, make sure the seals were snug, make sure all my undergarments fit under the suit, and make sure I knew how to put everything on properly. I proceeded to don all my undergarments (a baselayer and thick jumpsuit plus socks) then wriggle myself into the drysuit. There is definitely an art to efficiently donning a drysuit, and I still have a looooong way to go. Thanks to the team at DUI, everything fit like a charm and I was ready to go in my stylish new suit! Before I got too close to having a heat stroke in all that insulation, Vin told me I could get out, and that’s where things got dicey. There is a certain technique to getting your head out of the neck seal, it’s not as easy as the pro’s make it look. Or maybe my head is just too big for its own good! Either way, I got my head about half way through the seal before I realized I was semi-stuck with my hands smushed through the seal around my cheeks and mouth. Rolling with laughter, Vin started to reach for the camera, which was just enough motivation to get me the heck out of that neck seal. Let me tell you, if you care a lot about how your hair looks, don’t do dry suit diving. But I got the rest of the suit off with no problems, and we proceeded to adjust the straps and harness of my Halcyon rig (Halcyon is another OWUSS sponsor, and they generously donated an Infinity system to me, which is an incredible system to dive with!). It turned out to be quite the afternoon, getting all my gear tailored and ready to dive with. We then spent the evening going out to dinner at a lovely Portuguese restaurant, where I got to try some more New England classics like cod cakes and stuffed quahog, plus delicious Portuguese food.

 

Thursday came bright and early, as Vin and I were to head into Boston to talk to a scientific diving class at UMass Boston about our respective jobs. It was a really enjoyable morning chatting with the class about what Vin does with the MA Division of Marine Fisheries and what I do as the Rolex Scholar. I’ve come to realize I really enjoy these chances to interact with college kids and show them they can make a career in the dive industry. After lunch, we swung by Vin’s office to meet with Dr. Greg Skomal, a renowned scientist studying the Atlantic white shark population, to see if I could get out in the field with him for a day. After making tentative plans, we decided that the afternoon would be spent teaching me to trailer a boat and put the Malkoski’s small boat in the nearby harbor. Back at the house, we got the boat trailer attached to the truck and pulled it out of the driveway. Vin put the truck in park in the street and said, “OK, Michele, you’re driving.” Talk about trial by fire! But I hopped in the driver’s seat and slowly set out to a nearby parking lot, where I would practice reversing and maneuvering the trailer. There is a definite art to backing up a truck with a trailer and it’s not as simple as it looks. But after a some practice drills and only a few re-dos, I felt like I had a bit of a grasp on what to do. We then headed down the street to the boat-launching ramp, where I fairly successfully (relative to having just learned 15 minutes ago) backed the trailer down the ramp and got the boat in the water. We then grabbed Kim and Amy and spent the next hour cruising around the harbor in the boat, enjoying the sights and learning about the incredible history of the area. After about 30 minutes of driving, Vin let me take control of the boat (he’s very trusting) and I got the chance to drive the boat around, which made my day. Nothing better than cruising around on a boat on a sunny afternoon!

Friday morning I got the chance to head to New Bedford with Dee, who works for a major seafood processor and distributor, High Liner Foods. She gave me a tour of their factory, where the seafood is offloaded and processed to be sent out to the sellers. It was so interesting to see how the food makes it from the boat to the grocery store/restaurant and I learned a lot about all the work that goes in to making sure it meets standards by the USDA. Dee then drove me to town to an area with the whaling museum, National Parks building, and other historical buildings and shops. I spent the rest of the morning wandering around by myself, spending quite a lot of time in the New Bedford Whaling Museum, where I learned about the rich and extensive whaling history of New Bedford and around the world. I then went to lunch with Vin and we headed back to grab our diving gear, as we would spend the afternoon getting me in the water in my drysuit! We headed to a nearby shallow lake, which is frequently used for dive training. We proceeded to gear up and head into the water. Let me say, the lake diving is nowhere near the tropics, but over the years I’ve learned, that so long as I’m diving, I’m happy. We waded out into the cold water (it was so weird not getting wet!) and submerged. It was a bit of a strange dive for me. My last dive was a CCR dive in the tropics and to transition from CCR and a wetsuit to open circuit and a drysuit proved to be quite interesting, but not too challenging. Vin and I swam to about 20 feet of depth where I took a bit of time to get adjusted to all the changes, and then we went over some drysuit skills, such as the gymnastics roll if your feet get full of air and start taking you up to the surface. We swam around some more, and I quickly realized that drysuits were not the difficult beasts I’d imagined them to be. After about 30-40 minutes, we swam back to shore, feeling quite satisfied with my first dive. Upon stripping the suit, we realized, however, that parts of my pullover were damp – yikes! We suspected the neck seal was trimmed just a tad too big but hoped that maybe when doing all the crazy drills and moving around, a bit of water had snuck into my suit.

Saturday we decided to do a few more dives and figure out what the problem was. We headed into Rhode Island to head to a local shore diving site where we planned to do 2 dives for the day. After gearing up (I was getting pretty fast at it!) we headed down to the shore where we proceeded to get in and get diving! Although I hadn’t had the limiting 10 feet of viz since my OW dives on Catalina, I was content and happy in the water, and warm! We swam along a wall, stopping now and then to look at a crab or lobster or flounder. I actually felt quite comfortable and at ease in the drysuit right off the bat. However, about 30 minutes in, I began to realize that it wasn’t quite holding air as it should. I kept ending up vacuum packed and needing to add more puffs of air into the suit. Plus I felt these little trickles of water down my neck. Our thoughts were confirmed – the neck seal had been cut a little too big and wasn’t forming a proper seal. We decided to turn back and head in. Upon stripping, the pullover was damp (it didn’t bother me at all underwater though) but Vin told me that when I get to colder water and longer dives, I would really need a neck seal that held, so we found a nearby shop to get a new seal. After a delicious lobstah roll for lunch at a waterfront deli, we headed for the shop to solve my problem. We grabbed a new neck seal and headed back for Marion. Although faced with a minor setback, it was still an enjoyable day in Rhode Island (I ended up seeing most of the state, it’s so small) and got to go diving! Who can complain? We swung by a local fish market on the way home to pick up some fresh lobstah to give me the full New England experience for dinner. Man, the fresh lobstah was delicious and I couldn’t have had better company to enjoy it with.

 

 

My first week in New England was spectacular! I had a blast each day of the week and the Malkoski’s gave me a proper immersion in the New England culture, with quite the range of experiences.  Although faced with a few minor setbacks, I was getting the necessary preparations done to get myself ready to head to Vancouver Island in the week to come.