What do you say when people ask you, slightly incredulously, why on Earth are you diving at this time of year? Well, the answer quite simply is, because we can. A passerby suggested this morning that it's just a matter of 'getting wet'; and they were quite right. Some of us just enjoy the challenge of Winter diving. There's also the possibility of enjoying a unique encounter. Not that we did today, but that's irrelevant. Coping with surf entries and exits is enjoyable in itself. Most people have heard the old saw, "Train Hard, Fight Easy'. Well, in a diving context, 'practice regularly to dive safely' might be substituted. The statistics are very clear. The majority of incidents involve divers who don't have the opportunity to practice regularly. My enjoyment is only slightly eroded by a persistent - and so far untraceable - leak in my drysuit. It's not enough to force me out of the water while it benefits from professional inspection and repair by the manufacturer, but it's certainly irritating. A fact which my dive buddies, who hear me grumble about it, will readily attest to. Oh well, I think I'll make it a New Year's resolution to send it away and address the problem. But how will I survive in its absence?
I should record my appreciation of the sacrifice others are making to be my dive buddies while I satisfy my strange obsession... I really do feel very grateful to them.
1 comment:
Presented this week at a public forum in Kingston was the proposed Queens Performing Arts Centre at the Morton Street Wharf off of King Street. Long a neighborhood and community park used as a launch for kayaks, swimmers, windsurfers, and divers both east and west of the Stella Buck Building, this area has been offloaded by the city to Queens and will be no longer part of the ‘public waterfront’. Easy water entry access is set to disappear permanently. This site’s water entry is not all like the break walls, boulders, and barricades found elsewhere in Kingston harbor.
Presented by the prime architects Snohetta at the public forum for public input, lacking were any details of the shoreline design most certainly underway (more than likely by the local engineering firm responsible for most of shoreline alterations the last few decades in the Kingston area; HCCL) in the necessary parallel process. Snohetta prides itself on integrating with the landscape but is absolving itself (and by inference Queens) of the responsibility to enshrine and improve easy access to the lake at this site cloaked in the guise of a separate approval process required by the conservation authority and the federal government.
Imagine shoreline boulders like those in front of the Time sculpture, paid parking set well back from the water’s edge, perimeter fencing, and 24hr Queens Campus Security patrols to complete the picture as a worst case scenario. There are even some rumors of plans that show a dock nearly directly over the underwater Morton Street Wharf in the not too far off future when funding permits. Clearly this is in error? Surely this can’t happen?
Queens has stated a desire to allow access to ‘along the waterfront’ on a ‘public pathway’, and not entry to the water itself. It seems likely now that will include only the bespectacled tweed clad by day and the crystal in hand evening gown set by night and not the dive clubs, divers, and others of the past. Make no mistake, the dive launch spots east and west of the southern section of the Stella Buck building will be Queens Property and not Public.
It would be a shame if the City of Kingston, Queens, and Snohetta eliminate the convenient and unique access to this historic underwater site.
Post a Comment