tiggymalvern | Diving on Bainbridge Island

Saturday was a gorgeous day, and the diving club had arranged a dive at a site on Bainbridge Island that I'd heard good things about, but never done, so off I went! It was perfect weather, the water was still warm from summer, but the worst of the summer plankton has dispersed leaving clearer water. Everything near perfect :-) We didn't see anything unusual, just the typical common fish, and a lot of nudibranchs. So many white-lined dironas it was almost insane.

https://youtu.be/NhOSjHIKG-w

The beach we dived from.

The downside to it all was that it was on Bainbridge island. The morning ferry over there was fine. The afternoon ferry coming back was running 45 minutes late, and then once back in Seattle, it took me over 20 minutes to travel 6 blocks. And that was a Saturday afternoon. What is it like when that ferry unloads in rush hour in the middle of the week???

I honestly can't imagine a worse place to unload a car ferry than right in downtown Seattle. A passenger and bicycle ferry from Bainbridge unloading there would make perfect sense. But why not unload the cars somewhere less congested? Have the car ferry dock in Lynnwood or somewhere? The ferries I take regularly from Edmonds and Mukilteo are hassle-free, you just drive off and drive away.

So as pleasant as diving on Bainbridge was, I won't be doing it a lot - it took up too much of the day travelling compared to the time diving.

While I was on the island, I stopped by the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial. It's a memorial at the old ferry dock, where in 1942, the Bainbridge Island residents were the first of over 120,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals to be shipped off to internment camps. The current political climate seemed like a good time to visit.