Monastery Beach: enter with fins on?

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

SaltyWombat

Contributor
Messages
426
Reaction score
154
Location
Monterey, Calif.
# of dives
500 - 999
I only dove Monastery once, and it was like a lake. I recall walking in and then putting on my fins.

I now have different gear and it takes me longer to put my fins on. I'm worried about being caught in the surf zone.

Any thoughts about donning fins on the beach and then walking in backwards? That seems like the best way, but I never hear about people doing it.
 
See here man, I'm walking with my fins strapped to my chest, (through the chest strap of my bc) mask in hand scoop up some water from refreshing salt water pool with my mask and tip it over my head spit in my mask and finger it around

full.jpg


watching the swell another scoop from another pool to rinse mask on and if my timing is right I hunch dive bomb my way into the water fighting and pulling down and down so I can wedge myself between some rocks and put my fins on

So walking backwards with fins on will prevent me from seeing the pools for mask scooping and falling into those pools
 
you can do either approach, but usually monastery is mostly dived when conditions are sufficiently calm to just walk in and don fins in the water.
 
For folks who want to enter with fins on, generally they crawl in.

Walking in backwards with fins on seems like it would be difficult. The beach slopes down so steeply I dont know how you could prevent yourself from tumbling backwards.

But I also agree with the above advice - dive it when its calm enough that you trust yourself to swim out without fins. Once you get past the surf zone, you can take as much time as you like to don fins.

Sometimes I don just one fin quickly and swim out a bit (because one of my legs is quite inflexible and hard for me to figure four)
 
I strongly suggest entering from either the south or north end. I've always avoided the center of the cove because waves can build at any time.
Yes, I think that's the most important thing. Depending on the direction of the swell usually either the north or south side is considerably better from a surf standpoint. Watch it for a while. The north side is much nicer in terms of kelp, the south has a lot more urchin barrens, but both are very nice sites.
I have seen a number of different entry techniques. Some do a sideways shuffle with fins on. Others do a big jump with fins on wrists, which you can do because the slope is so steep. Some do almost a backroll. I think the bottom line is to make sure that the conditions match your fitness and level of experience. Because getting in is easy compared to getting back out of the steep, slippery sand when you are tired.
 
Over decades of diving Monastery Beach --- North and South -- I have yet to wear fins while getting into the water; but have seen, over the years, comic and not-so comic, sometimes epic failures of fin-sporting divers, either face-planting on the steep declines; or, else, getting "turtled" on their backs, while waves struck the beach, as they entered sideways, like crabs or arse-backwards, shuffling like old folks, in slippers.

Also, if you're required, for any asinine reason, to crawl into the water, it just may not be your ideal day in Carmel . . .
 
There are folks who may have good reasons to enter w/ fins on. If so, IMO, crawling in is probably best, if you dont care how you look, and you shouldn't, we're all grown ups now.

As much evidence in this thread shows, however you try walking in w/ fins, there's a good chance you will bite it, and will need to crawl in anyways. May as well eliminate the "sudden fall" portion of the process.

That being said, I have always walked in w/o fins - push off the sloping beach like a swimmer off the pool wall, and start swimming. Is just the easiest way to do it, as long as conditions are calm enough to swim out w/o fins. And I dont see how needing more time to don fins would lead you want to enter w/ fins on. Once you get past the surf zone, you can don fins at your leisure. You may want to have some sort of fin keeper.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

Back
Top Bottom