3 Dives off the Marissa dive boat in San Diego- It really gets no better than this!

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Mo2vation

Relocated to South Florida....
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I just don't log dives
I've been waiting on this trip for a few weeks.

Someone I've come to know from DMX, "B1gCountry" (Tom) was coming to town with his lovely wife, and they wanted to see some SoCal kelp and some of the local sites in LowCal.

Claudette stepped up, and brought me along.

They were all diving Friday off the Marissa. I was going to come down Friday night late, and then join them all on Saturday. The plan for Saturday was to dive the Yukon for two dives then the Ruby E.

Friday late afternoon, reports started pouring in of amazing viz on the Yukon. I was getting so excited, as I waited for the clock to strike 5:30 and I could blast south and prepare for a day on these wrecks.

My plan was to revisit the interior of the Yukon - just inside some of the big square hatches, and bring along 3 or 4 remotely triggered strobes ("pixars") to light the place up. it gave me a chance to finally try out the remote strobes for interior shots.

I've been doing exteriors with them for awhile - now I finally got to do some interiors.

I've built 4 remote strobe rigs, or "pixars" (named by my buddy for their resemblance to the movie company Icon) are standard Ikelite DS125's mounted to an aluminum Gorilla Pod, and fired via an optical sensor (a "triggerfish" made by a diver in Belgium).

TriggerFish.jpg



Full-Remote-Rig-2-Mid.jpg



Remote-Strobe-Packed.jpg



This would be my first time using the pixars in a big interior space. I've been using them outside, mostly to drive my Fiber Optic snoots and for some cool kelp effects - but where these should shine is on a confined, dark, large space like the Yukon!

I get up and get on a very full Marissa. Of course, I have more gear to schlep on than most so we're making room, and hogging much of the V-berth. Chica and I have the only scooters.

We push out and hit the mooring ball. Waterhorse is there, so we back off a bit and hook on. After preparing all the gear the night before, I give it all another run through prior to splashing. The plan is simple:

  • Scoot along and find a suitable opening -hopefully one with cables, ropes or something near the outside that can serve as a hitching post for the scoots
  • Crawl into the wreck at 100 FSW, laden with a camera, an AL40 and a lobster bag filled with Pixars - assess the situation, position Claudette, set up the strobes, take some test shots, tweek the lighting a time or two, take the real shots, then take down
  • If there's NDL time and gas left, move UP to the Funnel (about 80 FSW), feed a pixar down the funnel, secure so I don't lose it, and light the thing up like a Christmas tree and get some shots.


Ambitious? Oh yes. But I'm not here that much, so I want to make the most of dive #1.

DIVE #1 - The Yukon
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We hit the water, and I immediately have a glove leak. A bad one. I hand Chica the cam and the lobster bag, and scoot back to the boat. Capt Lora fetches my spare left glove, I pop, snap on a new one - all is good. Claudette comes to me, I pull one of the Pixars from the bag, set it up on her back, run the trigger to her left shoulder. All looks good, she hands off the camera to me and we scoot to the bow and make our drop.

We tie up the ponies outside a hole, and crawl in. We move back towards the stern a bit and find the perfect place. For the next 18 minutes, we're inside the wreck at about 98 feet. I'm setting strobes, positioning the buddy, snapping shots.

About 5 minutes into this, I'm feeling light... moron here forgot his weight belt. I don't give it another thought - I've got a full AL40 I'm humping around, and enough remotely triggered strobes to weigh me down enough to do my stops 50 minutes from now. I must confess - zipping around inside that rusty box completely weightless felt like I was on an Apollo mission. It was way, way fun!

The pixar on her back isn't firing. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Very frustrating. The second pixar I have dropped behind a rusty electrical box is firing, but I have it set too low... so its not doing much. So we do the first round of Interior shots basically with the on-camera strobes.

We're going close to NDL, and I want to get out of here and up to the funnel before I burn too much gas and am too light to take the shots. So I call the end - chica exits and un-hitches the ponies while I clean up, pack up the strobes and meet her outside.

We scoot to the funnel - we're at about 80 feet now. So for the next 9 minutes we work here. I deploy a pixar down the funnel, and attach it with one of our fin keepers. I do a couple of test shots. The funnel is apparently split in two halves for its length... who knew? So I'm only lighting half of it. Not the desired effect. I call Claudette over and show her the shots - she sees only the bottom half is lighting, like some pink lemon wedge.

I position her and take a couple of quick snap shots - just to see how far away I can get and still trigger the Pixar. I look, take another couple. I look, adjust, reposition the buddy, take a couple more shots and its time to go.

We pack up - we're probably into 7 or 8 minutes of deco. We scoot to the line, make our 50 foot, 40 foot, 30 foot, 20 foot - make our gas switch, hang out, move to 10, hang out and pop. All is good with no weight belt.

I learned a ton, and I can't wait for dive #2.


DIVE 2 - The Yukon
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After a 58 minute SI, we head back in. Mrs BigCountry is sitting dive #2 out, so Tom is joining Claudette and I. We hit the water, and I affix a Pixar to Claudette's back - leaving me two in the lobster bag.

The plan this time is to tow Tom to the bow - I'll hand off my scoot to Tom, the lobster bag to Claudette and crawl on my back under the Yukon and get a shot of the double Dolphin cut out. I shot this in 2007 and I want to see how its changed since then.

Tom gets my scoot and is blasting around. Chica has the bag and is watching over me. I shimmy on the sand on my back to get under the holes. Only I'm not as graceful as I was last time. A ton of sand has been moved under the bow over the years - so its much tighter. I can't get as far away so the shot isn't as wide, plus this time I'm schlepping an O2 bottle with me.

I get a few shots, but I'm not happy. I motion to Claudette to go to the other side of the bow and peek over the far cutout with her light - so I can get a shot of her through the two dolphin-shaped holes. This shot works so great when the sun is out and the water is blue - as it illuminates the holes very well.

Our water was just off color (but still the best I've seen it since 2007) but it was very overcast. So no sunlight combined with me being a good foot or more closer to the hull now made the shot less than optimal. This was about 7 minutes at 103 feet.

I take down the cam and start to shimmy back out - and I'm stuck. There is a large fish hook in my arm, and its stuck on something. I give a yank, and it comes free. I pull it out and motion to Claudette and Tom its time to return to the inside of the ship with THREE remote strobes to get some more interior shots.

We scoot to the same place. Tom is loading so he doesn't join us inside. He takes my scoot and plays above us, watching the flashes go off and checking in from time to time - the plan is for him to join us at the funnel when we're done here. Claudette racks her scooter outside, and we head in.

I place one pixar at the far end of the chamber - a good 20+ feet from me. One is on her back, and the third I put just in front of me - shooting up the side of the chamber - my thought is to use the side way as a bounce and throw lots of light on the room.

The idea here is to have a series of strobes - My cam strobes light her, the bounce lights the room where she is, the one on her back lights straight up, lighting the upward facing hallway, and the one way in the back shoots forward, to halo her.

I do some test shots, adjust, shoot, adjust. I then look up - the hall above us (our 'ceiling') is huge. Really huge. I kick over to the far Pixar and reposition it. I reposition the one on her back now to point at the ceiling directly. I have her hover another 2 or 3 feet higher, and I drop to my belly so I can get the high ceiling into the shot.

The surge is picking up - so I have to put out my right leg to brace against the structure so I can hold position. As the surge has water heaving in and out of the ship, and especially this chamber, Claudette is getting pinballed pretty good. I get 3 or 4 shots. We're in here for about 15 minutes now - Deco is racking up, so I motion we need to go right now.

Tom meets us at the exit. I hand off the lobster bag of Pixars to Claudette, and motion to her and Tom that I'm going to kick to the funnel. I spin and start heading over.

Claudette unclips her Scoot from the hitching post and she scoots over and meets me 3/4 of the way to the funnel. She motions that she has 14 minutes of Deco. I look at the funnel, I look at her - I sign back "14 minutes??" She signs back "yup" - so I immediately motion we're heading to the upline.

The Claudette is towing me. Tom is with us - and the three of us head to the line and our first stop at 50 feet. When we move to 40 feet, I bust out the camera and start getting shots of Claudette and Tom together.

At the 30 foot stop, these two are in a groove. They do the hand jive - both of them being in un-matched gloves. Its a fun pic! We move to 20 and make our switch to O2. We're hanging out, and I see the upline has this 2 foot clean spot - right at 20 feet. So funny... bright yellow for 2 feet - the rest of the line is covered with fuzz and schmootz.

We do our 20 stop, our 10 stop then head back to the Marissa.


DIVE 3 - Ruby E
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We grab lunch, and the Marissa heads over to the Ruby.

With the increasing surge on the Yukon, we know the Ruby is gonna be a little worse. The plan is for Mr and Mrs BC to dive together, while Claudette and I hit the Ruby for some interiors. This time I'm going to do Pixar placements - I won't have one mounted to Claudette.

This is going to be a shorter dive - so we leave the scoots and just flop in. We head down the line and drop into the second forward hatch we see. Its pretty dark, and pretty small - so I shoot some natural light shots. Hand held, braced against a doorframe, I fire off some long exposure shots of the light spilling in from above. Kinda spooky, kinda cool.

We come back up from the hatch, and head over to the wheel house. I place two pixars inside and have them firing through the windows. There is so much filth and silt in the water (we are the last two on the wreck) the shots are pretty poor.

We move INTO the wheelhouse, and I reposition the Pixars to fire INTO the house from the outside. This works a little better, but the surge by the door and window is pretty severe, with Claudette and I getting pushed all over.

I snap off 3 or 4 shots and I pack up. Its just not fun, and there is so much yuck in the water its not clear.

We're kicking back to the bow, and I see this wacky structure that looks like a guard shack. We have gas, we have NDL time - so I ask her to get into the shack. She does - kinda lowering herself into it feet first - backing into it like a Sarcastic Fringehead backs into a wavy turban shell

I set the cam, look up and she's totally mugging for the camera. She's standing in the shack, head in her hand, elbows on the counter, looking like she's in a toll booth. On the third dive of the day, at 84 feet, my buddy is making a face at me, asking for exact change!!!

Shot. Shot. Shot.

She extricates herself from the toll booth. She is a bloody mess. Rust head to toe. As we're kicking to the upline I'm just laughing. I get out the wet notes and tell her, 'you look so wreck-y'

I get a shot of my very, very dirty buddy.

We head up the line, back to the Marissa and back to the docks.

WOW!!

What an excellent day. I can't remember the last time I had a three dive day and never once busted out the macro rig. Especially in San Diego. The water was great. The company was great. We met Tyler and KevRumbo on the boat!! Mr & Mrs BC, Chica, and of course Capt's Lora and Brandon on the Marissa.

Such a fine day of diving. I could not be more pleased.

Huge thanks to The BigCountry family - you inspired this trip, and your friendship means a lot to me. great stories, great diving, ton's o fun. So glad we met!

Lora and Brandon - what a great operation. Thanks for all the fun while getting us there and back, for great dive briefings, yummy food and another safe, fun trip.

And Claudette - you are amazing. Such a good sport, up for anything. You are my apex buddy, and you make me stretch and try new things. For the first time out, I'm so thrilled with the shots. I learned so much - tons of things I'd do differently, tons of things I want to try (like a proper funnel shot) but I wouldn't want to do this with anyone else. Thanks for the joy you bring this team.

Photos below. Enjoy!!


-Ken
 
Pics from the trip report, above.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Hitching Post - Dive 1
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Inferior interior from Dive 1 - a tiny pop from a pixar behind the box on the right, the rest is all on-camera strobe
Interior-2a.jpg



Funnel Test shot from Dive 1 - who knew this thing was split into two chambers?? So bogus. I'll light it next time with two remote strobes. Sheephead checking out the light! I didn't PS out the Pixar so you could see how I lit this thing.
Funnel-Light-1.jpg



Buddy into position against Funnel. I want to see how far away I can be and still make this thing fire. This is just a test shot so its overexposed, etc, etc... I'm sad I wasn't able to return on dive 2 and get these right. Oh well... its not the first time NDL has squashed one of my good ideas.
Chica-Funnel-Strobe.jpg




This is the Dolphin cutout from Dive #2. That's Claudette doing the peeky over the top!
Dolphin-Peek.jpg



Yukon interior shot from Dive 2 using 5 strobes:
  • two on camera
  • one remote on the diver's back pointing straight up
  • one remote (set right) using the floor (right wall) as bounce to fill
  • one remote about 25 feet away, behind the diver lighting up the back wall and offering a halo to the diver.

Unfortunately, in this shot the Diver was blow up a little bit by the inflow surge right as I was shooting, so the far away remote is visible just under her. Still - I love this shot.
Interior-1a.jpg



At the end of Dive 2, on our stops I grabbed a shot of Tom and Claudette getting their Glove on
Glove-City.jpg




Dive #3 - natural light down in the hold of the Ruby E
Ruby-E-Interior-Natural-Light.jpg





The Ruby E was a dusty, surgey mess by the time we got there. This was a shot from the wheelhouse - two pixars free standing. One behind the window, one behind the door. Had to get buddy very close to the floor to try to get a halo effect in the dust cloud. I'm going to work on this a little more - but this could be a neat effect when I get it dialed in.
Ruby-E-Interior-1.jpg




Dive buddy mugging in the Toll Booth Guard Shack thing on the deck of the Ruby E
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Dirty, dirty Dette
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I've done a lot of shots on the Yook - mostly exteriors. I'm gonna post below some shots from many years ago, and shots from this past weekend so you can get an idea of how things have changed for me, and how the growth on the Yukon has changed.


-Ken


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is my interior shot from 2 years ago at the Joel Wreck Workshop.
Chica-Yook-_2a-9001.jpg





Here's one from this weekend with the remote strobes.
Interior-1a.jpg







Here is my exterior of the Dolphin cutouts from 2007. Sunny day, clear water - they just light up. I was able to get much further away to compose a more complete view

2007
Dolphin-Window-2.jpg



This is from Saturday

2011
Dolphin-Peek.jpg
 
Nice report and photos. I was on the Marissa on Friday and had the pleasure of meeting B1gcountry and his wife and seeing Claudette again. We did have some spectacular conditions on the Yukon that day. Amazingly, on that dive trip, we went from 50+ feet of viz on the Yukon to 1 foot of viz in the Point Loma kelp beds. Talk about having the best and worst conditions all in one day.
 
Nice report and photos. I was on the Marissa on Friday and had the pleasure of meeting B1gcountry and his wife and seeing Claudette again. We did have some spectacular conditions on the Yukon that day. Amazingly, on that dive trip, we went from 50+ feet of viz on the Yukon to 1 foot of viz in the Point Loma kelp beds. Talk about having the best and worst conditions all in one day.

Same with the Ruby. We had 50-ish on the Yook - mostly blue water and still, and probably 15 or so of green, surgy soup on the Ruby.

They said Friday was excellent. Glad you got to meet the crew!


-K
 
Really nice shots, especially the interiors.
 

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