mikeguerrero
Guest
Hi all,
Arriving at the Break Water at 8am, I radioed in my homeboy Vassili letting him know we might need to scratch our dives.
A major fishing event with every known trailer was at the Break water, there were also very minimal divers but no where to park.
I even shot over to Macabee and refrained from getting into the mud that was breaking at the edges shore.
Thinking about Monastery but also knowing that the wave model was high in that area I radioed over to the crew of Silver Prince.
They sensed my desire to dive but not in these conditions and welcomed me to their boat; they had one more spot.
So Vassili and I jumped aboard after hurrying over to purchase Bonine to counter act our motion sickness.
Boarding the SP and shooting past swarms and swarms of jellies, Carmel looked promising as the jellies started to dissipate.
We only had two tanks so we planned only to get in twice; dive one would be just around the butterfly house in a small cove.
Man that locations was covered in the invasion of kelp flies, they were so happy that we arrived and didn't leave us alone, even brought some back to dock.
With a rocking and rolling while we got geared up, I was diving without my can light, it's at Halcyon for repairs, I had to resort to my Halcyon scout.
The bottom was in 60 ft of water and it had surge that made it hard to stay in place. I took Vassili to a dip in between two huge boulders where the surge stopped enough to explore. I found the skeletal remains of some creature that had died here at this depth.
I grabbed the largest piece and handed it over to my buddy and he was able to clip it on his double ender and bring it back to the boat for a positive ID, we had a marine biologist on the boat.
With viz at only 25 feet with strong surge I lost the anchor line but my buddy got us back to a general location of which was perfect when we completed our safety stops the boat was right above us literally, thanks Vassili.
Dive two both of us tapped out and Vassili got super sick and went to sleep. That dive wasn't anything that we missed with viz and surge being rotten.
Third dive was back to North Monastery where the SP made a perfect anchor to where the kelp ends on the North side.
With Vassili back in good spirits to make the last dive we suited up and had Raj give us an awesome tour of the reef.
I've dove North years ago and only once, this place was heaven. When we descended down alongside the kelp it opened up to 45+ feet and I was in aahhh.
Just breathtaking with huge boulders like I remember and huge fish like I remember. We kept to the upper limits of the reef, only glimpsing down ever so often to the other 120+ feet that I could see from 80ft.
Ever so often the deep end of the reef would call for me, I felt like they were the Sirens from Greek mythology, so I kept away, knowing that my gas would not allow me anywhere near that location.
Raj took us around the reef all the way to almost the shore where it got really bad for viz, only 20 feet, he was in search of the ever so elusive angel shark that he had seen just the other day.
We didn't find it and then knowing we had to swim back to the boat, it got really deep again and before we knew it it was time to surface.
I remember him taking us to a small pinnacle just North of the Kelps that laid in about 90+ feet of water, really gorgeous rock but our gas told us time is up. I'd sure like to know what that rock was and explore it another time.
North Monastery has to be one of the most gorgeous sites that I have explored in terms of being deep and lots of large critters, we are talking about large critters. The dive was 48 mins and 50 degrees of warmth, Vassili literally was cold and I was so comfortable, I told him he needs Argon.
Special thanks goes out to the crew of the Aquatic Discovery for being a very attentive to our diving party and special thanks for Raj for taking us out on a splendid exploration of North side, that dive was just awesome.
MG
Arriving at the Break Water at 8am, I radioed in my homeboy Vassili letting him know we might need to scratch our dives.
A major fishing event with every known trailer was at the Break water, there were also very minimal divers but no where to park.
I even shot over to Macabee and refrained from getting into the mud that was breaking at the edges shore.
Thinking about Monastery but also knowing that the wave model was high in that area I radioed over to the crew of Silver Prince.
They sensed my desire to dive but not in these conditions and welcomed me to their boat; they had one more spot.
So Vassili and I jumped aboard after hurrying over to purchase Bonine to counter act our motion sickness.
Boarding the SP and shooting past swarms and swarms of jellies, Carmel looked promising as the jellies started to dissipate.
We only had two tanks so we planned only to get in twice; dive one would be just around the butterfly house in a small cove.
Man that locations was covered in the invasion of kelp flies, they were so happy that we arrived and didn't leave us alone, even brought some back to dock.
With a rocking and rolling while we got geared up, I was diving without my can light, it's at Halcyon for repairs, I had to resort to my Halcyon scout.
The bottom was in 60 ft of water and it had surge that made it hard to stay in place. I took Vassili to a dip in between two huge boulders where the surge stopped enough to explore. I found the skeletal remains of some creature that had died here at this depth.
I grabbed the largest piece and handed it over to my buddy and he was able to clip it on his double ender and bring it back to the boat for a positive ID, we had a marine biologist on the boat.
With viz at only 25 feet with strong surge I lost the anchor line but my buddy got us back to a general location of which was perfect when we completed our safety stops the boat was right above us literally, thanks Vassili.
Dive two both of us tapped out and Vassili got super sick and went to sleep. That dive wasn't anything that we missed with viz and surge being rotten.
Third dive was back to North Monastery where the SP made a perfect anchor to where the kelp ends on the North side.
With Vassili back in good spirits to make the last dive we suited up and had Raj give us an awesome tour of the reef.
I've dove North years ago and only once, this place was heaven. When we descended down alongside the kelp it opened up to 45+ feet and I was in aahhh.
Just breathtaking with huge boulders like I remember and huge fish like I remember. We kept to the upper limits of the reef, only glimpsing down ever so often to the other 120+ feet that I could see from 80ft.
Ever so often the deep end of the reef would call for me, I felt like they were the Sirens from Greek mythology, so I kept away, knowing that my gas would not allow me anywhere near that location.
Raj took us around the reef all the way to almost the shore where it got really bad for viz, only 20 feet, he was in search of the ever so elusive angel shark that he had seen just the other day.
We didn't find it and then knowing we had to swim back to the boat, it got really deep again and before we knew it it was time to surface.
I remember him taking us to a small pinnacle just North of the Kelps that laid in about 90+ feet of water, really gorgeous rock but our gas told us time is up. I'd sure like to know what that rock was and explore it another time.
North Monastery has to be one of the most gorgeous sites that I have explored in terms of being deep and lots of large critters, we are talking about large critters. The dive was 48 mins and 50 degrees of warmth, Vassili literally was cold and I was so comfortable, I told him he needs Argon.
Special thanks goes out to the crew of the Aquatic Discovery for being a very attentive to our diving party and special thanks for Raj for taking us out on a splendid exploration of North side, that dive was just awesome.
MG
