4th July 09 Spectre boat - crap dives, great day and a Happy B-Day to Woody

[fnfalman]

Lovely sun shine with some wind to keep things cool. Alas, the viz were totally crap at both Santa Cruz and Anacapa.

Congrats to Woody for making it to his Big 50th Birthday, and having a damn sexy wife at that. Hi Corina!!! Don't forget to post the pic of your underwater beer toast!!!

 

[fnfalman]

Gloomy day that turn into abundant sunshine.

 

[orangelion03]

I went out on the Peace today and though we started with better topside conditions this morning than yesterday, underwater was awful. First stop was LAnding Cove, and viz was maybe ten feet. Motored to the other end of the island for our second at Rat Rock...got skunked there. Both Peace and Spectre headed out to Santa Cruz for the rest of the day. Cant recall the name of our third site...it looked promising from above, but at depth was soupy. I didnt bother to make a fourth.

 

[robint]

Wow, nice topside pics but the underwater conditions sound horrible! Was the poor vis due to algae bloom or something else? Shouldn't the algae bloom be done by now?

robin

 

[fnfalman]

A lot of particulates in the water and the silt is also stirred up something fierce. I don't know if it was the wind blowing the wrong direction or what, but we do have some surface chops and the wind was blowing hard. The typical dead calm coves all had wind whipping through them.

We started out in Santa Cruz for two dives and finished off the other two at Anacapa and it wasn't all that great.

Catalina on Friday was even worse. Currents came out of nowhere. On one dive we had to do a live boat recovery.

Still, it was better than no dives though. And doggone it, I missed out on the Giant Black Seabass sighting in Catalina again. Half of the boat saw them and the other half didn't. The kelp forest at the Quarry was about 99% dead. Only a handful that still half floated while the rest were dead and covered up all the rocks. And lots of particulates in the water there too.

 

[divepirate]

hey new dive buddy!
it was great to finally meet and dive with fnfalman! not sure how to post thanks here but just wanna say cheers to the spectre crew, dm jm, banjo bob, the yuwiler, rickyfong! my luvly wife, and all divers and students aboard who helped eat the fantastic birthday cake, tanks shannon!
so here goes with a couple of pix...

 

[orangelion03]

Damn fine photo Woody!!!

Cheers mate!