(Another) New in Town

[scotter]

Hi y'all,

I am a transplanted Texan who just moved into Sacramento just over a month ago. As things will be warming up around here soon... I am itching to get wet. The only caveats are that I have not done any cold water diving (but have a decent amount of warm-water experience... mostly Carribean) and do not know any dive buddies in the area.

Any recommendations on where I should begin my cold-water diving experience? I have seen Tahoe thrown out there... and read about the wall dive there, sounds pretty enticing. And what time of the year would be good to start? I have all my own gear (minus the tanks) but probably am a bit light on the exposure suits (3mm full suit and 3mm/5mm vest/hood). I was tinkering with the idea of learning dry suits... but that could be overkill? My only "cold" water diving experience was more "cool" water... mid-60s temps with 5mm farmer john/hooded jackets in Coco Islands and Galapagos.

And last but not least... where are good places to hook up with dive buddies?

Happy diving!

 

[dannobee]

Recommendations on where? Monterey or Carmel. Although Tahoe is a doable dive, it's rather boring. Most people that I've known have only done it once. Rocks and Crawdads, relatively few fish. Not much else to see.

What time of the year? Anytime. Watch the weather reports and wave models. You probably won't want to dive in seas bigger than 6-8 feet until you get more experience in our waters. Chuck has a weather page on his website, along with a first time diving monterey page for newbies. The mods should make it a sticky. His links are very nice for a newbie.

http://www.garlic.com/~triblet/ba_diving/

You're going to need more than a 3 or 5mm suit here. The water temp ranges from the high 40's to sometimes a balmy mid 50's. A 7mm suit and hooded vest are required. You could also use a drysuit with appropriate unders. If they're too thin, you'll be colder in the drysuit than the 7mm combo. Don't forget 7mm boots and thick gloves. Reef gloves just won't cut it.

As for dive buddies, you can post here or on Chuck's yahoo ba_diving message board. Quite a few divers come from Sacramento and stay the night in Monterey. There's a lot to see down there even if the diving's blown out, so any trip down there will not be wasted.

 

[boomx5]

Welcome Scott. There are definately a number of places to dive here in Northern California. First, Tahoe is really a nice dive and the Rubican Wall is definately at the top of the list if you are interested. It gets better as you go deeper and there are some great formations as well as some small sunken boats at various locations. It's about a 30 minute swim out there, but you can walk most of the way since it's pretty shallow. I know many people will use a kayak, however we prefer to use scooters since it only takes about 6-8 minutes to get to the drop-off. DL Bliss is closed till the Spring because of snow, but once it opens Rubican is definately a site worth checking out. I would seriously look at a drysuit since Tahoe can get cold. Right now I think the water temps are about 37-39 degrees so a good suit with a good undergarment and drygloves would be a prudent investment. There are also other locations around Tahoe that are nice fun dives, and I would be happy to get what info I have and where we like to go. If you want, just PM me and I'll be happy to help.

Monterey is also great if yopu want ot head on over to the coast. Chuck has got a good website with a lot of good info on Monterey/Carmel diving. You can also check out this link here http://www.divesitevideos.com/Lobos/ that has a lot of good photos and some video of what Pt Lobos is like. You can also check out the baue.org website since it also has some nice pictures and video of Monterey.

If you are in to taking a quick dip there are various lakes from Folsom (which kind of sucks, but is good for training) to several others heading up I-80 towards Reno that are nice to dive in. Like I said, just PM me if you are interested and I can get you more details on some of the different site we frequent.

 

[JustinW]

Scott,
Welcome to Sacramento. I hope you learn to like it around here. I think it would be great introduction to our cooler pacific waters to do an intro dive in monterey. Keith at Bamboo Reef is a great guy. He would be a great guy to do a cold water intro with. Lots of things to consider when going to colder water, and diving our kelp. An experienced local diver can show you the ropes on all of these aspects. Diving Tahoe as a first cold dive means you will be tackling two new things at once, altitude diving and cold water diving and thats something else to consider.

We have nice diving in Monterey, much with relatively easy access, but the gem of our region is our diving on the "north coast" which is basicly anything north of Marin County. Not many divers explore the area with tanks, but those that do are rewarded handsomely with an area free of reservation systems and hordes of other divers. A few around here frequently dive the area.

Boomx5 has some neat lakes that he dives too. I'm with him on the lake diving though. Good for training, not fantastic scenery though. I saw some footage of stumpy meadows but I don't remember where its at. Was that on the SAUE website before it crashed??

As far as equipment goes, 7mm wetsuit is the minimum, and this will get chilly when the temps drop in the low 50's and high 40's. The wetsuit I have been suggesting to people is the Xcel SCS tri-density with built in hood. This is one toasty wetsuit with a 9/7/6 construction. A drysuit is nice, but not required.

I hope you like the diving around here and I think you will find the divers to be great too. We have a good bunch of divers on SB that are just good people.

 

[boomx5]

Boomx5 has some neat lakes that he dives too. I'm with him on the lake diving though. Good for training, not fantastic scenery though. I saw some footage of stumpy meadows but I don't remember where its at. Was that on the SAUE website before it crashed??

There used to be a link but I'm not sure if it's valid or not anymore. Stumpy is a fun little lake dive and you even get some decent vis. It's real shallow in the deepest part...only about 120' and we've found a lot of junk that people loose. There is even some dead guys creamated remains in a box that Darkpup and Seavonj found a while back...I think it's in about 80' of water. The one thing that is fun about lake diving is you find a bunch of junk, some of it's good and some of it just isn't. I've found a lot of good sunglasses since people tend to loose them swimming and boating. One day we we were zipping around Donner on scooters and I found a real good fishing pole and reel, as well as a bunch of nice tackle equipment. I here there's a boat down at the deep end of Donner that we may go looking for this year, so definately a bunch of junk to find.

However, if someone is looking for life then Monterey is really the place to go.

 

[JustinW]

The hijack is only temporary but yeah, you are right Scott. I'm picking up an outboard next week that a guy found and doesn't want. Seems it didn't spend much time at the bottom either, should be a fun project. Now back to the regularly scheduled thread already in progress

 

[scotter]

Hey all! Thanks for the great responses. I will link up with Keith at Bamboo Reef this week and see about putting something together for Monterrey in the near future (and not to mention, rent the needed exposure suits). Just to check... is this the correct contact info for Bamboo? Noticed there was one in SF also.

Bamboo Reef
614 Lighthouse Avenue
Monterey, CA 93940
Phone: 831-372-1685

Don't worry... I am used to junk-yard diving. For my quick get-wet fixes in Dallas, TX, we had a couple of scuba parks in the area. Max 40ft depths, 10ft max viz (sometimes we were lucky to get 20ft, sometimes were unlucky to get <2ft), and balmy 80F bath-tub diving in the summer. They sunk all sorts of stuff in the parks from buses to a small commerical jet-liner... and a coffin in the cold, dark depths of the 40ft max depth, kinda spooky But regardless, I agree that doing Monterray with a dive shop is probably the best way to get an intro to cold water and NorCal diving.. after I get a few dives under my belt (and upgrade my kit)... I'll join you all on the junk-yard diving

Once again thank you all for the advice and warm welcome to NorCal and Sac-area diving! See you all around.

-Scott

 

[ProfessorAronnax]

Welcome to SB Scott!

 

[abman]

hi scott! you might want to check out the dolphin divers dive club we meet the4 3rd wed of each month at the round table pizza parlor out where madison ave and greenback ave merge togather. we are a very active club with dives all year round. .. I.E. the abalone season opener over at fort bragg the 1-3rd of april. this is just one dives of many that we have scheuled. if youy would like more info you may p.m. me thanks and welcome to sacramento! ken

 

[coreypenrose]

http://montereybayseaotters.org/

Join this club. Dive with some Monterey locals once a month.