En Ingles: If you are taken there to dive on a charter, it's a shut-down derelict rig.
Kinda' like me.
not necesarily true. In California, diving is done on operating rigs. The boats must receive permission from the Rig to dive there, some allow it and some don't allow it at all. We did the Grace in 2006 and thought is was fabulous.
Here is my video of the day's diving:
California - diving the Oil Platform Grace, Aug 2006 on Vimeo
We did 3 dives, the boat (
Peace Dive Boat) was divided into 2 groups allowing only 1 group in the water at a time. It was live-boat diving as water is too deep to anchor. We had to jump in and surface swim over to the rig before descending. When we were ready to return to the boat we had to surface under the rig and wait for a signal from the boat to swim towards it as quickly as possible. Divers must remain under the rig at all times when underwater and only leave the rig when told by the boat captain. The reason is that the current and swells can easily drag you out to sea. We had a mandatory 2 hour surface interval between the dives which was nice giving everyone a chance to eat and relax a bit. So while one group was diving, the other was on the boat doing their SI. As you can see by the video, several people were doing tech dives, some were hunting scallops which were allowed to be taken from the Grace (but not all Calif rigs).
It was a great day, we had very little current although is was VERY surgy from 30' to surface. It was rough doing a safety stop at 15' when you were being swung back and forth 10" or more and trying to avoid crashing into the pilons. Vis was anywhere from 60' (excellent) to 30' (in surge zone closer to surface). Awesome, awesome diving. I really look forward to doing this again.
The Peace requires everyone who does this trip to be advanced divers with a certain number of dives. I don't know if other boats have any req though. Also, we had to provide a drivers license along with a c-card at the dock before boarding for the authorities to check (9/11 security purposes). Lots of paperwork, too.
robin
edit: I forgot to mention that when we arrived at the rig, they lowered down to us a large mess bucket. The boat capt sent up to them the paperwork and a couple of bags of candy. The workers on the rig came over to the sides and waved and shouted to all of us. Several workers started asking questions like "what do you see down there?" It struck me as funny. When we left they all waved again (kinda cool).
