April 11 - Breakwater Dive Reports

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bbianchi

Contributor
Scuba Instructor
Divemaster
Messages
1,116
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6
Location
Monterey, CA
# of dives
200 - 499
So here is my first attempt at putting these up on here. I dont have cool pictures yet though, maybe some day. I didn't want to overwhelm this post so if you want to read the full thing just go to my site below.

This morning we arrived at San Carlos Beach at about 9:00AM. Jeff had to pickup his two 95CF tanks from MBDC and I had to stop by Aquarius II to see if my new tank has come in yet. Unfortunately it has not yet arrived, so they gave me a 95CF tank to use for the weekend, which was nice. The surf wasn’t very bad at all. Plus there was very little surge on this dive.

Jeff and I then started assembling our gear and getting ready to go for our dive. The plan was to go out in line with Reedside and try to find the big pipe. Once on the pipe we were going to follow it out as long as our air would allow. I was pretty impressed with how far out the tide was today as well. Low tide was around 10:15AM and it was way out.

DIVE #5: 42′Depth for 00:35 minutes with 52F water temperatures. We had again about 10-15′ vis.


For our second dive we had planned to do the Breakwater Wall. We had a decent surface interval, however had we spent one more minute (1:17 instead of the 1:16) we could have been into another pressure group. Oh well :wink:. The tide was still out quite a way so it made for a bit of a walk and again a bit of a swim to actually get some depth under us. On our way back out there quite a bit of surge along the wall that made it somewhat difficult to be in while trying to stay close to the wall.

All in all it was a successful sixth dive for us. I was a little overly anxious to explore in and around all of the rocks and my air went down fairly quickly. Thats no problem though because we have plenty of other days this weekend to go diving (this weekend for me is Friday-Monday).

DIVE #6: 42′ Depth for 00:36 minutes with 52F water temperatures. We had again about 10-15′ vis. No we didn’t really plan on having this dive almost be identical in depth and duration.

To read the full non-picturefied reports you can goto my amazingly slow website! Read all of dive's 5 and 6 here.
 
Great report. I am happy to hear/see that you are getting out there and you are sharing your experiences with us. Your air consumption will definitely improve with experience and time. Also, always remember to spend some time catching your breath on the surface before descending so that you don't suck it down too badly upon descent. And try do swim back underwater (not sure if you are doing that already, but Mark and I always try to avoid surface swimming on the return if possible!)

Hope that you enjoy the rest of your weekend!
 
Very good pointers. We actually decided on the second dive to catch out breaths before descending. I guess we were a little over excited about our first dives :wink:

We (due to how our instructors did it I guess) swam back both times until we were in about 10 feet of water before surfacing. Granted at breakwater during low tide apparently that means you still have quite a ways to swim :p.
 
Good to see you diving after certification. A lot of people never make it back out. Thanks for posting the report.
 
Keep at the diving!

My dive #5 was at Gerstle Cove at Salt Point on the Sonoma coast in 12' for 0:28 and I ended up with 700 psi. (Viz was atrocious, so we stayed very close to shore.)

My dive #14 was also at Gerstle Cove, 35' for 1:10 and I ended up with 760 psi.

It's really amazing at how quickly your air consumption will drop with nothing more than additional experience, confidence and comfort.
 
Wow,

Brandon you are definitely getting your fins wet... Good reports... Hope to see you at BW tommorrow... Just look at a diver in red fins with a red mask... :)
 
Were planning on doing McAbee today... anyone going to stop by we will be there. Im the one in the yellow mask and yellow fins.
 
Keep at the diving!

My dive #5 was at Gerstle Cove at Salt Point on the Sonoma coast in 12' for 0:28 and I ended up with 700 psi. (Viz was atrocious, so we stayed very close to shore.)

My dive #14 was also at Gerstle Cove, 35' for 1:10 and I ended up with 760 psi.

It's really amazing at how quickly your air consumption will drop with nothing more than additional experience, confidence and comfort.
Gerstle Cove is one my favorite dives! I dived that area last weekend and had incredible vis.
 
Hah! What are the chances, I ran into Mike at McAbee today! Can't wait to see his pictures.

I had to call todays second dive at around 30 minutes in, because I had some weird pressure problem with my eye. More on that later today/tomorrow in my reports. I have a dinner I have to get off to.
 

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