Jeff and I had a successful Lobos dive today, but our second dive that we decided to move to Breakwater has to be called. All in all a successful day, and here is my dive report. Theres a picture on my blog if you want to have a first hand look at the conditions.
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This is my last day of diving for this weekend. I had to take Sunday off because I had to file my taxes yesterday. I was a bit concerned with how the conditions may be today, mainly because all of the forecasts were looking pretty grim, but I really wanted to get into the water. Jeff and I had arranged to head over to Pt. Lobos and give it a try assuming the conditions weren’t too bad.
When we arrived at Pt. Lobos the waves weren’t looking all that bad. We decided to suit up and hope for the best when it came to the vis. After gearing up we made our way into the water, the ramp with all of its seaweed and algae does make things interesting. Once in we swam out to about the beginning of the middle reef and ascended there. We took a 0 degree heading and made out way into the reef. All I can say is WOW! I can’t wait to dive Lobos on a day with good conditions. We saw some amazing things, and I can’t believe how thick the kelp gets out there. It must be insane in the summer when its really growing. The visibility wasn’t all too great probably about 10′ in the cove and about 15′ when we swam out to the reef.
It seems however, that the conditions did their part in hiding or making what life there was hide. There was a bunch of purple coral growing on all of the rocks, and a surprising number of anenomies as well. I wonder, and perhaps someone can tell me, if it is common for there to be so many jelly fish. I believe we came across around 5 jelly fish, some lingcod, rockfish, and I think a rainbow surfperch. The low light from the fog mde it difficult to see all that much at depth with the vis how it was.
Right before we decided it was the time to turn back due to our air situation Jeff managed to get himself tangled in some kelp. I just swam under him grabbed the three offending strands and broke them. The pretty much took care of freeing them self at that point, and floated up towards the surface. The surge was IMO somewhat rough. We were moving quite a few (perhaps 6′ or so) with the surge. The good thing for us is that since we were either swimming into or away from it, we didn’t have too many problems avoiding rocks or kelp from it pushing us into them. The exit was a little tough. The waves had picked up some while we were under water and that made getting out on the ramp somewhat challenging. We had to crawl out on the ramp and the waves were pushing us around some. However, we made it out without incident and it was a good ending to a successful dive.
To note, while we were packing it up as we had decided to try to move to Breakwater in hopes for better conditions, there were some ladies that needed assistance. They had rental gear and it appears that there were trying to fine tune their weight in the water at the ramp. That wasn’t going all too well for them and thats when Jeff and I had to assist. The one lady I was assisting needed help putting her quick release weights back in and adding some more to her BCD. Once I got her weights situated we helped her out of the water so she could regroup with her buddy. They had also never dove Lobos before, so we had suggested that they swim out from the ramp to about the middle, drop down and head out at about 0 like we did and then come back at 180. At this point we realized that they needed to both be taught how to use their compass’, and we gave them a crash course. Also, they apparently weren’t aware of how the pressure gauges worked. We suggested to them to keep a close eye on their pressure and to be sure that they were on their ways back well before getting to just above 1000 PSI. We told them to shoot for about 1500 PSI, but their tanks apparently only had 2000 instead of 2400 from MBDC. I don’t know what was up with that, maybe they both wasted that much air messing with their weight. In the end I told them that if at any time they weren’t comfortable that they needed to turn back and not try their luck again.
DIVE #9: 33′ Depth for 00:33 minutes (we were going through air fast because we had to swim against the surge) with 52F water temperatures. We had again about 10-15′ of vis.
Since my server has limited bandwidth to see the pictures just visit the full post.
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This is my last day of diving for this weekend. I had to take Sunday off because I had to file my taxes yesterday. I was a bit concerned with how the conditions may be today, mainly because all of the forecasts were looking pretty grim, but I really wanted to get into the water. Jeff and I had arranged to head over to Pt. Lobos and give it a try assuming the conditions weren’t too bad.
When we arrived at Pt. Lobos the waves weren’t looking all that bad. We decided to suit up and hope for the best when it came to the vis. After gearing up we made our way into the water, the ramp with all of its seaweed and algae does make things interesting. Once in we swam out to about the beginning of the middle reef and ascended there. We took a 0 degree heading and made out way into the reef. All I can say is WOW! I can’t wait to dive Lobos on a day with good conditions. We saw some amazing things, and I can’t believe how thick the kelp gets out there. It must be insane in the summer when its really growing. The visibility wasn’t all too great probably about 10′ in the cove and about 15′ when we swam out to the reef.
It seems however, that the conditions did their part in hiding or making what life there was hide. There was a bunch of purple coral growing on all of the rocks, and a surprising number of anenomies as well. I wonder, and perhaps someone can tell me, if it is common for there to be so many jelly fish. I believe we came across around 5 jelly fish, some lingcod, rockfish, and I think a rainbow surfperch. The low light from the fog mde it difficult to see all that much at depth with the vis how it was.
Right before we decided it was the time to turn back due to our air situation Jeff managed to get himself tangled in some kelp. I just swam under him grabbed the three offending strands and broke them. The pretty much took care of freeing them self at that point, and floated up towards the surface. The surge was IMO somewhat rough. We were moving quite a few (perhaps 6′ or so) with the surge. The good thing for us is that since we were either swimming into or away from it, we didn’t have too many problems avoiding rocks or kelp from it pushing us into them. The exit was a little tough. The waves had picked up some while we were under water and that made getting out on the ramp somewhat challenging. We had to crawl out on the ramp and the waves were pushing us around some. However, we made it out without incident and it was a good ending to a successful dive.
To note, while we were packing it up as we had decided to try to move to Breakwater in hopes for better conditions, there were some ladies that needed assistance. They had rental gear and it appears that there were trying to fine tune their weight in the water at the ramp. That wasn’t going all too well for them and thats when Jeff and I had to assist. The one lady I was assisting needed help putting her quick release weights back in and adding some more to her BCD. Once I got her weights situated we helped her out of the water so she could regroup with her buddy. They had also never dove Lobos before, so we had suggested that they swim out from the ramp to about the middle, drop down and head out at about 0 like we did and then come back at 180. At this point we realized that they needed to both be taught how to use their compass’, and we gave them a crash course. Also, they apparently weren’t aware of how the pressure gauges worked. We suggested to them to keep a close eye on their pressure and to be sure that they were on their ways back well before getting to just above 1000 PSI. We told them to shoot for about 1500 PSI, but their tanks apparently only had 2000 instead of 2400 from MBDC. I don’t know what was up with that, maybe they both wasted that much air messing with their weight. In the end I told them that if at any time they weren’t comfortable that they needed to turn back and not try their luck again.
DIVE #9: 33′ Depth for 00:33 minutes (we were going through air fast because we had to swim against the surge) with 52F water temperatures. We had again about 10-15′ of vis.
Since my server has limited bandwidth to see the pictures just visit the full post.
