Best Dive Site/Op for Christmas Visitors?

[pasley]

Ok, First things first. If it has been 6 months or more since your last dive (particularly if it has been years) a refresher course would be advisable. If you choose to skip that, I would recommend hiring a DM to escort you and do a quick refresher.

Second, it does not have to be either or. If you go to San Diego first, do a dive or two there. They have nice diving, good kelp and there are 1/2 day boats too. Then come to Los Angeles for more diving.

Los Angeles has lots of great dives. Catalina is you best bet for good visibility and diving most of the time. I would take a dive boat out of Long Beach, 3 dives, sleep on the boat the night before, food and air included (Great Escape and others), transportation to and from the island and a variety of dive sites. Catalina Avalon Dive Park is good too, but more logistics, take express over, lug gear to dive site etc.

Lots of good shore diving in Los Angeles. http://www.sandeaters.org has a description of dive sites in SoCal. Visibility will be zero to 40 feet with 10-15 being common here on the mainland. At Catalina 20-60 feet is more normal.

Please note dive shops here rent tanks, computers, guages, 1st & 2nd stages, octo, BC and wetsuits for $45-60US per day (sport chalet pick up one day, rental is second day, return 3d day). You need to supply your own mask, fins, boots, gloves and snorkle if you want one (required in laguna beach). On the mainland there are only 3 shops that rent mask, fins, snorkle, boots and gloves and they charge $100 give or take a bit for all that.

 

[frogoutofwater]

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. Pasley - your reminder about refreshers is a good one. Both of us have managed to log a dive or two at least every six months (since I was certified two years ago and since Mr frogoutofwater started diving again), but I'm still enough of a novice that I'd like to dive with a DM on this trip.

And I also know that "a dive or two every six months" is not enough for me to make any progress; it's barely enough to stop us from slipping back to square one. So we're planning a more extensive dive holiday (probably Oman, which neither of us has visited, and which has mountains for Mr. frogoutofwater to climb) next spring and will do some additional training then. On this trip, we've got to limit ourselves to a single dive-focused day (either in San Diego or LA), because there are too many other things we want to do in the area before flying up to Vancouver.

If we go to San Diego, can anyone suggest either a moderately-priced hotel (US 150 or less) or an area where we should look for a hotel in order to be conveniently situated to go diving? We'll have a car. Thanks

 

[Diver_Jan]

I agree with Pasley on taking a refresher course, especially, if you have never dove California before. Diving here is alot different, and is considered some of the most challenging dive areas due to surf, tides, rip tides, and viz. Also, it's important that you are properly weighted according to the conditions and the equipment you will be using.

If you are going to be in the LA area, I would suggest looking up http://www.Reefseekers.com You can do a number of things: take a refresher, take a 'Discover Local Diving Class', take their FREE beach diving class; or sign up for one of their boats where they will have a DM escort you on a dive if you would like at no extra cost.

Best of luck.

 

[dpbishop]

If you are going to be in San Diego, The La Jolla Cove, which is a game preserve, is an easy shore dive. The Canyon at La Jolla Shores, while it involves a longer swim to get to, is deeper and more diverse. The problem is that visibility is real iffy in December, if there is any sizable surf the diving sucks. that said, La Jolla cove usually has better visibility than rest of the coast. Still, I would book a boat trip from LA to Catalina or from San Diego to Los Coronados if one fits your schedule. The visibility on the islands is always better than the mainland.

http://www.diegoweb.com/diving/ will give you links to dive reports in San Diego.

 

[Diver_Jan]

If you are going to be in San Diego, The La Jolla Cove, which is a game preserve, is an easy shore dive.

http://www.diegoweb.com/diving/ will give you links to dive reports in San Diego.

Even La Jolla Cove can be difficult with high surf, rip tides, and poor viz. Case in point, see post re lost dive gear in La Jolla. Do your research before picking a dive site.

Ultimately, be safe.

 

[California Diver]

the la jolla cove is terrible in the winter, better luck diving the shores or taking a trip to the local wrecks.

 

[frogoutofwater]

Thanks to everyone for your advice. We just got back from our Christmas trip. We decided to skip San Diego, drive straight to LA (after Christmas in Palm Desert with my parents) and dive at the Casino Dive Park on Catalina Island. We stayed at the Marriott Courtyard Long Beach the night before and the night after the dive - very convenient, nice rooms at a good price (about US $100 plus $8 for parking). Mr frogoutofwater notes, however, that the surrounding neighbourhood (he used to live there) is a bit dodgy at night. We decided to stay in Long Beach rather than at Catalina because the accommodation options at Catalina seemed rather pricey for the value on offer. We took the 6:15 Catalina Express (painfully early in the am), but almost missed the boat because we couldn't find the dock (started at the Queen Mary, drove back to Long Beach, were misdirected to a different Catalina ferry, etc). Don't forget to print out the map and take it with you. Also, it was hard to book the Express in advance because their only functional phone number was a 1-800 number (and I was trying to call from Paris; eventually, I called my sister in the US and got her to book the tickets for us).

We dived with a friendly DM from Scubaluv and had an easy, interesting dive. Good visibility, lots of fish and the kelp was interesting. The only regret is that I wish we had told the DM in advance that we're not the kind of divers who want their DM to rustle up critters for them - he was quite keen on flipping rocks over to expose octopus, clapping his hands to attract fish etc. It was a good dive for keeping our pre-dive skills fresh since we had to organise our gear ourselves at the shop and assemble it at the dive site (in contrast with some resort and boat dives where the dive shop does almost everything for you but breathe ...) We caught an early afternoon ferry back to Long Beach, crashed for a nap and moved on to a more interesting neighbourhood and hotel (Elan Hotel Modern) to continue the rest of our LA visit.

The Casino Dive Park seems like it would be a good place to brush up on skills, either informally or as part of a course. If we go back to LA again in the near future, we'll sign up for a specialty course and spend a couple of days there.

Next dives: Oman in March