Hi jlyle & kelpmermaid! Thanks for asking about our trip. We went out to Catalina Friday afternoon. We had booked a dive package through scico.com. We stayed at the Pavilion Lodge, which had nice rooms and was right on the main street. We had dinner at El Galleon, which was probably our favorite meal there-steak and prime rib. Saturday morning we headed out early to the Casino Point dive park. We geared up and walked down the stairs into the water-it was easy. Water temp was a comfortable 63, visibility around 50 feet. We swam straight out toward the buoy, and dropped down to 63 ft and headed left along the kelp line. We didn't visit the boat wrecks, but we saw lots of cool fish, including garibaldi, lots of little blue-banded gobys, black-eyed gobys, senoritas, a couple of halibuts, and my favorite, the sheepheads. One was huge! I think it was "Oscar". We saw him right where he is on the Franko's map of the park. He swam up to us, checked us out and swam away. We saw Dr. Bill at the dive park later in the day and introduced ourselves-it was nice to meet you Dr. Bill.
We only did one dive that day because we were meeting some friends to go kayaking. We rented from Descanso Beach Ocean Sports and did a tour with them. We paddled out to Fox Canyon. It was a fun little trip. Big Olaf waffle cones tasted great afterward. But it started to rain later that afternoon and then Sunday our boat trip got cancelled because of high winds. Waves were crashing over the wall at the harbor. We walked over to the dive park to see what it looked like but visibility looked like zero and nobody was out there diving. Monday morning was the same and then we had to leave. So bummed- we really were looking forward to diving with Scuba Luv. But the one dive we did was great and we can't wait to come back some day.
This weekend we're going to try again-going to Point Lobos Friday and boat diving in Monterey on Saturday. Wish us better luck with the weather!
