Conditions on the North Coast

[Eric Sedletzky]

Yesterday (Sunday) was the first scheduled dive for the North Coast Divers dive club.
We assembled at Stillwater Cove in Sonoma County and looked at the water. It looked a little sloppy.
After waiting around for a while we decided to get in our trucks and head up to South Gerstle to see how it looked there...not good
Then we drove up to South Fisk Mill Cove and it really didn't look good.

We decided to stay dry and live to dive another day.
Instead we had our picnic and dodged a few raindrops, talked about diving as we could hear the ocean roaring in the distance.

Here are a few pics for your enjoyment. These will give you a glimps of how it looked on the North Coast. Photos give stories reality.


ZKY

 

[headhunter]

Congrats on your first meeting!

It sure does look like you have some fantastic dive spots in those pics.

We're going to have to plan a road trip from SoCal to those north coast locations!

Christian

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Congrats on your first meeting!

It sure does look like you have some fantastic dive spots in those pics.

We're going to have to plan a road trip from SoCal to those north coast locations!

Christian

Just let us know and we'll provide the grand tour.

ZKY

 

[abman]

you could have extended the trip a bit over an hour farther up the coast, up to van damn st beach. unless it is absolutley blown out up and down the coast it is almost always diveable there. it gets hammered pretty hard threw out the course of the season, but it's still early so the ab's shouldn't be to few and far between. pm me if you are interested an info on any other locations, mainy on the mendicino coast. iv'e been diving it for almost 30 years. ken

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

It would be great to have you join us he next time we do a dive. Stay tuned to scubaboard (Norcal) or pacificcoastmarine.org
I've been diving this area a while too, not near 30 years, but I know quite a few places from Ft. Bragg down to Pt. Reyes.
I have a boat and have dove quite a lot of off shore seamounts and pinnacles all up and down the coast.
We should compare notes sometime.

ZKY

 

[abman]

that would be rally cool. i have a 14' zodiac, nothing big or beautiful,but, it's paid for and it floats. i know that my next scheuled trip back to ft bragg will be on memorial day. the dolphin dive club has an anual event in ft bragg. we uaually stay at pomo campground. i haven't dive that much on the sonoma coast yet but i'm always up to a new adventure. i do like the pt arena and ocean cove areas.i have dove them a bit. maybe we can hook -up aone of these days and chase down some ab's. ken

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

that would be rally cool. i have a 14' zodiac, nothing big or beautiful,but, it's paid for and it floats. i know that my next scheuled trip back to ft bragg will be on memorial day. the dolphin dive club has an anual event in ft bragg. we uaually stay at pomo campground. i haven't dive that much on the sonoma coast yet but i'm always up to a new adventure. i do like the pt arena and ocean cove areas.i have dove them a bit. maybe we can hook -up aone of these days and chase down some ab's. ken

Where is the Pomo campground? I never heard of that one. We usaully stay at Vandamme or Albion.
I've got a little 25 horse Evinrude I'm looking to put on a little 14 foot balloon myself. I run my dory (18.5 foot Oregon Dory with a 60 on it) right now but I want the option of something a little smaller that I can drag down to a beach.

Sonoma county has good diving with sites in closer proximity to each other. Mendocino county in my experience has better vis on average but the sites are more spread out.

My last big dive party campout was at Ocean Cove. I love that place. We tore it up on the last night till 3:00 am. We ran out of firewood so we went down to the cove and scrounged up some driftwood. It was a little wet so we got it going with a deco bottle of 50/50. It was a crazy night. Nobody in the campground said a word. There is so much room there that we were far away from anybody and had a whole little section to ourselves.

Eric