Today was the Scubaboard NorCal Meet & Greet at McAbee Beach. Sarah (sarita75) organized this one and there was a pretty good turn out. Even Ron made it 
.Hopefully I can get back into the habbit of posting my dive reports again as recently time has been the big issue. Looks like about 24 dives have gone unreported and that's not good! I have to say I am looking forward to seeing Devin and Ron's and all the other photos from today's dives.
Dive 1:
My dive buddies consisted of: Jeff (darth_rahl), Katherine (kmmkiwi), Devin (dhammer), and myself. Well the two seals seemed to want to be my buddy as well but we will get to that later. We entered at low or lowish tide and we swam out as a much bigger group. Ron, Sarah, and gang were with us as well. We dropped in and the vis was meh-ish. I would say generously 20 feet but the closer to shore/rocks you were the much worse it was. This dive we planned to head NE towards the rocks/pipes on the right side of the beach. On the way out I spotted some cool things for Devin to take pictures of. I didnt bring my camera today, as I was being lazy and didnt get it all setup for the diving today, BUT I had my light. I spotted severl rocks covered in strawberry anenomies and one actually had an abalone in the crack right next to them. Another actually had about 4 or 5 urchins tucked into a crack that was surrounded by the strawberry anenomies as well. At one point Devin motioned for me to follow him so I did, and he pointed to an urchin that must have been almost a foot in diameter! Crazy. There was a ton of fish out on this side of the beach too, I was very pleased. On our way back these two playful seals would not leave my fins alone! It was cute at first but became slightly annoying when they both had my fins in their mouths and were preventing me from swimming! LOL. It was so bad that I lost sight of my buddies. I would say one or the other kept playing with me for a good 10 minutes, and eventually the three of us caught back up with the group. It was fun. Great dive in the end.
Dive #49: 38fsw for 59 minutes with 54F water temperatures. Had about 20 foot of vis on the high side and about 8 on the low. This dive was with EANx32 and I consumed 2169 PSI of gas.
Dive 2:
This time we decided to check out the left side of the beach and maybe run into some gypsy wreck that Jeff had read about. No such luck in the end. The vis seemed to be worse actually on this side of the beach. Granted the water was warmer even though the tide was on its way in. Wouldnt you know it, right after we started the dive one of the seals was back to play again. This time I was leading so I guess one decided to pick on Katherine while the other disracted us up front. He kept laying on the bottom near rocks acting playful for us. Playing with/eating the kelp and chasing fish. Eventually we swam out further than he wanted to go and we were just a team of 4 again. Not so much good stuff to see on this side so I turned back at about 30 minutes in and then I found treasure! What appears to be a old Coke bottle, going to try to clean it up some and see if I can figure out just how old it is. Watch, its like current production. Then Jeff started leading again because he wanted to go to the right and I guess I wasnt swimming fast enough for him. We did a couple rectangle pattern swims out in the kelp parallel to the beach and then headed in. The vis has definantly decreased by this point. Oh and apparently at some point my wetsuit came unzipped and I was having issues with a continual flow of cold water coming into the back of the suit. So
refreshing!
And im happy to report, this was my 50th Dive!
Dive #50: 36fsw for 57 minutes with 57F water temperatures. Had about 20 foot of vis on the high side and about 5 on the low. This dive was with EANx32 and I consumed 1754 PSI of gas.
(As a side note there's a quick update blurb on my blog about the missing 24 dives and what happened over that course of time.)
.Hopefully I can get back into the habbit of posting my dive reports again as recently time has been the big issue. Looks like about 24 dives have gone unreported and that's not good! I have to say I am looking forward to seeing Devin and Ron's and all the other photos from today's dives.Dive 1:
My dive buddies consisted of: Jeff (darth_rahl), Katherine (kmmkiwi), Devin (dhammer), and myself. Well the two seals seemed to want to be my buddy as well but we will get to that later. We entered at low or lowish tide and we swam out as a much bigger group. Ron, Sarah, and gang were with us as well. We dropped in and the vis was meh-ish. I would say generously 20 feet but the closer to shore/rocks you were the much worse it was. This dive we planned to head NE towards the rocks/pipes on the right side of the beach. On the way out I spotted some cool things for Devin to take pictures of. I didnt bring my camera today, as I was being lazy and didnt get it all setup for the diving today, BUT I had my light. I spotted severl rocks covered in strawberry anenomies and one actually had an abalone in the crack right next to them. Another actually had about 4 or 5 urchins tucked into a crack that was surrounded by the strawberry anenomies as well. At one point Devin motioned for me to follow him so I did, and he pointed to an urchin that must have been almost a foot in diameter! Crazy. There was a ton of fish out on this side of the beach too, I was very pleased. On our way back these two playful seals would not leave my fins alone! It was cute at first but became slightly annoying when they both had my fins in their mouths and were preventing me from swimming! LOL. It was so bad that I lost sight of my buddies. I would say one or the other kept playing with me for a good 10 minutes, and eventually the three of us caught back up with the group. It was fun. Great dive in the end.
Dive #49: 38fsw for 59 minutes with 54F water temperatures. Had about 20 foot of vis on the high side and about 8 on the low. This dive was with EANx32 and I consumed 2169 PSI of gas.
Dive 2:
This time we decided to check out the left side of the beach and maybe run into some gypsy wreck that Jeff had read about. No such luck in the end. The vis seemed to be worse actually on this side of the beach. Granted the water was warmer even though the tide was on its way in. Wouldnt you know it, right after we started the dive one of the seals was back to play again. This time I was leading so I guess one decided to pick on Katherine while the other disracted us up front. He kept laying on the bottom near rocks acting playful for us. Playing with/eating the kelp and chasing fish. Eventually we swam out further than he wanted to go and we were just a team of 4 again. Not so much good stuff to see on this side so I turned back at about 30 minutes in and then I found treasure! What appears to be a old Coke bottle, going to try to clean it up some and see if I can figure out just how old it is. Watch, its like current production
. Then Jeff started leading again because he wanted to go to the right and I guess I wasnt swimming fast enough for him. We did a couple rectangle pattern swims out in the kelp parallel to the beach and then headed in. The vis has definantly decreased by this point. Oh and apparently at some point my wetsuit came unzipped and I was having issues with a continual flow of cold water coming into the back of the suit. So
refreshing!And im happy to report, this was my 50th Dive!
Dive #50: 36fsw for 57 minutes with 57F water temperatures. Had about 20 foot of vis on the high side and about 5 on the low. This dive was with EANx32 and I consumed 1754 PSI of gas.
(As a side note there's a quick update blurb on my blog about the missing 24 dives and what happened over that course of time.)
