After hearing such good reports from people yesterday, and especially Bruce telling me that he had his best Monterey dive ever at Mono Lobo I had to see for myself.
I set out early this morning to meet up with Jeff, Cliff, and Ben at Aquarius and while there we convinced James to join us!
We decided to do an extra long surface swim to save as much air not really for bottom time, since we knew the NDL would hit us, but for the swim back. We dropped to about 12 feet once on the way out to swim under some kelp and save us from having to swim around. As we were approaching our drop point we were able to make out the name on the dive boat that was maybe 100 yards away Cypress Sea! HA! You know youre swimming way too far if your bumping into dive boats. We had a little joke amoungst us that we were going to use their anchor line to drop in right on the Mono Lobo (assuming thats where Phil had put it). Unfortunantly they left the site right as we were getting there, no anchor line for us.
At 10:00am on the dot we descended for the dive, in about 60fsw. We continued out on a compass heading of about 240-270 but had planned to stay at around 65fsw to conserve air for the way back. Thinking back I think this worked against us with the 40-50′ vis we were probably just out of range to see the top of mono lobo, and the swim may have been too far putting us past it.
While swimming there really wasnt anything other than blue rockish out and about. I saw one maybe 2 foot cabezon but that was it, other than some random array of jellies and tons of anenomies. I was very pleased however, with how well my light was illuminating the bottom about 40feet below me. After we had swam for a while with no metridium sightings Jeff gave the turn back signal. I looked at my computer and still had almost 2600 psi and pleanty of NDL time remaining. We decided underwater that our 2 / 3 man teams would split up. Jeff and Cliff turned back, while James, Ben, and I headed almost due north to check out this black thing we could see in the distance. This is where we dropped to the 100fsw range and I was hoping it would be the wall, but it was just a cool looking rock structure. We hung out there for a few minutes and started on our way back.
The way back when we were in maybe 40-50fsw I noticed some seals had started to swim around it, and that was fun to watch. However, due to the blazing fast split fins that James had on, and me waiting for Ben we lost James. So we looked around a bit (longer than 1 min, but there were several large boulders to peak around) and decided to do our stops and head up. On the surface we realized we were a ways out and we were able to make contact with Jeff and Cliff letting them know to look for James. Ben and I headed back under to swim under all the thick kelp and popped up on the other side with Jeff and Cliff. About this same time I see James and where is it.. ON SHORE giving us the OK! WTH!! How did he get there so fast? Either way we all just finished our swim back and had a pretty cool dive none the less.
Back on shore Ben wanted to top up his doubles, and Jeff and Cliff were all in one car so they went back to the shop for Lunch and fills prior to heading to Butterfly House for their second dive. I decided to sit it out and spent the afternoon loitering around the dive shop.
Dive #80: 103fsw max for 54 minutes. 40-50'+ vis. diving EAN32 with a PPO2 max of 1.32 and a PSI Delta of 2448.
I set out early this morning to meet up with Jeff, Cliff, and Ben at Aquarius and while there we convinced James to join us!
We decided to do an extra long surface swim to save as much air not really for bottom time, since we knew the NDL would hit us, but for the swim back. We dropped to about 12 feet once on the way out to swim under some kelp and save us from having to swim around. As we were approaching our drop point we were able to make out the name on the dive boat that was maybe 100 yards away Cypress Sea! HA! You know youre swimming way too far if your bumping into dive boats. We had a little joke amoungst us that we were going to use their anchor line to drop in right on the Mono Lobo (assuming thats where Phil had put it). Unfortunantly they left the site right as we were getting there, no anchor line for us.
At 10:00am on the dot we descended for the dive, in about 60fsw. We continued out on a compass heading of about 240-270 but had planned to stay at around 65fsw to conserve air for the way back. Thinking back I think this worked against us with the 40-50′ vis we were probably just out of range to see the top of mono lobo, and the swim may have been too far putting us past it.
While swimming there really wasnt anything other than blue rockish out and about. I saw one maybe 2 foot cabezon but that was it, other than some random array of jellies and tons of anenomies. I was very pleased however, with how well my light was illuminating the bottom about 40feet below me. After we had swam for a while with no metridium sightings Jeff gave the turn back signal. I looked at my computer and still had almost 2600 psi and pleanty of NDL time remaining. We decided underwater that our 2 / 3 man teams would split up. Jeff and Cliff turned back, while James, Ben, and I headed almost due north to check out this black thing we could see in the distance. This is where we dropped to the 100fsw range and I was hoping it would be the wall, but it was just a cool looking rock structure. We hung out there for a few minutes and started on our way back.
The way back when we were in maybe 40-50fsw I noticed some seals had started to swim around it, and that was fun to watch. However, due to the blazing fast split fins that James had on, and me waiting for Ben we lost James. So we looked around a bit (longer than 1 min, but there were several large boulders to peak around) and decided to do our stops and head up. On the surface we realized we were a ways out and we were able to make contact with Jeff and Cliff letting them know to look for James. Ben and I headed back under to swim under all the thick kelp and popped up on the other side with Jeff and Cliff. About this same time I see James and where is it.. ON SHORE giving us the OK! WTH!! How did he get there so fast? Either way we all just finished our swim back and had a pretty cool dive none the less.
Back on shore Ben wanted to top up his doubles, and Jeff and Cliff were all in one car so they went back to the shop for Lunch and fills prior to heading to Butterfly House for their second dive. I decided to sit it out and spent the afternoon loitering around the dive shop
.Dive #80: 103fsw max for 54 minutes. 40-50'+ vis. diving EAN32 with a PPO2 max of 1.32 and a PSI Delta of 2448.
