Planned to go diving on Sunday with a mate who only just got certified so he could try out my gear before making any big purchases. Sunday looked, well, cold, so we bailed and planned for Wednesday instead.
When we saw the weather, we headed down to Monastery. I put on my old BC and backup reg set, he wore my BP/W and longhose. We headed out and he stumbled on a wave and ended up getting washed around, holding up an okay sign in the air. He apparently got so many monsterberries in his mask that he couldn't really clear it, and had to guess which way "out to see was". On the way out, we realized that we were hideously overweighted. I'd been so focused on figuring out the weight change from BC->BPW (and reverse) that I'd forgotten to take into account the steel tanks. We dropped down into 45' feet of water onto the sand at the edge of the kelp by the wash rock, and did a bunch of skills, followed by a small foray into the kelp. It was definitely the prettiest skills dive I've done.
Next dive was much better after taking off 6lbs of lead. I still was really frustrated by my BC wobbling around and the console on my hideously long HP hose, and I wondered how I possibly did 60 dives on it. I remember liking it compared to the other BCs I'd used too. We played around in 25-30' in the forest and clearings and saw a ridiculous number of fairly large lingcod having a convention or something.
We were heading home when we saw that it was sunny and warm, so we headed down to the breakwater and decided to go out to the metridiums. Filled our tanks, headed out and realized that the SK7 that a friend gave me (with a stern disclaimer) was as worthless as he promised when it was getting shallower going "northwest". My buddy took over nav and we went straight to the pipe. The guys at Glenn's promised us "some jellies at 30-35', but none near the metridium". Well, jellies did start at 30-35' but they weren't stopping. Now, I like a few jellies here and there, but it's the really big ones that bother me. Anything larger than my arm I don't like. We got to the end of the pipe, and the gopher rockfish was out screwing around (said hi) and a Really Big™ jelly crossed out path. I called turnaround, in the process making a huge mess of the bottom (I wanted out pretty badly), and we headed back. Lovely dive back along the pipe though.
Since the weather was holding, we filled the tanks yet again and did a night dive! My Intova managed to die again, despite this being a completely new light with only 5-10 dives on it, so we switched to the Scouts. I was actually really impressed with the penetrating power of the halogen Scouts -- it was definitely further than the Intova. I didn't think I'd like diving with them as a primary but it wasn't bad at all.
Usually I dive with people with far better air consumptions than myself, but being my mate's 4-8th dives he was worse than I was. Most of our dives were ~30min, which was actually nice from a temperature point of view. I'm usually feeling pretty done after my second hour-long dive, but I was still fairly comfortable after our fourth.
In any case, I got to celebrate my anniversary of diving with my 100th dive, at Monastery on a day with epic conditions. Stoked!
When we saw the weather, we headed down to Monastery. I put on my old BC and backup reg set, he wore my BP/W and longhose. We headed out and he stumbled on a wave and ended up getting washed around, holding up an okay sign in the air. He apparently got so many monsterberries in his mask that he couldn't really clear it, and had to guess which way "out to see was". On the way out, we realized that we were hideously overweighted. I'd been so focused on figuring out the weight change from BC->BPW (and reverse) that I'd forgotten to take into account the steel tanks. We dropped down into 45' feet of water onto the sand at the edge of the kelp by the wash rock, and did a bunch of skills, followed by a small foray into the kelp. It was definitely the prettiest skills dive I've done.
Next dive was much better after taking off 6lbs of lead. I still was really frustrated by my BC wobbling around and the console on my hideously long HP hose, and I wondered how I possibly did 60 dives on it. I remember liking it compared to the other BCs I'd used too. We played around in 25-30' in the forest and clearings and saw a ridiculous number of fairly large lingcod having a convention or something.
We were heading home when we saw that it was sunny and warm, so we headed down to the breakwater and decided to go out to the metridiums. Filled our tanks, headed out and realized that the SK7 that a friend gave me (with a stern disclaimer) was as worthless as he promised when it was getting shallower going "northwest". My buddy took over nav and we went straight to the pipe. The guys at Glenn's promised us "some jellies at 30-35', but none near the metridium". Well, jellies did start at 30-35' but they weren't stopping. Now, I like a few jellies here and there, but it's the really big ones that bother me. Anything larger than my arm I don't like. We got to the end of the pipe, and the gopher rockfish was out screwing around (said hi) and a Really Big™ jelly crossed out path. I called turnaround, in the process making a huge mess of the bottom (I wanted out pretty badly), and we headed back. Lovely dive back along the pipe though.
Since the weather was holding, we filled the tanks yet again and did a night dive! My Intova managed to die again, despite this being a completely new light with only 5-10 dives on it, so we switched to the Scouts. I was actually really impressed with the penetrating power of the halogen Scouts -- it was definitely further than the Intova. I didn't think I'd like diving with them as a primary but it wasn't bad at all.
Usually I dive with people with far better air consumptions than myself, but being my mate's 4-8th dives he was worse than I was. Most of our dives were ~30min, which was actually nice from a temperature point of view. I'm usually feeling pretty done after my second hour-long dive, but I was still fairly comfortable after our fourth.
In any case, I got to celebrate my anniversary of diving with my 100th dive, at Monastery on a day with epic conditions. Stoked!
