johndiver999
Contributor
Well it is not a "guide" story but sorta.
Flew to Calif (San Jose) From Florida, getting up ridiculously early. Buddy who dives out there and knows a lot of cool shore dives, picks us up at the airport. A few hours to his house, an hour to gather dive gear and a few/several? hours drive to the dive site. With the 3 hour time lag, this is a very long day. For lunch/dinner we have wine (not a lot) and peanuts.
So we get to the site late, northern Calif, don't even know where. We get to a protected area, sorta a cove with easy parking lot access. Never dove in Calif, or dealt with kelp beds. He explains we snorkel out, then go under the solid kelp bed, swim around, then head back and clear the kelp before our air runs out.
I trust him to "guide" and navigate and get us out of the kelp. Well, you guessed it, we "get lost" and run out of air in the kelp bed. Not a huge issue, but I wear my knife on the outside of my thigh (he never told me not to do that). When I ascend, I come to the surface spin around a few times to see where the hell we are and get all wrapped up in kelp. Didn't tell me not to spin at the surface either. So tangled in kelp, out of air and have to make our way out of maybe 75 yards of thick kelp matt. I am already exhausted from the travel/jet lag and now have to freedive under the kelp with scuba gear on, going like 15-20 feet each dive, popping up and then trying not to get tangled again (knife was a constant problem). Somewhat strenuous, but mostly just frustrating and incredibly slow.
Basically it sucked, there was no current, no waves, just a slow pain in the Azz. Finally cleared the kelp and had maybe 75 yrd surface swim in open water. It was well past sunset when I hit the rocks on the shore and I was puking peanuts and red wine. And of course my buddy found this amusing as hell, as did the tourists who were curious to approach the scuba divers leaving the water.
Our subsequent dives on the following days went well.
Flew to Calif (San Jose) From Florida, getting up ridiculously early. Buddy who dives out there and knows a lot of cool shore dives, picks us up at the airport. A few hours to his house, an hour to gather dive gear and a few/several? hours drive to the dive site. With the 3 hour time lag, this is a very long day. For lunch/dinner we have wine (not a lot) and peanuts.
So we get to the site late, northern Calif, don't even know where. We get to a protected area, sorta a cove with easy parking lot access. Never dove in Calif, or dealt with kelp beds. He explains we snorkel out, then go under the solid kelp bed, swim around, then head back and clear the kelp before our air runs out.
I trust him to "guide" and navigate and get us out of the kelp. Well, you guessed it, we "get lost" and run out of air in the kelp bed. Not a huge issue, but I wear my knife on the outside of my thigh (he never told me not to do that). When I ascend, I come to the surface spin around a few times to see where the hell we are and get all wrapped up in kelp. Didn't tell me not to spin at the surface either. So tangled in kelp, out of air and have to make our way out of maybe 75 yards of thick kelp matt. I am already exhausted from the travel/jet lag and now have to freedive under the kelp with scuba gear on, going like 15-20 feet each dive, popping up and then trying not to get tangled again (knife was a constant problem). Somewhat strenuous, but mostly just frustrating and incredibly slow.
Basically it sucked, there was no current, no waves, just a slow pain in the Azz. Finally cleared the kelp and had maybe 75 yrd surface swim in open water. It was well past sunset when I hit the rocks on the shore and I was puking peanuts and red wine. And of course my buddy found this amusing as hell, as did the tourists who were curious to approach the scuba divers leaving the water.
Our subsequent dives on the following days went well.
