Bubbletrubble
Contributor
Conditions did improve on Saturday afternoon. Wind chop was down. Waves weren't breaking quite so hard on the stairs. Divers seemed to be managing their exits OK.
I had to do a little duct tape doctoring to plug the holes in my worn-out neck seal for Saturday dives #2 and #3. Fortunately, the sun was out and my undergarment was able to dry in-between dives. Surface intervals were very nice due to the distant jazz music emanating from within the Casino building.
Visibility was best on Friday -- probably 40 - 45 feet in places. We ended up doing a mid-afternoon dive and a dusk/night dive on Friday, then 3 day dives on Saturday, and one morning dive on Sunday.
I saw several people abort their dives on Sunday due to the challenging exit. Our dive party (group of 5) surfaced at around 11 am in front of the stairs. I looked up and saw a wall of gawkers/helpers looking down as divers got hammered onto the stairs by the waves. We had one diver lose a contact lens, one diver almost lost a fin, and another diver opted to exit at Descanso Beach after getting crushed by the waves on both of his prior exit attempts. All were quite experienced divers. In the end, we all made it out relatively unscathed -- with just a few bruises.
Despite the challenging exit, that Sunday dive was worth it with vis in the 35 - 40 ft range. There were a ton of schooling fish at 70 fsw. We were treated to a medium-sized bat ray in "flight" and a couple of barracuda. All in all, it was a super weekend at the Catalina UW Park.
Perhaps we'll meet you on a future dive trip...
