In keeping with Merxlin's thread, I'm writing about today's dive.
I had a wonderful dive today.
I dove Cove 2 (The Office) with my regular dive buddy, with whom I love to dive. We were glad to see each other in the parking lot, and spent some time talking about his leaking drysuit valve and my schedule for the next month. We geared up and went over the dive plan, which was unusual for us . . . We were going to go down and do nothing but have fun. No skills, no drills; Kirk said, "We passed the class, we don't have to practice!" And I said, "If you'll remember, he said we LOOKED like Tech divers, and then listed all the things we have to do to BE tech divers." We both laughed. We agreed on a dive plan, and that I would lead -- of course, I had forgotten my mask and was borrowing one from the Honda Element Dive Shop, also known as Bob's car, so whether I could read my gauges and compass was not at all a given. We did our predive checks and bubble checks, and kicked out to the third buoy.
The visibility was interesting. It was like diving in a heavy winter snowstorm, where the snowflakes are huge and wet. We could see between and around the clumps of algae, but they reflected our lights and made actually discerning what we were looking at quite difficult. Early in the dive, I swam quite literally directly OVER about a three foot ling cod -- only Kirk's wild light gestures made me aware of it right below me. At just about that point, the fish decided it had had enough of me and decamped, but only about three feet away, where it settled on the bottom and glared at the interloper. Kirk snuck up on it from behind and tried to touch its tail, which resulted in a rapid departure. I was laughing hard into my regulator, which is a way to aspirate sea water.
We continued down the boundary line, and I swam through the little wrecked boat, which is a favorite buoyancy exercise. This time, I didn't touch the rim with my fins! Maybe I'm actually learning the edges of my "underwater body".
Visibility continued to be challenging, and it rapidly got very dark. Since I was diving without bifocals in my mask, it was a challenge to read the numerals on my depth gauge, but I managed to recognize when we had reached 70 feet, which was the agreed hard deck for the dive. We turned across the cove, scanning the bottom for anything interesting, and failing to find it. We reached the rope that goes up from the deeper structures to the wrecked sailboat, and I indulged in hubris and ignored it. Instead, I set course (as best I could make out the compass in the dark) for what I believed would be the sailboat. We slowly swam upslope, still looking for anything interesting. Even the omnipresent hermit crabs appeared to have found business elsewhere.
At intervals, I snuck glances at my buddy . . . I don't think he really understands it, but I love to watch him when we dive. He is so tidy, and so stable and quiet in the water. I can only hope I look like that to him.
Eventually, we swam into a thick cloud of silt, and I thought to myself that we must have arrived at the wrecked sailboat, which is a popular destination. In fact, we had -- my dead reckoning had worked, and we had arrived precisely where we had hoped to be. We poked around on the top of the boat, and then swam down slope a little bit to the group of thickly anemone-clad pilings. There was a beautiful lemon peel nudibranch there, and a couple of painted greenlings. No warbonnets or gobeys, but a few copper rockfish. After poking around the pilings a while, we looked at the stern end of the sailboat. It's open, forming a pup-tent shape, and it was great fun to sink until we were just a few inches off the bottom, and play our lights around the inside, where sometimes there is an octopus to be found. No octopus today, but a few back kicks and a breath brought us out of the opening and back into open water.
We turned around and agreed to begin heading for home. At that point, we met up with a group of students with their instructor, who were headed for the sailboat. We stayed together and swam past them, and then began exploring the bottom structures in the shallows. They were crawling with crabs of all sizes and several different species, and we found a kelp greenling in a concrete box. Both of us were fine on gas, so we meandered placidly across the cove, in no hurry to end the dive. Kirk found a large Dungeness crab in some kelp, and I tried to catch it, because he had told me of the fun he and his son had had crabbing on scuba this weekend, and I found it is not easy to get and keep hold of the sturdy little guys. He got away, and both Kirk and I were laughing.
We reached the boundary line again, and turned upslope, and swam very slowly and reluctantly up to where it was either stand up or crawl out of the cove on our bellies.
We hiked up the slope to the parking lot, showered, and doffed our gear on Kirk's tailgate. I had remembered to bring hot water in a jug, which is such a civilized thing to pour over one's head at the end of the dive, and this time, I even remembered to do it BEFORE I took off my dry suit. I shared the hot water with Kirk, and with the diving instructor who had been leading the group we had encountered. He asked me, "Did you have a good dive?" And I said, "Oh, yes." And he said, "You looked good down there," which pleased me immensely.
We went into the small restaurant for a warm drink, and sat and talked about the dive we had just done, and other dives we have done, and dives we have planned, and classes we have planned, and dives we have done with other people. Community -- the fourth pillar of diving.
We saw almost nothing of significant interest. We dove in fairly poor visibility, in a site where there are no surprises. But we laughed, and we reveled in the freedom to be underwater and weightless and verging occasionally upon graceful, and together as a pair who have worked to build rapport and trust. It was a wonderful dive.
I had a wonderful dive today.
I dove Cove 2 (The Office) with my regular dive buddy, with whom I love to dive. We were glad to see each other in the parking lot, and spent some time talking about his leaking drysuit valve and my schedule for the next month. We geared up and went over the dive plan, which was unusual for us . . . We were going to go down and do nothing but have fun. No skills, no drills; Kirk said, "We passed the class, we don't have to practice!" And I said, "If you'll remember, he said we LOOKED like Tech divers, and then listed all the things we have to do to BE tech divers." We both laughed. We agreed on a dive plan, and that I would lead -- of course, I had forgotten my mask and was borrowing one from the Honda Element Dive Shop, also known as Bob's car, so whether I could read my gauges and compass was not at all a given. We did our predive checks and bubble checks, and kicked out to the third buoy.
The visibility was interesting. It was like diving in a heavy winter snowstorm, where the snowflakes are huge and wet. We could see between and around the clumps of algae, but they reflected our lights and made actually discerning what we were looking at quite difficult. Early in the dive, I swam quite literally directly OVER about a three foot ling cod -- only Kirk's wild light gestures made me aware of it right below me. At just about that point, the fish decided it had had enough of me and decamped, but only about three feet away, where it settled on the bottom and glared at the interloper. Kirk snuck up on it from behind and tried to touch its tail, which resulted in a rapid departure. I was laughing hard into my regulator, which is a way to aspirate sea water.
We continued down the boundary line, and I swam through the little wrecked boat, which is a favorite buoyancy exercise. This time, I didn't touch the rim with my fins! Maybe I'm actually learning the edges of my "underwater body".
Visibility continued to be challenging, and it rapidly got very dark. Since I was diving without bifocals in my mask, it was a challenge to read the numerals on my depth gauge, but I managed to recognize when we had reached 70 feet, which was the agreed hard deck for the dive. We turned across the cove, scanning the bottom for anything interesting, and failing to find it. We reached the rope that goes up from the deeper structures to the wrecked sailboat, and I indulged in hubris and ignored it. Instead, I set course (as best I could make out the compass in the dark) for what I believed would be the sailboat. We slowly swam upslope, still looking for anything interesting. Even the omnipresent hermit crabs appeared to have found business elsewhere.
At intervals, I snuck glances at my buddy . . . I don't think he really understands it, but I love to watch him when we dive. He is so tidy, and so stable and quiet in the water. I can only hope I look like that to him.
Eventually, we swam into a thick cloud of silt, and I thought to myself that we must have arrived at the wrecked sailboat, which is a popular destination. In fact, we had -- my dead reckoning had worked, and we had arrived precisely where we had hoped to be. We poked around on the top of the boat, and then swam down slope a little bit to the group of thickly anemone-clad pilings. There was a beautiful lemon peel nudibranch there, and a couple of painted greenlings. No warbonnets or gobeys, but a few copper rockfish. After poking around the pilings a while, we looked at the stern end of the sailboat. It's open, forming a pup-tent shape, and it was great fun to sink until we were just a few inches off the bottom, and play our lights around the inside, where sometimes there is an octopus to be found. No octopus today, but a few back kicks and a breath brought us out of the opening and back into open water.
We turned around and agreed to begin heading for home. At that point, we met up with a group of students with their instructor, who were headed for the sailboat. We stayed together and swam past them, and then began exploring the bottom structures in the shallows. They were crawling with crabs of all sizes and several different species, and we found a kelp greenling in a concrete box. Both of us were fine on gas, so we meandered placidly across the cove, in no hurry to end the dive. Kirk found a large Dungeness crab in some kelp, and I tried to catch it, because he had told me of the fun he and his son had had crabbing on scuba this weekend, and I found it is not easy to get and keep hold of the sturdy little guys. He got away, and both Kirk and I were laughing.
We reached the boundary line again, and turned upslope, and swam very slowly and reluctantly up to where it was either stand up or crawl out of the cove on our bellies.
We hiked up the slope to the parking lot, showered, and doffed our gear on Kirk's tailgate. I had remembered to bring hot water in a jug, which is such a civilized thing to pour over one's head at the end of the dive, and this time, I even remembered to do it BEFORE I took off my dry suit. I shared the hot water with Kirk, and with the diving instructor who had been leading the group we had encountered. He asked me, "Did you have a good dive?" And I said, "Oh, yes." And he said, "You looked good down there," which pleased me immensely.
We went into the small restaurant for a warm drink, and sat and talked about the dive we had just done, and other dives we have done, and dives we have planned, and classes we have planned, and dives we have done with other people. Community -- the fourth pillar of diving.
We saw almost nothing of significant interest. We dove in fairly poor visibility, in a site where there are no surprises. But we laughed, and we reveled in the freedom to be underwater and weightless and verging occasionally upon graceful, and together as a pair who have worked to build rapport and trust. It was a wonderful dive.
....ain't diving grand?
