Hey there WSU Coug and welcome to the SoCal area!
There's definitely a lot of diving get together options for you and the wife in Orange County. Here are a few things to look at to get you started:
The Wrinkles Dives are a monthly open shore diving event that rotate around various SoCal spots including Laguna Beach, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Catalina and has been a regular event with members from ScubaBoard and other forums for several years. You can see the next event (Catalina) by going
here future events are posted 1-2 months out.
Some of the members here participate in various OC dive clubs not run through ScubaBoard (although you'll often find their events, discussions and photos posted here). These clubs include
South Orange County Dive Club,
Laguna Sea Dwellers Dive Club,
South Coast Divers,
Sea Ventures and a few others I've misplaced the bookmarks for.
The Beach Crabs is one of the more active groups that participates on ScubaBoard and has its own forum. Most of their events are in the Northern LA area but also something you may want to consider. More info
here.
The SoCal moderators from ScubaBoard are also putting together a trip for all of California in Monterey this September which you may want to consider if you're up for the long drive. Read more about it
here.
You can also generally find private shops, boats and clubs posting their events in the trips and marketplace subforum located
here. And of course a lot of the diving members do is out of the group setting and just a few people getting together so you may want to reach out to people posting here or that you meet at any of the group events to see if you can't get something on the books.
