As the only SoCal who hadn't dived Leo - last week was a treat. Well, there was a bit of clustery, as it was my first SoCal dive in like a month or something. But it was cool.
As we're probably the only SoCals to not have a real dive at Vets, tonight Arnaud and I dived Vets Park. After my last "dive" there (the "Claudette Squid Dive Seal Bomb Zero Viz ChrisM Extravaganza") I really wanted to give it another shot.
It did not dissapoint.
Arnaud was diving wet. Fine for the 70 degrees at entry, and up to about 35 feet. At 36 feet, it abruptly dropped to the low 60's. At 77 feet, it was 54 (I'm sure a change that quick felt more like 44...) I was diving dry and was cooking on the surface, but fine at depth. He, not so much.
However, it was 50 minutes of fun fun fun. Jellys, weird bearded eel things, zillions of octos making homes in cans and bottles, at least 10 different types of crabs (including one in a gilley suit... not sure what that was about) tons of fish, Nudis, slugs, hares lots of big shrimp, TONS of little ones, a seal, lots of huge snails and the usual sea pens, sand dollars and all that rot.... just stuff everywhere. There was this PVC pipe and rope set up at 75' that went off someplace - like a survey marker thingy. Balloons - lots and lots of balloons.
One of the things that amazed me - there was no current at depth. I mean it was dead calm - nothing moving. Really a strange feeling, being in the ocean without even a puff of current. Just dead calm.
I still haven't adjusted my BP yet - so it was more straight jacket diving. I gotta get this thing together. And loosen the bungee on my evil, finger-bluing gauges.
Man. I was so pleased with this dive. And its 9 miles from my house... how cool is that? Malibu (our usual night spot) is 27, and OCal, well, is still OCal.
Vets rocked! I'm so impressed. I wish I brought both tanks tonight. Arnaud thinks he wouldn't do a second dive... he was pretty icy. I think I may have been able to talk him into it.
Oh yeah - I'll be doing this again real, real soon.
---
Ken
As we're probably the only SoCals to not have a real dive at Vets, tonight Arnaud and I dived Vets Park. After my last "dive" there (the "Claudette Squid Dive Seal Bomb Zero Viz ChrisM Extravaganza") I really wanted to give it another shot.
It did not dissapoint.
Arnaud was diving wet. Fine for the 70 degrees at entry, and up to about 35 feet. At 36 feet, it abruptly dropped to the low 60's. At 77 feet, it was 54 (I'm sure a change that quick felt more like 44...) I was diving dry and was cooking on the surface, but fine at depth. He, not so much.
However, it was 50 minutes of fun fun fun. Jellys, weird bearded eel things, zillions of octos making homes in cans and bottles, at least 10 different types of crabs (including one in a gilley suit... not sure what that was about) tons of fish, Nudis, slugs, hares lots of big shrimp, TONS of little ones, a seal, lots of huge snails and the usual sea pens, sand dollars and all that rot.... just stuff everywhere. There was this PVC pipe and rope set up at 75' that went off someplace - like a survey marker thingy. Balloons - lots and lots of balloons.
One of the things that amazed me - there was no current at depth. I mean it was dead calm - nothing moving. Really a strange feeling, being in the ocean without even a puff of current. Just dead calm.
I still haven't adjusted my BP yet - so it was more straight jacket diving. I gotta get this thing together. And loosen the bungee on my evil, finger-bluing gauges.
Man. I was so pleased with this dive. And its 9 miles from my house... how cool is that? Malibu (our usual night spot) is 27, and OCal, well, is still OCal.
Vets rocked! I'm so impressed. I wish I brought both tanks tonight. Arnaud thinks he wouldn't do a second dive... he was pretty icy. I think I may have been able to talk him into it.
Oh yeah - I'll be doing this again real, real soon.
---
Ken
