Launch Party! Going Dry at Vets! May 18, 2008

[HBDiveGirl]

Remember the best Christmas presents you got as a kid? The ones that made you race out of the house, tornadoes of shredded wrapping paper spinning in your wake?

Hee hee... Today was Christmas in May: Pasley got a drysuit

Delivered 11:15 AM Saturday.
He was zipped inside it and descending into Redondo Submarine Canyon at 0804 Sunday morning.

Yeah... he was that excited!!

Today was the perfect day at Veteran's Park: Blazing sun at 0700 as Ken L. joined Mel and I in the empty parking lot. The ocean had been replaced by a glossy postcard of Paradise. We live here? wow....

Of course it's a little cruel baking in the sun when you know it's going to be 52F underwater. (Drysuit = Good.)

Ken and Mel soon looked like fashion models for DUI, (while I just tried to stay out-of-frame with my battered and beloved old BARE drysuit.)
Mel couldn't stop grinning.. it was great!!!

As new drysuits can be a little unpredictable, I suggested some basic descent/ascent practice and a few midwater stops just to see how it handled. I was hanging slowly, no pressure....

... and Mel proceeded to give a clinic in the art of buoyancy control in a drysuit.
He hovered down to 10fsw and stopped midwater.
Down to 20fsw and he stopped again.
Then 30fsw, and back up to 20, and then 10.

Warm as toast and cool as a cucumber.
Mel's grin through his mask said it all: "This is pretty cool. Can we go play now??"

You betcha!! Off we went...

....Right into the waiting flippers of a young sea lion who thought we were the best toys to drop in all morning!! OMG, this puppy was all OVER us!
We all spun and twisted and rolled while this big-eyed furball went nuts in all directions. We had 20 minutes of chuffing fun, kicking up dust and then finning a few feet over into clear water to play some more.

Did I mention the visibility?

It was stunning!

70 feet down, I twisted to watch our sealion race toward the sun... and I could see him all the way up to the splash of foam as he burst through to the air. We could see at least 30 feet all around us as the canyon slope descended into the misty distance.

It was gorgeous. It was cold. 52F. (Drysuit = good.)

Between Sealion acrobatics, we found 6 kinds of nudibranchs: Black dorids, 'ssendas, moustachioed maculatas, trilineatas, frondosuseses, and a DENDRONOTUS IRIS! (I love these guys and rarely see them at Vets.) Octopus and saracastic fringeheads watched us fly by in the big blue-green space. Seapens stood at attention, while those weird floppy-sock wormy-thingies fluttered back and forth in the surge. (What on God's-Wet-Blue-Earth ARE those things? I'm pretty sure they're worm-based, but.. what? Eggs? Feeding appendages? Wind-socks? What?!?!?)

An hour later we scrambled ashore through the 2-foot summer surf.
I like to think we strode elegantly between the masses of happy kids and families on the beach.. but we probably just staggered in that goofy, happy, nitrogen-soaked gait that includes lots of laughter and story-telling.
"Hahaha.. I couldn't stop laughing when the sealion kept barking at us!!!"
"Nice work with the new signal, 'The P-valve works!!' There was no mistaking that one

"
(Drysuit = good. Drysuit with plumbing = better!)
"What the heck was that 1/2-inch striped gummy-worm fish stuck to the kelp frond?" "Did you see that gorgeous D. iris?" "Can you believe we navigated exactly back to the steps? Too cool..." "Oh, that sealion was the best. I coulda played with him for hours!!"

Welcome to the Dry Side, Mel.

You're unstoppable now!! (Drysuit = Very Good.)

Thank you Mel, and thanks to Ken L., for a beautiful first dive of the day.

~~~~
Claudette
__________________

 

[jlyle]

If I had know that was you at Vet's, yesterday, I would have stopped and chatted. I was on my way to meet the rest of the PV Bike Club for a ride to breakfast. You're right, I was floored at the lack of activity at Vet's on such a gorgeous day.

Jim

 

[MaxBottomtime]

You picked the right day. There is no lull today. The low set of two footers with about five second intervals is followed by four to five footers. The waves were actually taking shape and beginning to curl out at the end of the pier. Today is my last day of vacation and I'm spending it doing houswework.
By the time I left Vet's it was already 120F so I decided not to trek down the Marineland trail in a drysuit. I got extremely lucky last week. On Wednesday I talked to a construction worker there about diving for a long time. On Friday he remembered me and gave my gear and me a ride from Cobble Beach all the way to the parking lot. Can't beat that service.

 

[orangelion03]

Congrats Mel!!

Looks like you remembered the zipper this time

 

[liuk3]

Thanks, Claudette, for inviting me to the party yesterday! The conditions were great, and the viz was very nice. We had two excellent dives. Mel, I'm honored to have been there for your drysuit's maiden voyage. You looked like a pro in the suit, and I hope I wasn't too close to you when you Christened your p-valve. It really is a beautiful drysuit that you got. Lunch after the dives topped off an absolutely wonderful day. Days like this is why we live in southern California!

 

[JMdiver]

Congrats Mel!!

Looks like you remembered the zipper this time

I guess you had to have been there.

John

 

[Kevfin]

Very cool, um I mean, warm, in a hot sort of way. Congrats Mel...

 

[HBDiveGirl]

I guess you had to have been there.

John

It was a rather snarly January day at Anacapa Island, with the Spectre dive boat FULL of OW students doing the Monster-Mash shuffle from their dive stations all the way to the gates, WITH THEIR FINS ON THEIR FEET.

'scuse me... pard'n me... oops!.. sorry... whooaWhoaWHOAAOA.... thanks... sorry.. 'scuse me....

Mel had a rental drysuit as he was begining his research into which drysuit to consider for purchase. This was a new model of DUI for a test run.

He geared up with the stumbling Conga-line of newbies, console bricks swinging like wrecking balls, tanks dropping like pile drivers from too-loose BC's, .... it was a little distracting.
Mel stopped what he was doing several times to help people on either side of him.

Finally geared up, mask on, regulator in..... Mel strode in a giant way off the deck... splashed.... surfaced quickly... and motated for the swim step with intensely quiet speed.

The suit had flooded.
52F water.

His undergarments were soaked on a cold wintery day. Back on deck, he looked immediately at his teammates and said with a smile, "You guys go ahead and have a great dive while I get this drysuit sorted out. I'll join you for the next one."

Gracious and decisive.

...an hour passed...

Back on deck for the surface interval, the team gathered around a still smiling Mel to learn what the problem had been.

Mel jovially spun out the tale:

"Well, the suit is just fine.... Not a damn thing wrong with it... S'all good."

"But I learned something important."
"Those two big long space-age zippers running from hip to shoulder?"
"Well....." [we all leaned in to hear...]

"...The inside zipper is much more important than the outside zipper."



BWAAAA-HAAA-HAHAHAHAHAHA. Busted us up all over the deck!!!!
Then he got dressed in dry undergarments, zipped up both zippers, and went diving.
An unforgettable moment, filled with relentless good humor and a love of diving.


There you have it!

~~~~
Claudette

 

[pasley]

Congrats Mel!!

Looks like you remembered the zipper this time

Yep, you don't forget that more than once. Claudette has told the story as only Claudette can. Isn't she great at writing? Anyway, as she said at Anacappa making only my second dive after 20 dry (and 12 hot) months I was a tad rusty to say the least. Anyway it was my first time in a dry suit since February 2006! So anyway I zipped up, and jumped into the water where upon the suit instantly flooded, and I mean flooded!:11: Man that water was cold. So with my hopes dashed, I quickly swam to the back of the boat and lifted my bag-o-water dry-suit out of the water. I had standing water up to my knees at first I thought is was a zip seal not seated. But after checking them all and finding no reason for the flood I set everything out to dry while I thought on it and got warm. Then as I looked at the suit drying in the sun and at the two zippers laying open, it hit me, I had left the inside zipper open! So anyway the lesson learned is, if you are going to zip only one of the two zippers on the dry suit, the inside zipper is the most important one.:warning:

So every time I put on a dry suit I think of that day and share a laugh.