- Messages
- 97,516
- Reaction score
- 98,623
- Location
- On the Fun Side of Trump's Wall
- # of dives
- 2500 - 4999
Strange night at Cove 2 ...
Started out by running into a couple of strange characters in the parking lot. They looked like narc'ed out WSSD candidates, for sure ...
Then, we had lighting issues. Went to start the dive, and TBone's light wouldn't fire up ... so he got out of the water and went back to his car to get his backup primary light. That wouldn't work either ... so I got out, went back to my car, and got him a light to use. Finally, back in the water and we're underway.
While all this was going on, OE2X and Lamont were in the water making friends with a couple of inquisitive harbor seals. Darn things decided to become the third buddy team for our dive, and stuck with us for the duration. They're fun to watch ... when you can see them. Problem is, they're like underwater Tasmanian devils ... everywhere they go there's this little silt tornado trailing along behind them. Boy, they make a mess.
We followed the boundary cable down to the plates at about 70 fsw ... found one nice-size octo tucked into one of the dens ... but the female that had been sitting on eggs down there for the past several months had obviously done her duty and passed away. The den was empty, and what was once a "curtain" of beaded octopus eggs was mostly gone ... just a few shreds left to show it had ever been there. We cut cross-cove, dodging enthusiastic harbor seals ... and finally made it down to the I-beams.
At that point I noticed TBone was using his Scout ... the light I had loaned him had died about 10 minutes into the dive. We're checking out all the rocks looking for the little wolfie ... didn't find it, but Lamont and I found something that looked like a really fat worm grubbing around in the rocks. No idea what it was ... never seen anything like it before. Suddenly I noticed my light was going dim. Hmmm ... I didn't think HID lights were supposed to do that. Darn thing just got real dim, real fast. So I turned it off and pulled out my backup. OK ... now we're 18 minutes into the dive and two of the four divers are on backup lights ... time to start heading upslope.
We made our way up the rope to the pilings at about 60 fsw, and took a bit of a detour to see if we could find any cool critters. Would've helped if I'd had fresher batteries in my backup light ... it was starting to look a little orange. No worries, we've still got Lamont's 18W HID light between us. Problem is, when there's little light, things tend to look different. I've done over 300 dives in that cove, and suddenly I'm looking around wondering where the heck we are. Did our safety stop (while being buzzed by the pair of seals that had stuck to us for the entire dive), and headed shoreward ... only to find ourselves out by the point. Oh well ... haven't done that for a while. Got our bearings and headed back to the entry to end the dive.
Just one of those nights, I guess. Not sure what's up with all the light failures ... sun spots, perhaps? But it was still a nice, 45 minute dive.
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
Started out by running into a couple of strange characters in the parking lot. They looked like narc'ed out WSSD candidates, for sure ...
Then, we had lighting issues. Went to start the dive, and TBone's light wouldn't fire up ... so he got out of the water and went back to his car to get his backup primary light. That wouldn't work either ... so I got out, went back to my car, and got him a light to use. Finally, back in the water and we're underway.
While all this was going on, OE2X and Lamont were in the water making friends with a couple of inquisitive harbor seals. Darn things decided to become the third buddy team for our dive, and stuck with us for the duration. They're fun to watch ... when you can see them. Problem is, they're like underwater Tasmanian devils ... everywhere they go there's this little silt tornado trailing along behind them. Boy, they make a mess.
We followed the boundary cable down to the plates at about 70 fsw ... found one nice-size octo tucked into one of the dens ... but the female that had been sitting on eggs down there for the past several months had obviously done her duty and passed away. The den was empty, and what was once a "curtain" of beaded octopus eggs was mostly gone ... just a few shreds left to show it had ever been there. We cut cross-cove, dodging enthusiastic harbor seals ... and finally made it down to the I-beams.
At that point I noticed TBone was using his Scout ... the light I had loaned him had died about 10 minutes into the dive. We're checking out all the rocks looking for the little wolfie ... didn't find it, but Lamont and I found something that looked like a really fat worm grubbing around in the rocks. No idea what it was ... never seen anything like it before. Suddenly I noticed my light was going dim. Hmmm ... I didn't think HID lights were supposed to do that. Darn thing just got real dim, real fast. So I turned it off and pulled out my backup. OK ... now we're 18 minutes into the dive and two of the four divers are on backup lights ... time to start heading upslope.
We made our way up the rope to the pilings at about 60 fsw, and took a bit of a detour to see if we could find any cool critters. Would've helped if I'd had fresher batteries in my backup light ... it was starting to look a little orange. No worries, we've still got Lamont's 18W HID light between us. Problem is, when there's little light, things tend to look different. I've done over 300 dives in that cove, and suddenly I'm looking around wondering where the heck we are. Did our safety stop (while being buzzed by the pair of seals that had stuck to us for the entire dive), and headed shoreward ... only to find ourselves out by the point. Oh well ... haven't done that for a while. Got our bearings and headed back to the entry to end the dive.
Just one of those nights, I guess. Not sure what's up with all the light failures ... sun spots, perhaps? But it was still a nice, 45 minute dive.
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
