Me and FrankF got there around 7am. The ocean was a sheet of glass, almost like most of the spots on the North shore of LI.
We took a walk down to figure out exactly where the wrecks were and plan our entry. The retreat is right in front of the site, right next to it is the condos (where you can't park, even this time of year with an empty lot) so we parked next to the Church. As we were about to get our gear, someone came up and told us we could probably park in the Beach Club next to the condos, so we moved...again.
As we're unloading the old guy who owns the beach club comes out and says we can't park there. We talk to hime for a minute, then I continue hauling gear as Frank continues to chat with him and gets him to change his mind. We set our gear up on the wall in front of the beach club, and take our sweet as time, as we're both pretty tired from hauling all the gear a few hundred feet.
Then I notice it's pretty close to our planned time, and the water isn't as calm as it was when we first showed up. We rush to finish rigging our gear and head towards the water, and down the beach a good 100 feet to the jetty that the wrecks are off of. At this point I feel like I just ran a marathon. Also the waves are getting bigger and it's already half an hour past slack, by the time we swim out it would be another 10-15min and that's without taking a much needed rest. Plus we're just rushing to get in the water in general. I figure you add all of that up and we're just asking for trouble. So I call the dive.
Next we head to Belmar, planning to do the back bay, behind Shark River Inlet, where the tide won't really be an issue. We get there and it's choppy as hell, especially for the bay, and vis is 0, so we don't even make an attempt.
So basically we both got up really early to get get a couple slices of pizza! I did get to test out my p-vavle though!
I do want to try to do this dive again though. I think the best plan is to park in the back of the condo lot, just to dump your gear (It's much closer to the beach than where we were), then maybe park by the church. Bring your gear to the jetty to rig it, so you're not walking as far on the beach in your rig. Also get there 1 1/2 - 2 hours ahead of time, because even with that plan you have to haul gear pretty far. You really need to factor in time to take a rest before jumping in.
I have a few pics I'll post in the next few days.
