Palin' around The Palawan: October 10, 2009

[HBDiveGirl]

Ken and I had the fun of diving the Palawan for the first time this past Saturday, in extraordinary conditions.

What a day for romping around with X-Scooters!

11:30 AM, Saturday October 10, 2009.
132fsw max depth, about 54F on the wreck.
Vis at the bottom was about 50 feet... with so much ambient light that HIDs were only needed for signaling and enhancing colors of the beautiful life forms.

Unforgettable.
Both of us had heard about this nearby wreck for years, but it was never the right time to dive it until this past weekend.

It was so very worth waiting for!

I'm a wreck-naive, SoCal diver, no doubt.
It's a short list I've dived in the past 6 years, and most are as much rubble as wreck:
Valiant
SueJac
Ace 1
Hogan
Georgia Straits
Avalon
Olympic
F.S. Loop, and several others in the San Pedro area.
Ruby E (the toy boat cake decoration!)
The Yukon (the newest, and the only one that's mostly intact)

And then there's the Palawan: A combination Liberty ship hull, gigantic planter box, fish holder, and half-pipe scooter park!

This upright hull is over 400 feet long.

Big. Really big.

Dropping like a brick from the ceiling, my eyes opened wide, trying to take in the huge stern that suddenly slammed into view.

It was disorienting, especially as we were scootering downwards, head first, in 5th gear.
I had to slow up, rotate in space and get the enemy's gate to be down... where it belonged!
It was weird!

Once the sand agreed to be on the floor instead of the wall, the size of the ship made sense.
I've walked the decks and compartments of a living Liberty ship in San Pedro many times: The S.S. Lane Victory.

It's incredibly cool to be able to dive an intentionally sunken version of a ship I've walked through.

Anyone thinking of diving the Palawan owes it to themselves to visit the Lane Victory first. It certainly made my experience even richer.

From gigantic to miniscule: we kept noticing hundreds of nudibranchs, like push-pins decorating this 400 foot long bulletin board of a ship. I loved scootering the entirety of the starboard hull, occassionally zipping up to the corynactis-decorated top rail, and then zooming back down to smile at the ling cod lying about on the sandy "beach" all around the ship. (All they need are beach towels, books and chilled drinks to complete the picture!)

Rounding the bow, Ken and I arced the X-scooters up and over... into the wide open compartments where the forward deck used to be. There are some nasty small crawl spaces visible, but those are gladly someone else's cup of tea. I enjoyed the huge open cargo holds, and swooped about like a skateboarder cranking turns in an empty swimming pool.

We turned back towards the stern and the hull went on and on and on... "WowThisIsBig" kept looping through my brain. Wow....

We were back at the shot-line with tons of time to spare, so we hopped and skipped our way through the open spaces of the hull almost back to the bow again. I felt like a kid in a playground, needing to try out all the equipment. Three other divers on scooters (with HIDs) zoomed around... looking about 3 feet tall next to this reclining skyscraper of a shipwreck.

Who knows when I'll get to experience the Palawan with this great visibility again. I kept burning the images into my memory, intentionally, gratefully.

Ken and I had just a superb time.
What a place. What a dive.

Many Many thanks to Laila and Chris for inviting us along and DM'ing an excellent day of diving.

Ken, "Thanks" are inadequate. You are a remarkable teammate. Inestimable.
I loved this dive beyond words, (but I still had to try.)

~~~~
Claudette

 

[drbill]

Whew... I thought this was another post about Palin in The Pub! When I dive Palawan, it will be in the Philippines but glad you and Ken had another amazing adventure, 'Dette! Hey, you forgot to include the Pisces and the two sailboats in the dive park among your wreck dives (tee hee).

 

[Teamcasa]

Thanks for the report Claudette. We were diving the Yukon and Ruby E last Sunday and had epic vis (30-40) there as well. I'll have to put the Palawan on my list now.

 

[Mo2vation]

For years, and I mean FOR YEARS I've been invited on trip after trip to dive the Palawan wreck. The shop I got my AOW from years ago used to go out there regularly, and they used to ask me out. I know private boaters that dive it and have invited me. Its so close you can kayak out to the thing - but like the illusive Farnsworth banks (took me 4 or 5 tries over about 5 years) I finally got to dive the Palawan this weekend.

And could the conditions have been any better?

Warm, calm, clear day - no wind, no swell. The water was clear with just a band of yuck at from about 30 to about 25 feet - then clear again.

I had a chance to dive this trip with some good friends, met some new ones, and just had the best day ever. So many new things tried and learned - I can't wait to get out there again.


The Palawan


This is a very big. I've read varying sizes from 350 feet to "over 400 feet" to 441 on the Cal Wreck Divers site. Its the biggest thing I've been on since the Grove (which was sideways last time I was there) in Fl. It is very scooterable with lots of scoot throughs, tons to see along the outside and top.

It was sunk as an artificial reef in 1977, so it was pretty much stripped before it was sunk. It was on the outside - we didn't go in.

Its kinda funky - as its sunk so deep into the mud over the years that when you're inside (we peeked in, but didn't penetrate more than a couple of feet) you're probably deeper than the sand!

I didn't bring the camera on this trip, as we had too many new things going on and I wanted to keep the new stuff top of mind. And that's too bad, as this would have been the day for wide angle on both wrecks. We counted 10 species of Nudis on this thing within the first 5 or 10 minutes (as we scooted along) - its covered. Mini Metridiums, corrys, bryzoan and all kinds of neat stuff.

I can't get over how clear it was. It was just lovely! A little chilly (52) but I replaced all my gloves on Friday night, so I was warm and toasty on this dive.

There is a very cool debris field. Well, there are two - one on port and one on starboard. The port field is a big yawn. The Starboard field is great. There are a zillion large cement (?) columns all over the place, like what your table after a jenga drop looks like. There were lobster everywhere. So many fish.

So much to see - we were only on the thing for 28 minutes - time to scoot all the way around it once, check out both debris fields, scoot around the top under the gunnels once, scoot through a bunch of holes, peek inside and then head back up.

So much fun!!! It was clear enough that the boat filled my field of view when we hit about 60 feet on the way down.

I can't wait to go back.



The Avalon



This was amazing. This is like 4 dives in one.

This is a wreck, apparently going down in a storm in the late 60's. The only thing that is recognizable is the bow, which looks like a bow. The rest of the thing is all over.

There is something that looks like the top deck - with metal plates and stuff.

A ways away there is a tower that looks like the top of a large crane.

A little bit the other way there are large tracks like the bottom of a tank, with wheels and all manner of industrial looking schmootz with what looks like the base of the tower.

Over in that other direction there is a large room that makes a very cool swim-through with light pouring through and illuminating about a hundred huge rubberlipped perch in there.

Go that way for a bit and you'll come to many large steel plates tumbled over rocks forming lots of hiding holes filled (and by filled I mean 20 to 50 in a hole) with large lobster.

There were huge schools of fish gathering over the bow - so we scooted through them in the clear water. There are more Fed Ex Nudi's then I've ever seen on any 5 dives. Hundreds on the bow. Hundreds. From rice kernel size to 4 inches. They were everywhere.

Did I mention the fish? Huge schools of perch, jack mackerel, and blacksmith. So many fish on this thing.

The deal is this: Its all over the place. Without a scooter we would have never seen it all. Huge props to Chris who told us to go to the stern and gave us perfect compass directions. The stern is where its all going on.

Unlike the Palawan, which is in sand and mud, the Avalon is on a rocky reef. So there is kelp, and fish, and amazing rock structure all around the wreck. And lobster - more lobster than I've ever seen. They were everywhere.

And ling cod. BIG lings. Not Edmonds sofa-sized freaks, but big for SoCal - 3 and 4 footers. One huge pregnant one was not amused when we got a little close to her. Sheephead - also big. And hiding in the lobster holes (maybe hiding from the Lings?)... which is weird. That's like hiding in the pantry.

We were down there for a long time, and were having so much fun. We finally decided we better get back up, as everyone was waiting on us (again....)


We came up, and before we got out of our gear we hear: "the bar's open...." Our host was really a sweetie! Excellent group.

Just a super trip. Both dives were excellent. Clear, fun, so much to see..... MAN! I can't wait to go back.

They were both so different. The Palawan with its massive, intact bulk on the sand, and the Avalon with its spread-out, broken up attempt to become part of the rocky reef its laying on.

I can't recommend these two stops enough.

Claudette - you are the best buddy ever. Thanks for the hook up and thanks for two more great dives. The things we get to see. Amazing.


---
Ken

 

[DwayneJ]

Your ascents are quick? Any reason??

 

[limeyx]

Your ascents are quick? Any reason??

He didnt want the boat to run out of ice-cream before he got back?

 

[Mo2vation]

He didnt want the boat to run out of ice-cream before he got back?

yeah that's it.

;-)

Two minutes to drop from the surface to 115 feet is fast?

Scooters help, I guess. Never thought much about descending fast.

---
Ken

 

[DwayneJ]

yeah that's it.

;-)

Two minutes to drop from the surface to 115 feet is fast?

Scooters help, I guess. Never thought much about descending fast.

---
Ken

Ascent is when you go up and decent is when you go down. Your two dive reports show considerably faster ascent than 30ft/min.

 

[Mo2vation]

Ascent is when you go up and decent is when you go down.

Your two dive reports show considerably faster ascent than 30ft/min.

Basic scuba certs teach 30ft/min except for PADI who still teaches 60ft/min.

Yes - our ASCENTS on scooter dives are almost always in the mid to high 50's - sometimes faster. I think they're averages on the Sensus over some small part of the ascent... not too sure. I don't get it, but that's how they show on the graphs.

Look at the time (well, the graph in the pic isn't interactive) - we left 119 FSW at 31 minutes and popped at about 59 minutes. It took us 28 minutes to rise 119 feet. From 104 to 40 feet it took us 10 minutes.

The ascent wasn't a rocket ride to the surface. I don't get how Sensus figures these out. It may be in the owners guide someplace.

Who knows.


---
Ken

 

[Codyjp]

If I put my arm down low then raise it above my shoulder with my Oceanic it it will register an ascent too fast. It averages only very smallest of movements. I don't pay much attention to it anymore.