Eric Sedletzky
Contributor
Would any of you Beach Crabs be into coming up north and checking out some of our diving?
I want to extend a personal invitation to your group to come up and join us, the North Coast Divers, for a fun filled weekend of diving and camping?
We are a group just like yours with a structure very similar, a scheduling organization and group of divers that just love to dive.
Here is the official invitation and informational:
Come one, come all,
Join me and the North Coast Divers for the 2009 Annual North Coast Party Meet & Greet.
This year we will have it at Albion River Campground in Mendocino County, California.
The Dates set are:
July 30th thru August 2nd , 2009.
Join us for a great time where we get to meet each other, dive together, eat, and drink, and party it up around a big fire at night. We dive our butts off by day and feast at night for 3 straight days.
Albion Campground is a great place to camp and hang out. Amenities include: Two areas for boat launching, docks for overnight tie up, fish cleaning station, great restrooms with flush toilets and showers, flat campsites for tents, on-site restaurant that serves up scrumptious breakfasts. They also have camp trailers for rent, kayaks for rent and free wi-fi. There is a beach right at the edge of the campground where kids can play and kayaks can be launched. Shore diving can be done from the beach as well with abalone to be found right in the cove. There are also many other locations to shore dive from and to launch kayaks all up and down the coast. All of them are in close proximity to Albion. There is Russian Gulch State Park, Van Damme Beach, Mendocino Headlands just to name a few.
The spaces people are reserving are all in D section starting with all the sites closest to the restrooms in both rows and working towards the pond. Participants will need to contact the campground through the link and reserve their sites. Once you reserve a site it's yours and you can invite your friends to share your site. Please go to their website to view a map of the facility and get the rest of the information about the facility:
Albion River Campground - Albion, California
The whole area is a destination location in itself with the town of Mendocino just a few miles north with all its Victorian architecture, quaint shops, restaurants, and art galleries. There are wineries in the inland valleys, and miles of beautiful untouched coastline. There is a full service dive shop in Fort Bragg about 15 miles north on highway 1 for air fills and any other dive equipment needs including gear and Kayak rentals.
Some things to know:
Please show up fully self sufficient in respect to food, beverages, camping supplies like camp stove, lanterns, folding chairs, tent, bedding etc, (all the basic camping equipment that youÃÍl need). Having some fire wood is nice too; the campground has fire pits.
How we do it:
Everybody handles their own breakfasts and lunches. Dinners are a pot luck (optional, you can do your own thing if you wish). The potlucks are fun to get involved in, trying different dishes people have cooked up and sharing a few of your own specialties. I've even had professional chefs (also divers) show up and really cook up some amazing stuff. The focus is on cooking up the game that we've gathered during our dive day and creating a mind blowing gourmet meal coupled with the best wine the region has to offer. The North Coast provides all sorts of seafood, rock fish, scallops, urchins, abalone, and other things.
I'll also be bringing my big barbecue which is big enough to hold probably 12 tri tips or more. It will be available for anyone to use (BYOC). Some people also bring a grate or piece of expanded sheet metal and barbecue right on their fire pit. This is the classic "roughing it" style and it works great too.
If you plan to hunt and more specifically gather abalone, you'll need a fishing license and an abalone report card with tags. Please go to the DFG website to learn more about the regulations. It is important that you thoroughly understand the laws because DFG has a zero tolerance policy in regards to infractions in the taking of abalone. If you do everything right you'll be just fine.
Abalone season re-opens on August 1st, so that Saturday we can hit the water with our freediving gear and go get 'em!
The diving in the area is spectacular. If you have a boat or kayak you are highly encouraged to bring it. The area is very rocky with great underwater structure and amazing sea life. There are walls, pinnacles, sand channels, and all kinds of other cool things to see. It's like miles and miles of Point Lobos.
The water is 44 to 53 degrees on average year around. In August it will be in the low 50's.
A 7 mil farmer john will work fine or a drysuit. For freediving a 7 mil one piece with hood is fine. Make sure you have sufficient exposure protection for your own enjoyment, nobody likes to be cold. But since you guys dive Socal, you're no stranger to cold water. You'll be fine.
Also: You don't need to be a hunter to attend. There will be plenty of people there that love to sight see or take pictures
Thank you very much, and hope to see you guys there.
Eric Sedletzky
(ZKY)
I want to extend a personal invitation to your group to come up and join us, the North Coast Divers, for a fun filled weekend of diving and camping?
We are a group just like yours with a structure very similar, a scheduling organization and group of divers that just love to dive.
Here is the official invitation and informational:
Come one, come all,
Join me and the North Coast Divers for the 2009 Annual North Coast Party Meet & Greet.
This year we will have it at Albion River Campground in Mendocino County, California.
The Dates set are:
July 30th thru August 2nd , 2009.
Join us for a great time where we get to meet each other, dive together, eat, and drink, and party it up around a big fire at night. We dive our butts off by day and feast at night for 3 straight days.
Albion Campground is a great place to camp and hang out. Amenities include: Two areas for boat launching, docks for overnight tie up, fish cleaning station, great restrooms with flush toilets and showers, flat campsites for tents, on-site restaurant that serves up scrumptious breakfasts. They also have camp trailers for rent, kayaks for rent and free wi-fi. There is a beach right at the edge of the campground where kids can play and kayaks can be launched. Shore diving can be done from the beach as well with abalone to be found right in the cove. There are also many other locations to shore dive from and to launch kayaks all up and down the coast. All of them are in close proximity to Albion. There is Russian Gulch State Park, Van Damme Beach, Mendocino Headlands just to name a few.
The spaces people are reserving are all in D section starting with all the sites closest to the restrooms in both rows and working towards the pond. Participants will need to contact the campground through the link and reserve their sites. Once you reserve a site it's yours and you can invite your friends to share your site. Please go to their website to view a map of the facility and get the rest of the information about the facility:
Albion River Campground - Albion, California
The whole area is a destination location in itself with the town of Mendocino just a few miles north with all its Victorian architecture, quaint shops, restaurants, and art galleries. There are wineries in the inland valleys, and miles of beautiful untouched coastline. There is a full service dive shop in Fort Bragg about 15 miles north on highway 1 for air fills and any other dive equipment needs including gear and Kayak rentals.
Some things to know:
Please show up fully self sufficient in respect to food, beverages, camping supplies like camp stove, lanterns, folding chairs, tent, bedding etc, (all the basic camping equipment that youÃÍl need). Having some fire wood is nice too; the campground has fire pits.
How we do it:
Everybody handles their own breakfasts and lunches. Dinners are a pot luck (optional, you can do your own thing if you wish). The potlucks are fun to get involved in, trying different dishes people have cooked up and sharing a few of your own specialties. I've even had professional chefs (also divers) show up and really cook up some amazing stuff. The focus is on cooking up the game that we've gathered during our dive day and creating a mind blowing gourmet meal coupled with the best wine the region has to offer. The North Coast provides all sorts of seafood, rock fish, scallops, urchins, abalone, and other things.
I'll also be bringing my big barbecue which is big enough to hold probably 12 tri tips or more. It will be available for anyone to use (BYOC). Some people also bring a grate or piece of expanded sheet metal and barbecue right on their fire pit. This is the classic "roughing it" style and it works great too.
If you plan to hunt and more specifically gather abalone, you'll need a fishing license and an abalone report card with tags. Please go to the DFG website to learn more about the regulations. It is important that you thoroughly understand the laws because DFG has a zero tolerance policy in regards to infractions in the taking of abalone. If you do everything right you'll be just fine.
Abalone season re-opens on August 1st, so that Saturday we can hit the water with our freediving gear and go get 'em!
The diving in the area is spectacular. If you have a boat or kayak you are highly encouraged to bring it. The area is very rocky with great underwater structure and amazing sea life. There are walls, pinnacles, sand channels, and all kinds of other cool things to see. It's like miles and miles of Point Lobos.
The water is 44 to 53 degrees on average year around. In August it will be in the low 50's.
A 7 mil farmer john will work fine or a drysuit. For freediving a 7 mil one piece with hood is fine. Make sure you have sufficient exposure protection for your own enjoyment, nobody likes to be cold. But since you guys dive Socal, you're no stranger to cold water. You'll be fine.
Also: You don't need to be a hunter to attend. There will be plenty of people there that love to sight see or take pictures
Thank you very much, and hope to see you guys there.
Eric Sedletzky
(ZKY)
