Well i promised many of you a report on my trip and here it is:
What a blast of a weekend, it was over too soon, but I cant think of a trip I enjoyed more. I am now sitting in work wondering where I will get the energy from, but who cares, its all in the name of the love of diving!!
So it all started last Friday morning, I flew out of Orlando at 7am (EST) and arrived at 9am (PST), I havent traveled across the country and just looking out of the window was kind of cool to see what kind of shape the southern part of this country looked like, at least from the air. Got in to LAX, finally met Jess (Jessejean) who I had been chatting to for a while and trying to organize this trip with. We set off for the beach, and by noon we had grabbed a bit of breakfast and were in the water in true dive bunny style! We set out from a little cove at the Leo Carrillo beach, swam out past the rocks, through the small amount of swell, dropping in over some of the kelp. The beach was approximately N-S, just around the headland, the swell was up enough for a few desperate surfers, who couldnt wait for anything larger to come in, to catch a little action. We found the viz was only about 5-10ft, we stuck kind of close together, the surge at 20ft was still enough to move us around a good bit. We kicked to hold position when the surge was against and then kicked away when the surge was with us to get some jet propulsion (a theme for the weekend I was to find out). When we shot with the surge, we soared through some pretty nice kelp, got a little close to a few rocks, potentially cold water coral, but I couldnt really tell. The big trouble about the surge was that you could easily get separated due to the distance you might cover during one of the rides in fact at one point we each went a different way around a rock and lost each other, surface from 18ft and hooked up to go down again. There were stone crabs everywhere, quite a few fish, we thought we saw a ray hidden in the sand, but after chatting about size, shape and appearance it might have been a sand tiger or something. The water a was a little chillier than I think most of my WWW dive buddies back home could handle, somewhere in the lower 60s, my 5mm was good to go in the temp, a little 3mm hood, but didnt have any gloves. So after about 40 mins I am looking at about 1/3 of a tank, we start swimming back up north to our entry/exit point, but realize we are really close to the rocks at the entry, with the surge kicking us around a bit its something we wanted to avoid! That was a sweet little dive, but things only got better from there.
For the second dive we hooked up with a guy that Jess knew from an LDS she is getting in with the staff of. He took us to a new site that she hadnt dove yet and it proved to be an improvement over the first site. We parked on the side of the road again, got down onto the beach and started getting suited up. Dave, the LDS guy, had a bit of trouble with his suit, the zipper popped off and he was left suitless, so he ran back to the store to get another one whilst Jess and I jumped in. Dave gave us a briefing of what to expect. I would say this was about a half-mile long stretch of kelp running E-W, although for some reason I thought it was N-S (note to self, take those compass bearings!). There was a long shore current and we were going to ride that from one end to the other, first hiking up the shore to the west end and ending up just east of the steps we got onto the beach from. We got in, but unfortunately Jess had kept the same weighting from her first dive in 2x3mm full suits and was now using a two-piece 7mm suit. She tried to get down, but to no avail. I knew I might be 2# or so overweighted, but wasnt trying to push being completely rock solid on minimal weighting, so I had some to spare. She took two 2# weights out of my trim pockets and handed them off to me to put in her trim pockets. One of those pockets was inside out and when I tried to put the weight in what I thought was the pocket, it was the gap behind the pocket and she watched the weight drop quickly to the floor. One duck dive and a little searching (with surface support/direction from Jess) and I managed to find it I was as light as I thought I would be, but with a little suit compression I was able to stay down. I finally loaded her up and we set off on the dive, knowing either of us could end up too light at the end. First we got into a nice thick bit of kelp, with some cool little channels of rock, that when the surge pushed, would shoot you through like a cannon almost like riding the flow in some of the springs, but unlike most of the springs I didnt know quite what was around the corner! The viz at Deer Creek was a good deal better than at Leo, so we managed to stay in touch really easily, the viz might have been 15ft or so. We saw a huge ray that had tried burying itself in the sand, but then rose up doing a king cobra impression as we circled him for a little time. The kelp was pretty thick here compared to Leo, or at least it felt that way. Due to Jesss good compass work we stayed on track following the shore, I thought we were aiming to go south (N-S shore), when in fact that was taking us out to sea from the actual shoreline good job one of us was on that game! We ended the dive and found ourselves at the end of the kelp run, but blocked from shore by yet more rocks, we surfaced to work out our best way back and I must admit due to being light I really had to push myself down to go along the bottom and miss the rocks. We got out from that dive and Dave was asking us about doing another directly afterwards as he was jonesing to get wet, but we knew we wanted to hit a night dive, and another before that would have made us too cold. So we sat out for about an hour or so till the twilight started to set in, jumped back out and did the same dive as a threesome. I brought over my big old HID, which was probably overkill with a little backscatter, but I saw so many fish and crustaceans that I might not have if I hadnt have had my stadium lighting. Between the two afternoon dives, I saw tons of fish, some thick kelp and played yet more in the surge. It was a good day that finally ended around 11pm when I crashed on Jesss friends couch only managed 3 dives, 130-140 mins underwater and being up for 22 hours, still plenty of energy for the rest of the weekend!
Part 2 to come.
What a blast of a weekend, it was over too soon, but I cant think of a trip I enjoyed more. I am now sitting in work wondering where I will get the energy from, but who cares, its all in the name of the love of diving!!
So it all started last Friday morning, I flew out of Orlando at 7am (EST) and arrived at 9am (PST), I havent traveled across the country and just looking out of the window was kind of cool to see what kind of shape the southern part of this country looked like, at least from the air. Got in to LAX, finally met Jess (Jessejean) who I had been chatting to for a while and trying to organize this trip with. We set off for the beach, and by noon we had grabbed a bit of breakfast and were in the water in true dive bunny style! We set out from a little cove at the Leo Carrillo beach, swam out past the rocks, through the small amount of swell, dropping in over some of the kelp. The beach was approximately N-S, just around the headland, the swell was up enough for a few desperate surfers, who couldnt wait for anything larger to come in, to catch a little action. We found the viz was only about 5-10ft, we stuck kind of close together, the surge at 20ft was still enough to move us around a good bit. We kicked to hold position when the surge was against and then kicked away when the surge was with us to get some jet propulsion (a theme for the weekend I was to find out). When we shot with the surge, we soared through some pretty nice kelp, got a little close to a few rocks, potentially cold water coral, but I couldnt really tell. The big trouble about the surge was that you could easily get separated due to the distance you might cover during one of the rides in fact at one point we each went a different way around a rock and lost each other, surface from 18ft and hooked up to go down again. There were stone crabs everywhere, quite a few fish, we thought we saw a ray hidden in the sand, but after chatting about size, shape and appearance it might have been a sand tiger or something. The water a was a little chillier than I think most of my WWW dive buddies back home could handle, somewhere in the lower 60s, my 5mm was good to go in the temp, a little 3mm hood, but didnt have any gloves. So after about 40 mins I am looking at about 1/3 of a tank, we start swimming back up north to our entry/exit point, but realize we are really close to the rocks at the entry, with the surge kicking us around a bit its something we wanted to avoid! That was a sweet little dive, but things only got better from there.
For the second dive we hooked up with a guy that Jess knew from an LDS she is getting in with the staff of. He took us to a new site that she hadnt dove yet and it proved to be an improvement over the first site. We parked on the side of the road again, got down onto the beach and started getting suited up. Dave, the LDS guy, had a bit of trouble with his suit, the zipper popped off and he was left suitless, so he ran back to the store to get another one whilst Jess and I jumped in. Dave gave us a briefing of what to expect. I would say this was about a half-mile long stretch of kelp running E-W, although for some reason I thought it was N-S (note to self, take those compass bearings!). There was a long shore current and we were going to ride that from one end to the other, first hiking up the shore to the west end and ending up just east of the steps we got onto the beach from. We got in, but unfortunately Jess had kept the same weighting from her first dive in 2x3mm full suits and was now using a two-piece 7mm suit. She tried to get down, but to no avail. I knew I might be 2# or so overweighted, but wasnt trying to push being completely rock solid on minimal weighting, so I had some to spare. She took two 2# weights out of my trim pockets and handed them off to me to put in her trim pockets. One of those pockets was inside out and when I tried to put the weight in what I thought was the pocket, it was the gap behind the pocket and she watched the weight drop quickly to the floor. One duck dive and a little searching (with surface support/direction from Jess) and I managed to find it I was as light as I thought I would be, but with a little suit compression I was able to stay down. I finally loaded her up and we set off on the dive, knowing either of us could end up too light at the end. First we got into a nice thick bit of kelp, with some cool little channels of rock, that when the surge pushed, would shoot you through like a cannon almost like riding the flow in some of the springs, but unlike most of the springs I didnt know quite what was around the corner! The viz at Deer Creek was a good deal better than at Leo, so we managed to stay in touch really easily, the viz might have been 15ft or so. We saw a huge ray that had tried burying itself in the sand, but then rose up doing a king cobra impression as we circled him for a little time. The kelp was pretty thick here compared to Leo, or at least it felt that way. Due to Jesss good compass work we stayed on track following the shore, I thought we were aiming to go south (N-S shore), when in fact that was taking us out to sea from the actual shoreline good job one of us was on that game! We ended the dive and found ourselves at the end of the kelp run, but blocked from shore by yet more rocks, we surfaced to work out our best way back and I must admit due to being light I really had to push myself down to go along the bottom and miss the rocks. We got out from that dive and Dave was asking us about doing another directly afterwards as he was jonesing to get wet, but we knew we wanted to hit a night dive, and another before that would have made us too cold. So we sat out for about an hour or so till the twilight started to set in, jumped back out and did the same dive as a threesome. I brought over my big old HID, which was probably overkill with a little backscatter, but I saw so many fish and crustaceans that I might not have if I hadnt have had my stadium lighting. Between the two afternoon dives, I saw tons of fish, some thick kelp and played yet more in the surge. It was a good day that finally ended around 11pm when I crashed on Jesss friends couch only managed 3 dives, 130-140 mins underwater and being up for 22 hours, still plenty of energy for the rest of the weekend!
Part 2 to come.
. I will also hope to plan trips to other diving areas of this country as time goes on, PNW, Great Lakes, cavern and cave areas in other states, Mid-Atlantic and the NE, if anyone wants to jump on board be my guest!
