Tell me about surf entries and exits

[TMHeimer]

How do you think that method would work in the conditions of the above video that @MaxBottomtime posted?

I figure it would work fine. Wouldn't lose a fin but maybe a head. I wouldn't consider a place like that if I were 20, let alone 71, and years ago I made some dicey entries, and worse exits.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

One of the worst features of diving Marineland was the sound. Before exiting, I would listen to the rocks tumbling in the surf. You could hear it from 100 feet offshore at 20 feet deep. The louder it was, the more you risked injury. I've seen divers break bones, get pretty bloody, and even one die of a heart attack in that surf zone.

 

[pauldw]

Last time I checked, there was only one dive shop on the entire Oregon coast; all the ones that had tried before had failed. Back when there were dive shops on the coast, if you went in and asked about local diving they would point you toward a handful of sites inside of jetties, or to local lakes. Never to the open coast (this was surprising to me when I certified inland at college, and then went back home to the coast). There have hardly ever been any journalistic features about diving on the Oregon coast, and the few that have made a dive magazine or web site usually have a cautionary aspect about them. There is a reason for all of this. The northeast Pacific frequently has horrendously dangerous conditions. It will never, ever be destination diving. Can you rock climb with heavy gear on? Manage surge and low visibility, with the resultant navigation problems? Crawl out of the surf without getting injured while being slammed down onto the rocks repeatedly, and rolled around uncontrollably? If so, maybe it's for you. But for the average diver, it would be a terrible idea. There are occasional safe days, but almost always there are not. If you can get one of those rare days when the ocean is actually flat, and when visibility is good, it's amazing. But those videos earlier in the post about Marineland? That isn't a bad day in Oregon, that's a normal day. You live by Puget Sound, correct? Dive there.

This is what you go to Oregon for, not for diving:
Pacific Northwest Scuba Divers | Scoping out shore diving access today in Oregon. | Facebook

 

[landphil]

I always go mask on, reg in- but my mask skirt is well-tucked under my hood. When it starts getting really extreme I ditch my drysuit for my 9mm wetsuit. 10 lbs less weight and some extra padding are well worth a little chill. I also keep my fins on my fin keeper strap (or sometimes just one if I need to be really quick.) I have one of the 2-strap ones, which keeps me from losing my 2nd fin while I’m putting on the 1st one. Having your hands free to pull yourself along the bottom under the waves is an underrated technique. Although, I did break my finger doing that on the Big Sur Coast last year. In another plus for cold water diving, it didn’t really start to swell up and hurt until after the dive

But the main extreme surf entry trick I now often use is diving with my wife, where she’ll call the dive or make us go somewhere much more mellow. And that should probably be your takeaway here. Because springtime is not prime season to be pioneering new dive sites on the Oregon Coast. That’s why they invented late summer and fall.

Newport and Florence both have some popular dive sites you could check out

 

[pauldw]

I always go mask on, reg in- but my mask skirt is well-tucked under my hood.

Yup. I've even heard of people whose mask strap is inside of their hood.

 

[blue steal]

View attachment 899502

Scuba diver must be always wearing a shortie

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

One of the worst features of diving Marineland was the sound. Before exiting, I would listen to the rocks tumbling in the surf. You could hear it from 100 feet offshore at 20 feet deep. The louder it was, the more you risked injury. I've seen divers break bones, get pretty bloody, and even one die of a heart attack in that surf zone.

That's a meat grinder!

 

[blue steal]

That's a meat grinder!

I finally had to give up diving at OML last year.
It’s a beautiful dive whether you enter at the point or the cove, but after over a hundred dives there I have seen to many injuries and the rock scramble to enter at the point just became to tricky for me.
Even an entry and exit at the cove can be quite “challenging” unless conditions are “doable” as our leader Reverend AL used to say.
But it is a beautiful dive when conditions are “doable”.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

 

[Chavodel8en]

Its helpful to know something about the site, and the particular surf that happens there. For example, Monastery Beach has particular surf conditions that call for specific protocols, that are slightly different from other beaches.

I do mask on, reg in. If you're knocked over it's nice to be able to see and breath. If the surf is sporty I have the mask especially tightened -- and the strap lower on my head -- as I go thru the surf, so I dont lose my mask. As Eric S. says if the surf is so rough that it might take my mask despite those precautions, then its time to find a different site.

General procedure is to wade thru the surf zone with fins securely in hand and then once past the surf, hopefully be able to float on back and don fins at leisure. Sometimes, if the ocean is still sporty, I put on just one fin (because I have one bum leg where its harder to don fins) and then swim out further to flatter water.