I booked a double dip on the Vandenberg with Captain’s Corner with an excellent dive guide. Surface ride had some chop with a couple of other passengers not feeling so well, scattered short rain showers. I brought my own mask and regulators. The rental BC was an Atomic BC1 and I used their full foot fins. The cylinders were AL80 yoke and I requested 30% nitrox. They had hard weights in 2 and 3 pound increments. There is a larger cooler to put any drinks or snacks that you bring onboard for the dive interval, which is about an hour. There are two fin off ladders for coming back aboard.
Although I had my own pair of gloves, they provide gloves for descent and ascent along the mooring line. The divers initially descend along a vertical line hanging off a tag line at the stern, and then follow a horizontal guide line at 15 feet forward to the mooring line for final descent to the wreck. They also hang an AL80 with a regulator at 15 feet in case a diver needed gas to finish their safety stop. Of note, the cylinder valve is off, so a diver would have to turn it on to use the gas.
The water temperature was 83-85 at depth, visibility was excellent, and almost no current, to the point where we could ascend and descend easily along the line without having to hang onto it, and hold the safety stop easily near the guide line. I was in a rashguard and swim trunks and very comfortable.
We were able to dive our tank according to our own gas consumption and NDL time. Southpoint Divers moored in after us and were running much shorter dive times. They were pulling up their divers from the end of their second dive shortly after I finished my descent at the start of my second dive.
There are 5 mooring balls from bow to stern with the best one being the one in the center of the ship. That is the one we moored to. Dive one was from the center to the bow, and dive two was from the center to the stern. Swim throughs could be fairly straight forward, but my guide knew some of the ones that had some interesting verticality.
I forgot how much easier diving is without a drysuit and in full foot fins. We saw moray eels, a resident sea anemone, crabs, a juvenile spotted drum, an adult spotted drum, an octopus, scallops, a colony of what looked like spiky conch and eggs, a couple of lionfish, and lots of little stuff that I don’t know the name of.
Highly recommend Captain’s Corner with a guide, if only to show a lot more to a new diver than they would be able to find on their own. There were a set of regulars on the trip as well, one solo tech diver that did penetration, as well as another diver who had been on the Vandenberg close to 100 times.
Although I had my own pair of gloves, they provide gloves for descent and ascent along the mooring line. The divers initially descend along a vertical line hanging off a tag line at the stern, and then follow a horizontal guide line at 15 feet forward to the mooring line for final descent to the wreck. They also hang an AL80 with a regulator at 15 feet in case a diver needed gas to finish their safety stop. Of note, the cylinder valve is off, so a diver would have to turn it on to use the gas.
The water temperature was 83-85 at depth, visibility was excellent, and almost no current, to the point where we could ascend and descend easily along the line without having to hang onto it, and hold the safety stop easily near the guide line. I was in a rashguard and swim trunks and very comfortable.
We were able to dive our tank according to our own gas consumption and NDL time. Southpoint Divers moored in after us and were running much shorter dive times. They were pulling up their divers from the end of their second dive shortly after I finished my descent at the start of my second dive.
There are 5 mooring balls from bow to stern with the best one being the one in the center of the ship. That is the one we moored to. Dive one was from the center to the bow, and dive two was from the center to the stern. Swim throughs could be fairly straight forward, but my guide knew some of the ones that had some interesting verticality.
I forgot how much easier diving is without a drysuit and in full foot fins. We saw moray eels, a resident sea anemone, crabs, a juvenile spotted drum, an adult spotted drum, an octopus, scallops, a colony of what looked like spiky conch and eggs, a couple of lionfish, and lots of little stuff that I don’t know the name of.
Highly recommend Captain’s Corner with a guide, if only to show a lot more to a new diver than they would be able to find on their own. There were a set of regulars on the trip as well, one solo tech diver that did penetration, as well as another diver who had been on the Vandenberg close to 100 times.
