Leejnd
Contributor
Hey everyone! It was great to get to the beach on Saturday. And great to meet all of you (and see some old friends again)!
Josh's dive reports are pretty spot-on...the vis was, well, pretty much non-existant. Charlie didn't really want to go in, but he did so to indulge me. He's not quite as obsessed with diving as I am, and prefers to dive when the conditions indicate that it'll be worth it. But I was going absolutely crazy (as was obvious, I'm sure, by all the whining I was doing in here!) so he did it for me. What a guy.
Christian was quite gallant -- even though he couldn't dive (due to some mysterious toe injury that conveniently appeared the night before the get-together, so that he had a great excuse to not have to bother with the zero-vis dive)
he volunteered to haul us up to the cove in the back of his truck, so we didn't have to climb the hill with our gear on. That was very helpful!
The last time we tried to get in the water at Leo Carrillo Charlie and I got seriously dumped and maytagged, and Charlie sacrificed his mask to the sea gods, so we were a little leery. Luckily we were able to time our entry so that we missed the big sets, which were pretty evenly spaced. Unfortunately it seems Robert got stuck in one, so it took them a little longer to get past the surf zone, and the sea gods got a sacrifice of a snorkel from Josh. Greedy b*stards!
Once we got out a bit, we set a plan to skirt the kelp beds, which were surprisingly prolific. We dropped down into....murk, murk and more murk. Charlie and I stayed pretty much in touch contact, or we would have lost each other for sure. The plan was for me to lead, since I've got a lot more dives than Charlie. I like to tell myself that I have a pretty good sense of direction underwater, and for the most part when I look down at my compass it usually says what I'm expecting it to say. But the murk got me so twisted around that I headed off in a direction which I THOUGHT was according to plan, and Charlie signaled me our secret marital underwater signal that basically means "what the HELL are you doing? Are you stoned?" and I looked down at my compass and I was completely off. So much for ME leading the dive. Charlie took over, and we moved forward into the blackness, every now and then coming across a few rocks where we could put our face right up to it to see actual marine life. Yep, saw a few urchins! Saw a Spanish Shawl! Saw ONE fish. Woo hoo.
Given that it was heading towards a really low tide, we never got below maybe 21 fsw. After 16 minutes we surfaced to do a look-see, and saw Josh, Ana and Robert doing the same thing. We surface swam over to them, and found ourselves frolicking with a cute little harbor seal. Highlight of the dive.
The swells were rolling in a bit bigger, causing a few stomach lurches, so we decided we'd had enough. Unfortunately, between us and shore was a massive bed of kelp. We decided to drop down and swim through it, which we did. The vis got even worse (not sure how it could get much worse...from zero to negative, I guess!). Charlie lost me, even though I was right beside him, but he didn't see me, and I think he thought my tapping was the kelp talking to him, so he surfaced, so I followed...right smack dab in the middle of the thickest part of the kelp. So we had fun doing the kelp crawl out to open water. We waited for the rest of them to work their way out of the kelp, and we all had a pretty easy, well-timed exit.
Was it worth it? Depends on who you ask. Hey, I got wet...I breathed air underwater...I saw a fish! I'm happy.
Had a great time at the BBQ afterwards. Christian got a little overzealous with the heat on the first batch of burgers, which ended up rather hockey-puckish, so we fired him from chef duties and I, and then Roger, took over. We had fun chasing the squirrels away from the food for the rest of the afternoon.
A bit later we watched Josh and Adam enter the water...now that was some serious entertainment! They got POUNDED, as is clearly evidenced by Kalani's awesome pics. I was so impressed that even with those enormous breakers hitting them dead-on, neither one of them ever lost their footing and got maytagged. But it was rather tense viewing for a while...I've never seen anyone stay for that long in the absolute WORST part of the surf zone! We were all quite relieved when they finally cleared it. Phew!
Well, wish we could have stayed for the later festivities, but ya can't leave teenagers alone in the house for too long. So we headed home before dinnertime.
Thanks Christian for organizing! And thanks everyone else for showing up! I'm going to try to talk Charlie into going to the La Jolla get together next month.
Josh's dive reports are pretty spot-on...the vis was, well, pretty much non-existant. Charlie didn't really want to go in, but he did so to indulge me. He's not quite as obsessed with diving as I am, and prefers to dive when the conditions indicate that it'll be worth it. But I was going absolutely crazy (as was obvious, I'm sure, by all the whining I was doing in here!) so he did it for me. What a guy.
Christian was quite gallant -- even though he couldn't dive (due to some mysterious toe injury that conveniently appeared the night before the get-together, so that he had a great excuse to not have to bother with the zero-vis dive)
he volunteered to haul us up to the cove in the back of his truck, so we didn't have to climb the hill with our gear on. That was very helpful! The last time we tried to get in the water at Leo Carrillo Charlie and I got seriously dumped and maytagged, and Charlie sacrificed his mask to the sea gods, so we were a little leery. Luckily we were able to time our entry so that we missed the big sets, which were pretty evenly spaced. Unfortunately it seems Robert got stuck in one, so it took them a little longer to get past the surf zone, and the sea gods got a sacrifice of a snorkel from Josh. Greedy b*stards!
Once we got out a bit, we set a plan to skirt the kelp beds, which were surprisingly prolific. We dropped down into....murk, murk and more murk. Charlie and I stayed pretty much in touch contact, or we would have lost each other for sure. The plan was for me to lead, since I've got a lot more dives than Charlie. I like to tell myself that I have a pretty good sense of direction underwater, and for the most part when I look down at my compass it usually says what I'm expecting it to say. But the murk got me so twisted around that I headed off in a direction which I THOUGHT was according to plan, and Charlie signaled me our secret marital underwater signal that basically means "what the HELL are you doing? Are you stoned?" and I looked down at my compass and I was completely off. So much for ME leading the dive. Charlie took over, and we moved forward into the blackness, every now and then coming across a few rocks where we could put our face right up to it to see actual marine life. Yep, saw a few urchins! Saw a Spanish Shawl! Saw ONE fish. Woo hoo.
Given that it was heading towards a really low tide, we never got below maybe 21 fsw. After 16 minutes we surfaced to do a look-see, and saw Josh, Ana and Robert doing the same thing. We surface swam over to them, and found ourselves frolicking with a cute little harbor seal. Highlight of the dive.
The swells were rolling in a bit bigger, causing a few stomach lurches, so we decided we'd had enough. Unfortunately, between us and shore was a massive bed of kelp. We decided to drop down and swim through it, which we did. The vis got even worse (not sure how it could get much worse...from zero to negative, I guess!). Charlie lost me, even though I was right beside him, but he didn't see me, and I think he thought my tapping was the kelp talking to him, so he surfaced, so I followed...right smack dab in the middle of the thickest part of the kelp. So we had fun doing the kelp crawl out to open water. We waited for the rest of them to work their way out of the kelp, and we all had a pretty easy, well-timed exit.
Was it worth it? Depends on who you ask. Hey, I got wet...I breathed air underwater...I saw a fish! I'm happy.
Had a great time at the BBQ afterwards. Christian got a little overzealous with the heat on the first batch of burgers, which ended up rather hockey-puckish, so we fired him from chef duties and I, and then Roger, took over.
We had fun chasing the squirrels away from the food for the rest of the afternoon.A bit later we watched Josh and Adam enter the water...now that was some serious entertainment! They got POUNDED, as is clearly evidenced by Kalani's awesome pics. I was so impressed that even with those enormous breakers hitting them dead-on, neither one of them ever lost their footing and got maytagged. But it was rather tense viewing for a while...I've never seen anyone stay for that long in the absolute WORST part of the surf zone! We were all quite relieved when they finally cleared it. Phew!
Well, wish we could have stayed for the later festivities, but ya can't leave teenagers alone in the house for too long. So we headed home before dinnertime.
Thanks Christian for organizing! And thanks everyone else for showing up! I'm going to try to talk Charlie into going to the La Jolla get together next month.
However, since Josh was closer and I've already bribed him with beer, I'll believe his side of the story.
