11.28.10
Time: 11:06am
Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper
Depth: 41ft
Bottom Time: 41 minutes
Vis: 15ft
Temp: 61°
Notes:
Casino Point is a world class dive site. It's sort of a 'Best of California Diving' location. It hosts big rocks, a ship wreck, sunken tires, a sunken swim platform, sunken piers, loads of kelp of many sizes, tons of fish, from time to time you'll even see a giant sea bass. You enjoy a dive at 30 feet just as easily as 100ft in Casino Point. It's also for divers only and is a protected habitat so the fish are super friendly, it's almost as if they know you can't do anything to them.
I love Casino Point.
This was the worst conditions I've ever seen there. Visibility was 12 to 15 feet, where it usually ranges 20 to 25 feet, often better. The surface was choppy. It was cold outside. When we got there, we slightly considered not even diving. Luckily we went in.
Despite the less than perfect conditions it was a very fun dive. We stayed above 50 feet the whole time and barely went through half a tank in 41 minutes. There were many of the classic Catalina fish (Garibaldi, Sheephead, various bass) and a couple really fun little guys including one of my favorites a C-O turbot. Jenni found a six legged star fish, quite odd.
Nothing spectacular, but a really fun little dive.
It was so cold coming out of the water we decided to stop the day at one dive. We spent the rest of the day driving around Avalon in a golf cart and shivering over some whiskey.
Life on an island is good!
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Dive 52 - Shaws Cove - Laguna Beach, CA
11.20.10
6:58am to 7:29am
Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper, Linda, Sam
Depth: 25ft
Bottom Time: 31 minutes
Vis: 12ft
Temp: 63°
Notes:
This was the beach day for our Rescue Diver Course. We were taught by Linda Shafer at Beach Cities Scuba in Orange County. She was a very good instructor, we usually work with Joe Tustison also a great instructor but he was not available on the dates we wanted.
The day started out early. We met at 6:30am. It was cold and rainy, however, it was just acceptable enough to go out.
When we first went into the water the swells were pretty mild maybe 2 feet. But within 1 minute of getting past the surf zone swells picked up to 3/4ft with some 5ft swells in there. The conditions were also pretty choppy with mild white caps in the open water. Once we dropped down it was much calmer and the conditions were actually pretty decent for Shaws Cove.
Our dive was a 'Search for Missing Diver' dive. Think of it as hide and seek. So once we were down, we swam to the main reef and the three of us taking the course waited while Linda disappeared into the blue. We waited the planned 2 minutes and began our search patterns. Per previous conversations with Jenni and Sam, we went with a U-Shaped search pattern. Basically, set your compass swim 3 minutes, turn 90°, swim 15 seconds, turn 90°, swim 3 minutes and repeat.
Sadly we did not find Linda, however, she said that she saw us swim by twice. So we did the search patterns fine, but need to be more aware with our looking around.
The rest of the day we did things like recover unconscious divers from the sea floor, do CPR in the water, take off a non-breathing victims gear, etc. etc. It was very choppy by the end of our day, Linda assured us if we were able to do our drills today we would be fine helping people in real life.
Although I hope we will never have to recover and unconscious diver and perform CPR in the ocean, it feels good to know how to handle it.
6:58am to 7:29am
Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper, Linda, Sam
Depth: 25ft
Bottom Time: 31 minutes
Vis: 12ft
Temp: 63°
Notes:
This was the beach day for our Rescue Diver Course. We were taught by Linda Shafer at Beach Cities Scuba in Orange County. She was a very good instructor, we usually work with Joe Tustison also a great instructor but he was not available on the dates we wanted.
The day started out early. We met at 6:30am. It was cold and rainy, however, it was just acceptable enough to go out.
When we first went into the water the swells were pretty mild maybe 2 feet. But within 1 minute of getting past the surf zone swells picked up to 3/4ft with some 5ft swells in there. The conditions were also pretty choppy with mild white caps in the open water. Once we dropped down it was much calmer and the conditions were actually pretty decent for Shaws Cove.
Our dive was a 'Search for Missing Diver' dive. Think of it as hide and seek. So once we were down, we swam to the main reef and the three of us taking the course waited while Linda disappeared into the blue. We waited the planned 2 minutes and began our search patterns. Per previous conversations with Jenni and Sam, we went with a U-Shaped search pattern. Basically, set your compass swim 3 minutes, turn 90°, swim 15 seconds, turn 90°, swim 3 minutes and repeat.
Sadly we did not find Linda, however, she said that she saw us swim by twice. So we did the search patterns fine, but need to be more aware with our looking around.
The rest of the day we did things like recover unconscious divers from the sea floor, do CPR in the water, take off a non-breathing victims gear, etc. etc. It was very choppy by the end of our day, Linda assured us if we were able to do our drills today we would be fine helping people in real life.
Although I hope we will never have to recover and unconscious diver and perform CPR in the ocean, it feels good to know how to handle it.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Dive 51 - La Jolla Shores - San Diego, CA
11.16.10
Time: 10:19am
Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper, Mike Kelly
Depth: 106ft
Bottom Time: 45 minutes
Vis: 20ft
Temp: 55°
Notes:
Met up with Mike Kelly, our friend from Beach Cities Scuba in Newport Beach. This was a Tuesday morning dive that we've been talking about doing for quite some time. Mike has Tuesdays off and I work 1:30pm to 10pm on Tuesdays.
We had hoped to do 2 dives, 1 at La Jolla Shores and 1 at La Jolla cove, but we were all running late and only had time for 1 dive.
It was a very nice dive, we met a couple other divers that came with us. They were nice and good to dive with as they were experienced but slow and cautious. We started the dive swimming out about 1/2 a mile then dropped down at about 30 feet. This was directly in front of the main drop off a La Jolla Shores. It drops steep from about 30 feet down to a valley that runs to something like 2500ft. We went to 106 feet and stopped.
There were many large crabs down there and some wild sea anemones. We stayed that deep for about 5 minutes and then went up to about 60 feet where there was a rock/reef about 40 feet long. We hung out there for a bit and looked at fish. There was a fun rock fish hiding as they always do.
We did an underwater swim all of the way back to the shore until we were in about 4 feet of water. We saw a couple of small string rays, a favorite of mine. About 10 minutes before the end of the dive the two guys we met parted ways to surface and swim back because one of them was out of air.
Overall a great dive. VERY cold, this actually prompted us to go buy some thicker under layers so we can dive in winter.
Time: 10:19am
Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper, Mike Kelly
Depth: 106ft
Bottom Time: 45 minutes
Vis: 20ft
Temp: 55°
Notes:
Met up with Mike Kelly, our friend from Beach Cities Scuba in Newport Beach. This was a Tuesday morning dive that we've been talking about doing for quite some time. Mike has Tuesdays off and I work 1:30pm to 10pm on Tuesdays.
We had hoped to do 2 dives, 1 at La Jolla Shores and 1 at La Jolla cove, but we were all running late and only had time for 1 dive.
It was a very nice dive, we met a couple other divers that came with us. They were nice and good to dive with as they were experienced but slow and cautious. We started the dive swimming out about 1/2 a mile then dropped down at about 30 feet. This was directly in front of the main drop off a La Jolla Shores. It drops steep from about 30 feet down to a valley that runs to something like 2500ft. We went to 106 feet and stopped.
There were many large crabs down there and some wild sea anemones. We stayed that deep for about 5 minutes and then went up to about 60 feet where there was a rock/reef about 40 feet long. We hung out there for a bit and looked at fish. There was a fun rock fish hiding as they always do.
We did an underwater swim all of the way back to the shore until we were in about 4 feet of water. We saw a couple of small string rays, a favorite of mine. About 10 minutes before the end of the dive the two guys we met parted ways to surface and swim back because one of them was out of air.
Overall a great dive. VERY cold, this actually prompted us to go buy some thicker under layers so we can dive in winter.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Dive #50 - Fraggle Rock, Catalina - 11/07/2010
· Bottom Time: 00:39
· Depth: 62ft
· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper & Joe Tustison
· Visibility: 30+ ft
· Temperature: 55º
Dive #49 - Krolls, Catalina - 11/07/2010
· Bottom Time: 00:29
· Depth: 73ft
· Buddy:Jenni Wilson-Cooper & Joe Tustison
· Visibility: 15 ft
· Temperature: 55º
Dive #48 - Krolls, Catalina - 11/07/2010
· Bottom Time: 00:26
· Depth: 99ft
· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper & Joe Tustison
· Visibility: 25+ ft
· Temperature: 55º
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Dive #47 - Picnic Beach, CA - 11/06/2010
· Time In: 12:48
· Bottom Time: 00:29
· Depth: 32ft
· Buddy: Jenni Wilson-Cooper
· Visibility: 10ft
· Temperature: 57º
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