The Barge

On Saturday, we met up with Suzanne, Ted and Kevin at the Breakwater. First, Rob, Suzanne and I did a quick skills dive (boring). We did some valve drills, S-drills, shot a bag, and did a 6 minute ascent. I couldn't reach my isolator, because my tanks were tilting to the left. Boohoo. So after that dive, I adjusted my harness, and things were better on the second dive. By the time we got out of the water, Ted and Kevin had arrived. 35 ft, 30 minutes, 50 degrees

For the second dive, we went out to the barge. Rob and I had never been there before. Rob and Suzanne teamed up, and Ted, Kevin and I were the second team. We dropped pretty far out along the wall and swam out until Kevin pointed out the cinder block. Ted tied off his spool and we swam out towards where the permanent line starts. We found it without too much difficulty and Ted tied off his spool. We followed the line out (it is a long kick :) ) and saw a bunch of squid eggs on the way out (and a bunch of starfish eating squid eggs). Then Kevin and Suzanne each tied off their reels at the end of the line. Not long after that, we came to the barge. I immediately found a pretty big clown nudibranch in a nook on the barge. There were some metridium on the barge, and we saw another really big clown nudibranch on the other side. The barge was pretty well covered with red bryozoan (Rob noticed some red smears on my wing at the end of the day... whoops). Rob saw a rainbow nudibranch. There were a ton of fish. I have to say I don't really remember (or never noticed) that much else about what was growing on it, because by this point I was really really cold. Rob does not remember much else that he saw either, and he also attributed that to being really cold. We had planned for a max dive time of 90 minutes. So, just as I hit my turn pressure, we hit 45 minutes. How convenient. We headed back, and I saw a couple hermissenda in the sand near the line. Rob and Suzanne apparently saw a fringehead. I was jealous, since I've never seen one but always wanted to! I also saw two rainbow nudibranchs on the same tube anemone (one big reddish/purple one, and a smaller white one). Rob and Suzanne were waiting for us at the tie off when we got back. Apparently they'd been waiting a couple minutes, since Rob is a speed demon. Or maybe I am just slow and Ted and Kevin were going slowly for me :) Anyhoo, we headed in along the wall. Rob and Suzanne quickly left us in their dust again. We ascended near the gate, and headed in on the surface. Ted and I each did a weight check since Ted was using his new tanks for the first time, and I forgot to do a check last weekend in the 85s. We were all freezing by this point so we hurried in. It had been raining on and off throughout the day, and while we were cleaning up, it started to pour. So getting out of the water didn't really help me warm up. 62 ft, 90 minutes, 47 degress (brr)

Nils and Jonathan were standing along the wall as we got out of the water. They were heading to Bullwhackers for lunch, so we all agreed to join them. Finding parking in Monterey on a Saturday afternoon (even a cold, rainy one) was a bit of an ordeal. But we finally managed to park and Nils and Jonathan had gotten one of the tables by the fire. And I had some hot chocolate (which Rob made fun of, but hey, I wasn't the only one drinking hot chocolate!).

Afterwards we went to Any Water Sports to get our tanks filled, and we saw Kevin, Ted, and Nils again. Kevin and Ted gave us a quick tutorial on laying line (using Frank's display reels, hehe). So now we can get ourselves back to the barge, or more importantly, back from the barge.