Foggy Banks

Sunday was the last BAUE Big Sur charter for the season. I must say that I was a little relieved that I would be finished with 6 AM boat departures for the year :) Luckily we were able to load our gear on the boat the night before, so we didn't really need to be awake in any sense in the morning when we boarded the boat. We headed down the coast, and were greeted by fog. I'm not really sure where the fog got bad, because I was sleeping on and off on the way down. At some point, I awoke to fog. We headed to Midway Pinnacle, where the first dive was planned, and it was foggy. After unsuccessfully trying to wait out the fog, we headed to Las Piedras Wall, and the first group (not me) did a dive there. After their dive, we decided to head out to the bank (the second dive was planned for Sur19) to see what the weather looked like there. It was still foggy out there, with variable fog on the way. So we quickly determined it was not diveable and headed back to Las Piedras.

When we got back there, it wasn't quite as nice as it was when we left, but it was still not foggy right around the site. It was pretty overcast though, whereas it had been pretty sunny when we left. The conditions there were not that great. It was pretty stirred up on the bottom, and the water was very green. The dive was so underwhelming that Rob did not even take his camera out to take any pictures :( We circled the whole pinnacle, starting at the south end and going counter-clockwise. So we played under the overhang twice, at the beginning and end of the dive. The only notable sitings were rockfish. There were some impressively big fish, especially vermilions. But even the blue and olive rockfish were pretty big. There were also a bunch of little schools of juveniles, including quite a few tiny rosies. At the end of the dive, we worked our way up to the shallower areas near the south end, and met up with the other team to start our drift. The reef comes up to 60-some feet, so we did our gas switch and then shot our bags and started the drift.

By the time we got to the surface, conditions had deteriorated and it was foggier. The other dive shift had a second dive planned, so they decided to head north until the fog cleared. They hoped that they could get a dive in around Yankee Point or Carmel. Ha! The fog was crazy thick all the way north until we turned the point into Monterey bay. Then it completely cleared up and it was a nice sunny day in the bay. It was an amazing contrast. So a few divers from the other shift did a dive at Mile Buoy. That was a long boat ride to dive Mile Buoy :) Apparently Clinton was equally underwhelmed with the dives and didn't publish any of his pictures. I haven't seen any video from Beto or Kevin either. I guess the trip will be forgotten in the annals of dive history.