Cordell Bank 2013

In October, BAUE spent three days diving at Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary.  I've wanted to dive Cordell for years, and this year, it finally came together, thanks to a lot of planning work on Matt Vieta and Jim Capwell's part.  After failing to find a suitable dive boat close to Cordell, we eventually landed on moving the Escapade from Monterey to Bodega Bay.  We had a weather window of about 12 days (not sure I counted that right), and the plan was to watch the forecast, and if there was a window where we could get the boat up, dive, and get the boat back to Monterey, we would go.  As it turned out, the weather was perfect during the first week of our weather window, so on Monday afternoon, we got the official call that we would be attempting a dive on Tuesday morning.  The boat made it to Bodega Bay in much better time than expected, and then for the next 3 days, we had flat flat seas for the 20+ mile trip out to the bank from Bodega Bay.

It's taken me a long time to finish this report, mostly because I didn't really think that the report could possibly do the trip justice.  The diving was amazing!  Clinton put it best when he said something along the lines of how great it is when something you've dreamed about for years actually lives up to your expectations.  The second reason that it's taken a while to finish the report is that I've also spent a lot of time recently on video editing, making different versions of videos for different uses.  (And I'm still working on a final "project" video, which will have more than just footage from the dives.)  I've included a video per day in each of the posts, and a short summary video here.

Considering how delayed this report is, I will forgo the one-post-a-day thing, and just post it all at once.  So, without further ado...

Craine's Point
Northern East Ridge
Northern West Ridge
Not Diving in Fog

I don't think the report actually does do the trip justice, but hopefully the photos and video can help.  All of that is posted in the BAUE gallery.

Thanks to everyone who made the trip possible, including Matt, Jim, the crew of the Escapade, NOAA and the Cordell NMS people, the Bodega Bay Marine Laboratory (which provided housing), and Anywater Sports.