Steam Engine

Photo by Clinton Bauder

We setup an afternoon dive in the bay to get some more ascent practice in the RBs.  After all of our recent Lobos dives, we all felt like we needed to do some real ascents off of a boat.  It ended up being four of us... Rob, Kevin, Clinton, and me.  Clinton isn't exactly a fan of the RBs, so I was glad he was willing to do a dive with us :P  A recreational dive, but still a dive.  I think it was Rob's idea to do the Steam Engine, which I've never done before, and having done it, I'm still not sure I could distinguish it from any other piece of the shale at about 80' (that's not a complaint, just a statement).

Photo by Clinton Bauder

After we dropped down, we found the nearest shale ledge, and just followed it for a while.  The viz was quite good, and so we were pretty well spread out over the shale.  I was right next to the ledge we followed, but Kevin was kind of far off of it, probably harassing crabs.  We passed the steam engine proper after not too long.  It was smaller than I expected, though I guess I never really gave it too much thought before.  Aside from the random human junk on the bottom, we made some quite good finds.  The best find of all was a very cute little muppety sculpin, which I wasn't sure (at the time) whether it was a bull or a buffalo sculpin -- turns out it was a buffalo sculpin.  I don't think I've ever seen one here before (only in Seattle).  So that was a very exciting find!

Photo by Clinton Bauder

After quite a bit of meandering along the shale ledge, and quite a few little octopus encounters, we happened upon a big chain.  Naturally, we had to follow the chain.  It was running perpendicular-ish to the ledge, heading shallower.  I became sort of obsessed with following the chain.  I had to keep following it until we reached the end.  Which turned out to be a good plan, because when we got to the end, there was a Tochuina right next to it!  A sort of surprising find, since it was in about 80'.  I think that's the shallowest that I've ever seen one.  At that point, it was getting close to wrapping up the dive, but first Clinton had to switch off of his bottle.  He ended up cross-clipping (or so it seemed) his camera when he clipped it off, though when I went in to investigate, I found that it wasn't clipped off at all, but was instead resting in a frighteningly precarious position; good thing we were still on the bottom.  By the time that was all dealt with, it was basically time to thumb the dive (actually it was already pretty borderline from the "min deco" perspective), so we started the ascent.

Photo by Clinton Bauder

The viz was quite terrible on the ascent, and with four of crowded around one back, it felt a bit spazzy. The original plan had been to practice a couple of ascents, but when we surfaced, it was a bit snotty.  I got pretty beaten up getting back on the boat.  Somehow after I had my fins off, hanging from my wrist, a wave came and sort of pushed me to the side of the ladder, and sucked my legs under the swim step.  I still had a good hold on the ladder, but I couldn't get my legs back under me without my fins on.  Eventually I had to ask one of the crew to swing me around to the ladder.  A bit embarrassing.  Meanwhile, Rob and Clinton also got smacked around, and I think Rob ended up somehow getting his hand smooshed under Clinton's tanks.  It was weird, since it seemed only marginally snotty from both the surface and the boat, but we all got seriously worked getting back aboard.

Photo by Clinton Bauder

After that, I decided I'd had it, well mostly that I didn't want to get back into the water in order to get beaten up again getting back on board.  Clinton agreed, so we stayed on the boat while Rob and Kevin got back in just to practice an ascent.  They went to the bottom, and almost immediately put up a bag and practiced an ascent.  I felt a bit lame to skip it, since I thought my first ascent was pretty poor.  Rob claimed otherwise, and it would be out of character for him to say I did a good job when I did not (though he may have had an ulterior motive, since he's invested in me not selling my JJ on Craigslist).

Overall a very fun dive, especially for "just an afternoon rec boat in the bay"!  And finally some pictures to post here.