The South Side of Mt Chamberlin

After quite a lot of boat cancellations and dives in the bay, we finally had a great day of diving down by Yankee Point.  We actually didn't have plans to dive this weekend, but during the week, Jim sent out email asking if anyone was interested in a boat on the weekend.  We ended up going with Sunday, since the forecast was slight better (though both days were good).  I guess it was the right call, since we made it all the way down to Mt Chamberlin, and the conditions were excellent.

We put the downline on the south wall, and our (Team Kitty's) plan was to head over to the south annex, assuming good viz, play around there for a while, and then make our way back up north to K2 to start our deco.  The standard south annex dive.  We descended into excellent viz with very blue water that was also very cold.  After this dive, I said that El Nino was officially over!  It was the coldest dive I've done in a while.  I think everyone's gauge read in the 40s, with some reports down to 44 :(  My gauge seems to read warmer than everyone else's, so at least in my head, I had a slightly warmer dive.

When we first got to the bottom of the line, we were a little confused about where exactly we were.  As a result, it took a minute or two to get our bearings and make it to the south wall.  Once there, we immediately jumped across the sand over to the annex.  We arrived at the annex around  where we usually do, where it stretches from about 150' to a little over 200' on the bottom, and we headed to the west, following along the bottle as it got deeper.  When we got to the west end, we swung around to the south side, and looked around on the wall and down at the bottom there.  We of course always have to look for a GPO on the bottom, but didn't find any today.  Too sunny out I guess.  We did find a wolf eel sticking half of his body out of the wall a bit up the wall.  Rob and Kevin were below me (surprise, surprise), and when I signaled them to show them the wolf eel, he started to move, and i was sure he was going to disappear back into his hole.  But instead, he came out of his hole and swam along the reef for a bit.  He even let Rob take his picture!

We eventually worked our way up the wall and crossed over the top of it where there is the little break in the wall.  There was an enormous school of blue rockfish hanging out there (as usual), so Rob took a few pictures of us with the fish.  We then headed back over the sand to Mt Chamberlin proper.  We meandered up the channel, stopping at one point for some pictures, and worked our way back to K2.  I was a bit surprised that we didn't run into the other teams at this point.  We worked our way up to the top of K2, where there were the usual assortment of fish (but no GPO in the crack).  We shot our bag and started the drift there.

It was a cold deco, but it did seem marginally warmer on the shallower stops.