Back at Lobos

The purple beast

Team Kitty-proper was diving at Lobos today.  I guess I didn't really officially announce it yet, but I recently got a rebreather, a JJ-CCR, which shall henceforth be referred to as the Purple Beast  (I took a class on the JJ in February, but my unit just recently arrived.)  So, we have a lot of easy recreational diving ahead of us, to get comfortable with the beast.  Last weekend's three-dive-day was aimed at that.  At the end of the day, I was threatening to list my JJ for sale on Craigslist.  So, I wasn't super excited about another day with the beast, but I recognized that it was necessary to get over the hump.  After a week of diving it in class, I actually loved diving the thing.  Rob and I were diving JJs, and Kevin was in open-circuit.  Kevin took the class too, and has a JJ on order, but hadn't received it yet.  He was jealous.

We pretty much did the tour of Lobos again, with some GPO-peeping stops included.  We were also planning on doing some drills on the way back in.  The visibility was pretty good, I might even call it very good.  We hit all of the major spots, including Granite Point (and its nearby GPO), Lone Metridium (and its nearby GPO), the Sisters, and Beto's.  We spent more time at Beto's than probably any of the other spots, or at least it seemed that way.  However, we did not succeed in finding either a GPO or a wolf eel in the usual wolf eel crack.  When we were on our way over to Lone Metridium, we ran into Beto (with Paul and Greg, I think), and they were gesticulating toward the crack with the GPO... so they saved us the trouble of having to find it ourselves :)  Other than the GPOs, we saw some sea hares in the sand between Middle Reef and Granite Point, which is unusual, I think.  I don't know if I've ever seen a sea hare at Lobos before!  So that was pretty coold.

After a whirlwind tour of Lobos, we returned to the end of the sand channel to do some drills.  We did some drills last weekend too, but this week was a bit more extensive, since we didn't have any time constraints.  We started out around 60 feet, where we put up a bag and dropped our scooters.  We practiced a few ascents with short hangs, some bailout drills, S-drills, and other such fun things.  We eventually moved closer in along the sand channel, and did a few more drills around 30 feet, and at least one more practice ascent, before heading in.

After the dive, discussion turned to whether we were any warmer on the dive than usual.  I didn't really think so, until Kevin pointed out that it was a two and a half hour dive.  Normally I wouldn't make it that long in the water without ending the dive because I was cold!  So maybe there IS something to this thing about rebreathers being warm.  Though I don't think that really makes up for the whole having to learn how to dive all over again :)