Rob, Kevin, Matt and I had a date with Phil to dive off of his boat out of Lobos today. I haven't been on Phil's boat in ages! With the four of us, it was pretty crowded on the boat, but with only two bottles each, hey, it could have been worse :P Luckily, the weather was good, so the drive to Yankee Point in a fully loaded boat was not a problem. Well, except that Rob was driving, which is always a little scary. Since we had a super nice dive at the Mount Chamberlin South Annex a couple weeks ago, we decided to return there. In particular, we wanted to find the swim-through that we had found on that dive, and visit it again. After a bit of driving around, we found a 150' spot and dropped the anchor.
We headed down the line into great viz, and warm water on the top, just like we had experienced on our last dive here. We followed the line down and then we were getting situated (I was having some trouble reaching my light switch because my light was mounted a bit differently than usual, and Rob and Kevin were helping me with that), when I heard someone laughing, and looked up to see Matt staring into the swim-through and pointing. We had practically dropped the anchor in the swim-through! So, finding the swim-through again turned out to be pretty easy :) We headed down the back side of the ridge pretty much right there, rather than following the "front" (north) side to the west, like we usually do. That wall is quite shear there, and the sand it around maybe 240'. The excellent viz continued all the way to the bottom, and it was quite bright down there too.
Once we were near the bottom, since the viz was so good, I could see a bunch of small boulders in the sand off of the wall. And then I noticed that they had quite a few crinoids on them! So I went over there to play with the crinoids, take some video, etc. I don't know why I love crinoids so much. After we got our fill of the crinoids, we headed back toward the wall, when I spotted a GPO under a big rock ledge pretty close to the wall. And it was quite an active GPO at that. We watched him for a while, taking photos and video, while he was sticking his arms out and squirming around. While we were looking at that, I noticed that there was a second GPO, under the same ledge, but on the other side. He wasn't nearly so active though, so we pretty much stuck with the first one.
After that, it was time to come a bit shallower, so we worked our way to the top of the ridge, and watched the nice scenery up there. It was super bright up there, and the water was very blue and clear. There was a pretty big school of juvenile rockfish milling about up there, and a few egg yolk jellies. We took some video up there (Rob was lighting for me), posed for some pictures, and then before you know it, it was time to start our ascent :( Deco was thankfully VERY warm again (about 60 degrees). There were some more egg yolk jellies to entertain us, but other than that, it was pretty uneventful. It occurred to me on the deco that give that we were the only team in the water, and the deco temps were so comfortable, we really should have pushed the bottom time a bit. We really aren't very good at this CCR diver thing yet :P
On the drive back, we encountered a big mola on the surface. Rob went for a swim with the mola, and got some super cute video footage. Eventually Matt got in for a brief dip, and then I did too, at which point the mola headed for the hills, of course!
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