South Monastery

Since we were down for the weekend for the NCUPS competition, we decided to dive on Sunday morning before the awards thingy. Karl had his new camera and housing, which he wanted to try out, so we went to South Monastery with him. Rob suggested that while Karl was futzing with his camera, I could futz with Rob's. So the plan was to just swim out a bit and find a spot and hang out there. We got into the water and swam out to the edge of the kelp on the surface. We dropped in the very nice viz and started swimming. I was #3 and kept falling behind because I wanted to actually look at stuff. Finally after we had been swimming and swimming, I asked Rob if he wanted to stop to take pics, and he explained that there was a problem with Karl's camera, so he couldn't take pics. Ahhh. So the death swim continued. I did manage to find a bunch of Limacias along the way (while I was falling behind :P).

We eventually stopped to look around for awhile, and Rob gave me his camera. I pretty quickly realized that the 30 second briefing Rob had given me on the camera was inadequate, and I gave it back to him :) So Rob took a few pictures instead, while we looked around at one of the larger structures. I signalled to Rob that we should turn the dive. He didn't seem too down with that, but I pointed out that we had been swimming out for45 minutes, so even if we turned now, we were in for a 90 minute dive. Okay okay, he agreed. Shortly after turning, we found a rock that had a nice little crack with hydrocoral in it. After the dive, we both agreed that we had never seen this particular hydrocoral formation before. I posed for a few pictures, and then we continued in. We came upon a friendly sea lion on the way end. It always seems like sea lions are more interested in zooming past you than actually interacting, but for some reason this one seemed friendly. He was almost harbor seal like in this way. Other than that, we had a pretty uneventful swim back in under the kelp. The kelp forest at South Monastery is so nice. I don't know why we don't dive there more often.

We ascended basically right where we dropped, and made our way back to shore. There was a bit of flopping around in the surf, but I managed to walk out under my own power, which is all I am really shooting for. But I did have the least elegant exit, which is sort of embarassing since I was the only single tanker :P I am totally sold on single tank diving for South Monastery. For a shallow kick dive, there is really no need for anything more!

NCUPS 2009

Well, better late than never. This post is very out of date, but I did want to write something, since we had two really fun dives for NCUPS this year. I magnanimously offered to dive in a single tank, since I think single tankers actually look nicer in pictures (Rob doesn't, which really says something about him). And I also offered to ditch the dry gloves, since I think bright blue gloves also look dumb in pictures. I was pretty excited to do some single tank diving, which I only ever do on night dives. As a concession, I told Rob I would bring a stage for the second (macro) dive. That way he didn't have to worry about gas constraints. After some discussion, we decided to shoot for Coral Street for the first dive (shooting WA), and probably the Breakwater for dive two (shooting macro). We have very little experience diving Coral Street, but I have seen some lovely kelp shots there, and there's always the potential for seals, so we figured we'd do something different.

We stayed down in Monterey the night before, which was nice, since we didn't have to get up crazy early, but still got to Aquarius before registration had even started. Once Rob got his registration packet, we were off to Coral St. There was an organized dive going on there through Wallins, so we were concerned about parking, but that turned out not to be a problem. We decided to use the little ledge above the beach to gear up on, which turned out to be a slight overestimation in my height. I couldn't get my tank on that high, and Rob had to give me a bunch of help. But then we waddled into the water, found the little channel, and headed out. It was slippery as hell with kelp. We swam out a little, and quickly decided that the kelp was annoying, so we dropped and swam through the very shallow kelp. After not too long, we found a little opening in the kelp, where we ran into our first harbor seal. He was quite playful, and not surprisingly, completely uninterested in posing for pictures. Not long after that, we ran into another seal, this time in an even larger open area. He was a fin tugger, but again, in no mood to have his picture taken. We basically just meandered about for a while. Rob had given me quite a briefing on exactly the shot of me that he wanted in the kelp. I wasn't allowed to breathe (that would disturb the kelp), I was to be at like 5 or 6 feet, and I was to swim through the frame towards him, as he took some shots. The first few passes I swam way too fast, because I really can't go *that* long without breathing. We had a couple of surface debriefs to discuss how to improve the technique. I was actually feeling totally nauseous after trying to frame this shot several times. Eventually I threw up on the surface and felt much better. (It was all Susan's fault for challenging me to drink an entire half gallon of milk in one weekend.) Anyhoo, the whole kelp shot ordeal was quite tiring, but in the end I was very pleased with the results. In fact, I liked some of the pictures so much that I used one for my picture in the employee directory at work.

Eventually we headed back in, and we saw a huge school of senoritas on the way in. It was a really awesome site. I just wanted to hang out and watch them for a while. With the bright light streaming through the kelp and all of the fish, it really looked tropical. Did I mention we had great viz? Anyhoo, we swam back in underwater until I could no longer stand skimming along the bottom at 5 feet, so I surfaced. We swam back through the channel, which was annoying to get out of, since the bottom is covered in slippery kelp bits. Then one of the instructors leading the Wallins dive pointed out a little spot in the sand where it might be easier to get my fins off. So I waddled over there on my knees. It was just the right depth (not very deep) to stand on my knees and pull my fins off. I had a brief encounter with a DM who thought I needed to be rescued while I was standing on my knees before removing my fins. After I made it clear to him that I both did not need rescue, and had a very able buddy if the need arose, he realized I wasn't part of his group, and backed off. I felt bad that I was a little mean to him, but he sort of snuck up me from behind and scared the crap out of me. But we both apologized and all was well.

At some point during the morning we had been talking about going to the wharf for dive 2, instead of the Breakwater. Once again, this is a dive we hadn't done much (I've dived it once before), but we did have fun the first time. And NCUPS had "surface support" stationed there throughout the day, so it was our big chance to dive it without having to line up someone to stand on the wharf. So we headed over there. The wharf is such a great dive. It is the easiest entry ever (although sort of a pain to walk through 18 inches of water for what seems like forever), you can gear up on the wall, which is the perfect height, it is super shallow, and there is so much cool macro life.

On the way over to the pilings, over the sand, we found a few cute little fishies who were poking their heads out of holes. They were very photogenic. When we first got to the pilings, all I could find were Hermissendas on red bryozoan! I was starting to think that this dive was a mistake, because at least at the Breakwater, I know what I am looking for. Then I found my first cool find (cool for me, but not necessarily photo-competition cool) -- a Dendronotus subramosus on a little green kelp leaf laying on the sand. It was a huge pain for Rob to get a picture while I was holding the piece of kelp, which was flapping in the breeze. I felt like there had to be Flabellina trilineatas there, and eventually I started finding some. I was relieved. Turns out I was setting my sights way too low.

We finally happened upon a single piling that was the jackpot for nudibranchs. I saw so many cool subjects on that one piling, I was having trouble keeping track of where everything was, and prioritizing what to show to Rob. Now I knew that Rob couldn't take pictures of super tiny stuff for the competition, since he wouldn't be able to crop. But at this point, I really didn't care -- I wanted pictures of these cool subjects for myself! Among the finds: Doto amyra (in a variety of colors, including creamsicle orange and a brownish color), Eubranchus rustyus, tons more Dendronotus subramosus, two Triopha maculata (in the orange with bright-white specks color that I have never seen outside of the aquarium), lots of Spanish shawls (yawn), and at least 10 Polycera atra (which I've only seen once before!), and about a dozen Dirona picta (another I've only seen at the aquarium!). I am pretty sure there were some Dendronotus frondosus in there too. In the non-macro category, we also saw a giant crab on the bottom. He was like science fiction big. I was literally not willing to take my eyes off of him while he was in claw's reach (which I estimated at being about 2 feet) from me. Rob had me lighting a specimen flapping in the breeze for him, and I was literally keeping one eye on my light and one eye on the crab. Once Rob was done I ran like a little girl far far away from that beast.

Around 90 minutes, I told Rob we should wrap it up, because I was getting cold. He asked me how much gas I had, and I made the mistake of telling him the truth. Then he got the idea that we could stay a lot longer. The thing about a 15 foot dive is that the plan to dive until you run low on gas really doesn't work :P After about 100 minutes, we finally headed in. Of course we ran into a photogenic Scrippsia pacifica on the way in, so we stopped for some pictures.

After we packed up our gear, we decided to meet Nils to get some third party advice on which pictures to submit. So we met up at El Torito, where I failed to drink a margarita, despite much talk about it. Then we headed over to Backscatter to submit. We ran into Mike and Mark there, and saw some of their pictures. Mike got a totally sweet shot of some hydrocoral at CRB, with a sunburst and Ben's silhouette in the background.

We decided to skip the NCUPS dinner thing that night, and go see the new Star Trek movie instead. I think it was a good choice. I just love Sylar as young Spock!

All of the BAUE boys' pictures from the competition are here.

BAUE Rec Boat

A couple weeks ago, I noticed a hole in our dive schedule for this weekend. I asked Rob and Kevin what we were doing, and they both said "nothing". So I suggested we hop on the BAUE recreational boat. We hadn't signed up, because I think we were assuming we would be busy cramming for T2 during the month of May. Luckily there was still room. There was even room to bring Ted! I hadn't looked at the forecast all week, so Saturday as we drove down I had literally no idea what we were in for. When we got down to K-dock, the news did not sound good. Apparently it was really really windy, with a decent-sized swell too :( Word from the earlier boats didn't sound promising. We eventually headed out (after waiting for a five-boat cluster at K-dock to clear, none of whom seemed to want to leave on time), hoping to make it around the point. It got a bit rougher as we were going, and eventually we were informed that Greg was still thinking of peaking around the corner, but it would be a big commitment and possibly a really rough ride. Just at that moment a really big wave tossed the boat around, which seemed like a sign. So we retreated to Ballbuster. Even there it was pretty dicey. I declared I would not be bringing a stage, since I didn't want to screw around on the surface with a bottle. I think this was greeted with a big eye roll from Rob (surprise, surprise).

Ted and Kevin were doing the scooter thing together on dive 1, and Rob and I were kicking (I don't really get the point of a scooter at Ballbuster). Rob and I quickly got into the water and headed down the line. The was a bit of particulate on the top, but it cleared up pretty quickly, and I could see the structure below starting from 20 or 30'. When we got to the bottom, the viz was quite good, and it was actually bright. I've had good viz at Ballbuster, but never good bright viz -- there is always enough of a layer that it's kind of dark down there. So this was a treat. We headed down to near the bottom, and swam around a bit. Rob kept sending me up above him to pose for silhouette shots. In between, I looked at the various critters. There were tons of trilineatas, including several pairs that were probably mating. I also found hydroids covered in Eubranchus ("big" Eubranchus, I could actually make out the details of the cerata). Eventually, for some reason (not really sure, Rob was leading...), we headed off of the main structure (east-southeast-ish) and eventually found a group of boulders, with an elephant ear on it. I also found an absolutely adorable fish sticking his head out of the staghorn bryozoan, sort of resting his chin on the bryozoan. Of course as I signaled to Rob to take a look he shined his light on the fish, who promptly scurried away :( But at least Rob got a glimpse first. We then headed back to the main structure. We passed the gorgonian (is there more than one gorgonian at Ballbuster? I've only ever seen one per dive) on the way.

When we got back, we worked our way shallower. We found a nice peachy-colored Dirona. We eventually ran into Mark and Marlies. I decided that Mark was a more interesting buddy, since he was shooting macro, and swam over to him to look for nearby Eubranchus. I found some and showed them to him, then return to my previously scheduled buddy. When it was time for Rob to switch off his stage (yea, he's just that much of a hoover -- he had to bring *three* tanks), he handed his camera off to me. Oooh. I decided to take a few pictures while I had it. I didn't even think about dealing with the strobes -- I left them in the funny tucked position Rob put them in for the handoff. But I still had some fun taking pictures of Rob switching off of his stage. I almost didn't want to give the camera back. We had a brief run-in with Ted and Kevin near the top of the structure, and before long it was time to begin our ascent. Just before then, we ran into a Scrippsia pacifica at 60'. I posed for some pictures. Rob had to shoo Mark out of the frame, hehe. Then we headed up the line. It was a long way up, there was sooo much scope on the line. There were tons of little jellies in the water on the way up, though, which was neat.

We got back to the surface, and it was pretty hairy on the surface. Everyone was hanging onto the current line, waiting to get back on the boat. But without any current pulling on the line, the line of people was just getting smashed into each other, and occasionally the ladder. I helped Marlies out of her second fin, but didn't get around to handing it off to her before she got out of the water. So I was left to negotiate getting my fins off with an extra fin on my wrist. Between that, holding onto the line, and not bashing my head on the swimstep, I had to sacrifice to fins to Neptune. And I couldn't even manage to drop the two that matched :( Rob took a mark on his GPS (his current favorite toy) for where I dropped it, and immediately started trying to put together a search team. I told him I wasn't getting back in (I wasn't convinced I could get back on the boat without dropping another fin :P), but Kevin was dumb enough, errr, nice enough to agree. Rob figured the fins were 150 feet southeast of the pinnacle, so they headed down with their scooters to look. They found them amazingly quickly -- their hang on the way back up far exceeded the bottom time, and even with that they were gone for less than 10 minutes. Greg was watching their bubble trail and was pretty convinced they had found them based on their meandering, then stopped for a bit, then hauling ass back to the pinnacle. They returned to a heroes' welcome, and were showered with Cheetos.

For the second dive, I suggested Shale Island. Ted and I were diving together on this dive, and we brought scooters. We dropped on the northwest side of the island, just west of the big anchor. We scootered counterclockwise around the island. The highlights were a lot of squid -- we saw two in the sand just off the island, and another meandering around over the island, and two on the line on the way up. Plus I kept seeing little ink piles hanging in the water. I also saw an interesting slug that was some sort of Acanthodoris. I'm not sure what it was -- it was a light yellow to cream color, so it was either a very light colored Acanthodoris lutea, or a darker color Acanthodoris nanaimosis. It had distinctive maroon-tipped rhinophores, which makes me suspect the latter, but since I have never seen the form, I really am not sure. In any case, I was pretty excited, but I suspected that Ted was thinking "wow, a yellowish dorid, so exciting". There were also a lot of Geitodoris heathi, most of them with the tell-tale dark blotch just in front of the gill plume. We ended up cutting the dive a little short, mostly because of a miscommunication about whether we wanted to hang out around the anchor for another 5 minutes, or thumb it. We accidentally thumbed it. We ran into those two squid on the line, but it was otherwise an uneventful ascent. The rest of the teams returned within about 10 minutes, and we headed in.

Photos from the day are here.

More Training, Ugh

Saturday we were at Lobos. The plan was to do a skills dive and a fun dive. However, the tides and our energy level conspired, so we ended up changing the plan. Instead, we would do the same thing we did last time -- scooter out to 50 or 60 feet, do our skills stuff, then head out for a short fun dive. I was the slow one on the "not it" game when talk turned to who would lead the dive, so I got stuck with that. We loaded our gear on the float (I swam, so much easier than carrying bottles down the slippery ramp), and then got into our gear and headed out. We dropped at the ramp (good viz), and scootered out to about 50 feet. We were just southeast of Hole in the Wall. We shot a bag and tied off to one of the little stalks of palm kelp. Then we did some bottle juggling fun. It went pretty well -- much better than last time! It didn't go perfectly, but I think we were all much happier with it than the last time we did skills.

Once we were finished with that, we decided to ditch or gear on the line, and head out for some fun. It was dead calm, so Kevin suggested we check out the shallow areas in the Cannery Point rocks. We dropped back down the line, clipped off all of our bottles, retrieved our scooters, and headed off. We headed south and then cut over down one of the oyster shell channels, until we ended up in a little are in 15 to 20 feet, with little walls on two sides. It was like swimming in a tide pool. Eventually we ended up in like 10 feet, and Rob and Kevin wanted to surface, to see where we were. We ascended really close to two rocks. It was pretty cool, considering how calm the water has to be to pull that off :) After marvelling at how close we were to the rocks and how little water movement there was, we headed back down and poked around some more. It was a pretty sluggy day. There were lots of Tritonias (and they all seemed to be short and fat!), Rob found a Hilton's, and otherwise it was the usual suspects. We eventually headed north, to about 35 feet, and hung out there for a while. There wasn't anything super interesting, but it was a really nice bright, clear day. Finally I decided I really needed to pee, so I turned the dive.

Unfortunately I had waited just a little too long for a comfortable trip back :) We got back to the line (phew, all our bottles were still there), and we retrieved our stuff and headed in. Rob got chastised for dilly dallying on the way in -- I was on a mission. We ascended right by the line, and dropped our bottles at the float. Rob scurried out of the water to assist me with the low tide exit. It was the quickest low tide exit I've ever made!

Between a Volcano and a Kitty

Friday we went out with Phil. Rob was a sleepyhead in the car, so around Gilroy, he made me take over the driving (not bad, usually he only makes it to Morgan Hill). Just after getting to 1 from 156, I noticed something moving slowly across the road ahead, like a fat cad waddling (a really slow, fat cat). I couldn't believe it when I saw the characteristic beaver tail. I had no idea there were beavers in the area. I don't think I've ever seen a beaver in the wild before, so I was quite excited (nature's engineers and what not). When we got to Lobos, we quizzed Jim (who was diving with Beto) and Phil about whether beavers were common in the area. Jim questioned our ability to pick a beaver out of a lineup, which we were much offended by, since we are, after all, MIT Beavers. Then he admitted that they are pretty common in that area, because of some nearby stream.

Anyhoo, the swell was small, so we headed down to Yankee Point. But first I had to endure a boat driving lesson from Phil (and the boys). Phil gave me some tips and left Rob and Kevin to fill in the blanks :) I managed to back the boat off the trailer, idle in the cove, and come back to pick Phil up without damaging anything other than Rob and Kevin's nerves. After I made it out of the cove and beyond the kelp, to the fun part, Phil insisted on taking the helm :( So we headed down to Yankee Point, against a south wind. We wanted to go back to the "Dos Gatos" area. We were shooting for the first (west) kitty on the GPS. We drove over a peak around 90 feet, and then couldn't find it again. We finally found a structure at about 100 feet, and decided to drop the hook there. Turns out there was a little bit of "user error" with the GPS, which might explain our difficulty in finding the spot.

We dropped down into fairly green water. There was a lot of particulate in the water on the way down, but it was fairly clear at the bottom. As we dropped onto the pinnacle, a big column of blue rockfish greeted us. After enjoying the fish, Rob, who was leading, led us north. We really weren't sure what structure we were on. I don't know how Rob decided which way to go. Once we got off of the pinnacle, we passed over a rubbly bottom, at about 140 feet. But it might as well have been in 30 feet -- the little rocks had some Urticinas on them, plus a lot of the usual encrusting life and nudibranchs. Eventually we hit a low-lying ridge which was not too exciting, so Rob decided to head west. Before you know it, we were in deeper water, and it was suddenly getting much darker. It was like I could see a point where we suddenly crossed into the darkness. Very eerie. As it became clear that we were getting deep without finding much of interest, Rob curved around back to the south, and we eventually hit a big pinnacle. We spent the rest of the dive there. There were spots with very bad viz, but generally it was about 40 feet, but very dark and green. The pinnacle dropped down to at least 200 feet in spots. There were some tempting sand channels below us, that looked like they would be fun to scooter along.

I don't know if it was because of the contrast to the green, dark water, but the reef just seemed to light up. It was extremely colorful. It was also a very sluggy day. It seemed like I saw all of the usual suspects. There were also a bunch of Doto amyras, including some very large (for Dotos) specimens. It would definitely have been a better day for macro. We ended up circling around the pinnacle, eventually working our way shallower. On one side of the pinnacle there was a garden of lush gorgonians. That is one thing I really like about this group of pinnacles -- there are so many really lush, fluffy-looking gorgonians (unfortunately Rob doesn't find gorgonians very interesting to shoot -- hmph!). There were also a bunch of very craggy, pointy elephant ear sponges. It was odd. Eventually it was time to go, so we said goodbye and started to drift. I put the bag up, and we settled in for the deco.

The deco turned out to have nearly as many critters as the bottom segment -- the deco critters were out in full force. It was crazy -- there were so many interesting, tiny jelly creatures, I would find something really cool and as I tried to point it out to Rob, he would be trying to point something out that he had found. There were tons of little comb jellies, and little jellies that looked sort of like tiny moon jellies, and the ubiquitous sea gooseberries. Rob found this crazy little creature that looked like some sort of tiny transparent squid -- no clue what that was. We eventually found a bunch of sea nettles, and some moon jellies (one really nice big one). But by far the coolest thing was this beautiful little jelly that was shaped like a little sea nettle but the bell was maybe 2 inches in diameter. There was a yellow spot on top of its bell, right in the center. Upon closer inspection, it was a tiny crab, along for the ride. It was so cute. Definitely would have been a good macro day! Eventually the parade of jellyfish either ended, or we lost interest, so Kevin posed us for some video at 20 feet. Then Rob whipped out his wetnotes and spent several minutes practicing his underwater page flipping (don't ask). Before you know it, the long cold deco was over. Actually it wasn't that cold -- my computer had 48 to 50.

When we surfaced it was raining a bit, but the water was pretty calm. Just some wind. We got back into the boat, after I narrowly avoided watching my rig drop to the bottom of the ocean. Oops. Kevin drove on the way home. He was clearly trying to test out the top speed on Phil's boat, which was certainly helped by the wind. I swear we made it back to Whaler's Cove in like 5 minutes. I was just holding on and trying to avoid falling out of the boat. Then I took the helm, and wowed everyone with my drop off and pickup (very low tide) of Phil. Okay, maybe it took a couple of loops to retrieve him from the ramp :P

After reviewing the bathymetry, we think the structure we originally dropped on was a ridge running between the west pinnacle of Dos Gatos and the "volcano" structure that Rob first found on the bathymetry, which led us to the area. If this theory is correct, the big pinnacle we spent most of the dive on was the volcano.

Kevin's video of the dive is here.

BAUE Project Fair

On Saturday, BAUE had a little get together at Point Lobos. We used the date to work on some of the skills for our annual projects. The day started out with an overview by Rob of the main dive sites in kicking distance at Lobos and the major landmarks. Then we split up into groups -- I was working on nudibranch survey, but there was also a group working on survey techniques, photo and video groups, and a group doing an orientation dive at Lobos. I made some neat little underwater nudibranch picture books for the new nudi-philes, which included tips for how to distinguish the similar-looking species. This was actually a pretty useful exercise, since a lot of the species I can distinguish myself, but have difficulty putting the difference into words for someone who can't (other than "they just look different"). It was also painful and reminded me that the guy who designed figure placement in Microsoft Word is a truly evil person.

Anyhoo, after a review of the transect areas, the survey protocol, and a discussion of the more common species that we see on the transects, we split into teams and headed into the water. I was diving with Nils, and Clinton was diving with Nathalie. John and Mike were planning to tag along, at least to start, to get some pictures. I was diving a single tank, which is the first time in forever I have done that other than for a night dive. It was wonderful. I'm a convert. For the first dive, we headed out to transects 1 and 2. Clinton and I counted, while our buddies identified (from the picture book) all of the slugs that we found. I pretty much saw the usual suspects, though there was a surprising lack of Cadlinas. There were lots of Tritonias (not just on the transects, but out and about on the reef) and several Berthellas, who were all very cleverly hiding their rhinophores from Nils. Once we finished the transects, we just took a leisurely swim back along the reef, pointing out any interesting nudis that we found. We saw a bunch of Limacias. We stopped by the wolf eels' den, but they were not in. Eventually I turned the dive on gas (Nils was packing doubles and a stage to make up for my single-tanked-ness). We headed back to the worm patch, and I quickly got to work looking for a trilineata -- I was hoping to find one to point out to Nils, and the worm patch seems to be the money spot for them. I found one, showed it to him, and then we headed up.

After lunch, the photo and video boys gave us some tips to look grood as photo/video models. Among the bits of advice were not to wear flaming bright drysuits (oops) and bright blue gloves (oops). For dive 2, we stuck with our original teams, but flipped who was counting. Nils looked for and identified the slugs, and I recorded them. Since we didn't get to stop and see the warbonnet on the first dive, I suggested we do transect 4. I knew I would regret that, since it is often comparatively devoid of slugs, and on the first dive I had notice that transect 5 was oozing slugs. And of course we saw very few slugs on that transect. But I did find the warbonnet. We planned to hop over to the east side of the reef after the counting was complete. On the way over, in the crack next to transect 4, I found another warbonnet. He was little, even by warbonnet standards. I am hopeful that I can find him again, assuming that is his permanent lair. On the east side of middle reef, we saw more of the usual suspects. I found a cute, muppet-like fish, which we think was a brown Irish lord. I eventually turned the dive on cold. We headed back to the worm patch, where I found another trilineata, and Nils found a Hermissenda and a Triopha catalinae. Then we headed up.

After that, we killed some more time at Lobos before heading to Siamese Bay for dinner. Yum yum.

All of the pictures from the day are here.

Cold, Clear Water

Saturday was the April installment of the BAUE tech boat. It seemed like it had been ages since I'd been on the Escapade, but really it was only two months. The boat was so popular that it was split into two installments, morning and afternoon. Since the lowly T1 divers had been relegated to the afternoon boat last time, we got the morning boat this time around. There were only 5 of us on the boat, so it was quite comfortable on the boat. The swell forecast looked really good throughout the week, so we were hopeful that we could get far south. However, it was a bit foggy out, which we were a little concerned about. However, by the time we got down to Carmel, the fog had lifted. It was a bit sportier than I was expecting though. But nothing too bad -- we still made it down to the Yankee Point area, to the vicinity of "Dos Gatos", the site we went to in February.

We had been itching to get back there, mostly because the bathymetry showed so much more to explore. And also because Kevin had missed the dive in February. When we got there, Jim warned us that due to the wind, he couldn't really tell what the current was doing. We hopped into the water, which was incredibly blue and clear. I could see the line, and I could see that it was pretty much completely vertical -- nice. We headed over to the line and paused at 20' for a bubble check. As soon as we left 20', I could make out the reef below. I was thinking we must be on the wrong site, because the pinnacle was supposed to top around 100'. It did top at 100', but the viz was just that good. When we got to the bottom, it seemed like we could see forever. We could see the ripples on the surface from 150'! We got down to the pinnacle, and I had to make an executive decision about where to go (since I was leading). I was a bit perplexed. The depth of the pinnacle top suggested we were on the first (west-most) peak, but the slope at the bottom of the pinnacle was all wrong. Rob had mentioned that there was some structure south of the pinnacles we were on last time, so I was wondering if that was where we were. Given the crazy good viz, it seemed like a good day to cover some ground and try to get the lay of the land. So off we went, in the north-ish direction. Actually once we were headed north, I just sort of meandered based on where I could see structure.

The first spot that we landed on was a ridge from about 150 feet down to 180-ish feet, that ran roughly east-west. It had a lot of elephant ears on the top. We hung out there for a little while, and Rob took some pictures. Then we continued on to a structure I could see in the distance, to the east or northeast. We found another biggish pinnacle off in that area, and we paused there. After poking around a little while, we continued on to the west. I felt bad that we were spending so much time on the trigger so Rob couldn't take many pics, but I figured that is really the only way to get the lay of the land. We eventually found a small ridge to the west, but it was pretty deep. It topped at 160 to 170 feet. There was another bigger structure off further to the west, but I decided it was time to head back. There were two things I noticed, critter-wise, on the dive. First, there were tons of cream/light yellowed colored slugs around. I think they were Geitodoris heathi. Back on the boat after the dive, John mentioned that he had seen a ton of them as well. The second thing I noticed was a bunch of sponges (I guess) that were light yellow to white in color and had an interesting texture. Anyhoo, we headed back to the start point. Since we had been meandering here and there, I decided to just kind of average the headings out and try to head straight back. As a result, the trek back was over deeper water, with lots of little pinnacles and boulders topping at around 160 to 170 feet. I could tell Rob was nervous that I was completely lost, and he gave me a big "phew" gesture when we finally saw the pinnacle where we had started.

We had a few more minutes before it was time to call it, so we hung out there for the remainder. I was getting pretty cold by that point -- my computer showed 44 degrees! A few minutes later, thumbed it, and we headed up along the pinnacle and then left it to drift. We saw Matt and John head up a couple minutes before us, and could see them for the rest of the drift. At our first or second deep stop, Rob, who was running deco, started gesticulating in some cryptic manner. Eventually we managed to determine that he was saying that the exhaust valve on his drysuit was leaking. Then he handed off running deco to me. At first I thought he was just doing that to screw with me, but eventually I figured out he was not. We spent the rest of the deco watching Rob contort himself in attempts to keep the leak at bay. I'm not sure how successful that was. I was really cold myself, and couldn't imagine having a significant leak in this cold water. Rob, however, has a finely honed ability to withstand leaky drysuits, which has come from years of diving in poorly maintained suits (he's a masochist). This was his "dry" suit though, which he reserves for boat dives and the like with cold deco hangs. When we got to 20 feet, Kevin took Rob's scooter, to make the contortions easier on him. Then he offered to take his camera, and I had to laugh when Rob hugged his camera and gave Kevin a "yea right" look.

When we finally hit the surface, Rob scurried to the ladder and got back onto the boat and out of his suit. Meanwhile Kevin and I took our time bobbing on the surface in the slightly sportier conditions. The waves seemed to come in sets, with periods where I was just hanging onto the line, thinking how the Escapade looked like a toy bouncing around on top of the waves. But eventually there were enough lulls to pass up each piece of my gear and scurry up the ladder (while being heckled by a certain crew member for my slowness). It was just a harrowing experience. I was glad to find that Kevin thought it was a harrowing experience too, and it wasn't just me :) The fog had returned, and it was surprisingly foggy on the ride home. We couldn't see land for the longest time and it seemed like we were going forever, without any reference as to where we were, until we were in the bay. Rob made a speedy recovery and was back to eating Cheetos before we even made it past Lobos. Check out the picture above to see the nature of the valve failure.