Friday Diving with a Special Guest

Rob was teaching a class starting on Friday, which I was to help with on Saturday and Sunday.  I decided that if Rob didn't have to go to work on Friday, I didn't want to either!  So I emailed Beto and Jim early in the week to see if they had anything planned for Friday.  The forecast was looking good, and Jim said if that didn't change, he was all set with crew.  Woohoo.  That afternoon at the gym, Rob was complaining about what a traitor I was for going diving without him, and I suggested that Ted come along... just to be extra mean to Rob.  I always try to get Ted to come diving with us during the week, but he never does.  He's obviously more hard working than me, or maybe just committed to using his vacation days for family time.  But he happened to have a comp day coming to him this very week, and after getting permission from the boss (err, wife), it was a go!  We carpooled down to Monterey, and I even drove.  I owe Ted like 500 rides home from the gym, so I figure each time I drive us to Monterey, that should wipe like 10 or 15 rides from my debt.

We met to board the boat at the very civilized hour of 9 AM.  Jim said that the wind was supposed to pick up in the afternoon.  On the way out, there were whitecaps in the bay (!) which was pretty discouraging, but once we were out of the bay it was calmer.  Go figure.  The ride down, once around Point Pinos, was pretty nice actually.  We made it down to Mount Chamberlain, and after a bit of negotiation, we anchored on K2.  Ted said he had been to K2 at most once, so I didn't see the point in doing some long south-wall-to-K2 scooter run.  So we planned to drop on the east side, head north, check out some of the deeper areas, and then come back up shallower and possibly south of the peak a bit.  The crew warned us there was some current before dropping us one team at a time.  Our team went second, since we had a 5 minute shorter bottom time planned. When we got in, the current was obvious, but it was not problematic.  We headed down the line into pretty good viz.  At 80 feet, the line suddenly flattened out and we scootered and scootered and eventually came to the pinnacle.  The ball had landed right on top of the pinnacle, so the 180 feet of line (or whatever) that they put out was not necessary.

When we first arrived at the pinnacle, there was a nice looking school of blue rockfish, as there often is.  We pretty much passed right by them -- I figured we could visit on the way up.  We dropped down the east side and headed north, pausing every now and then to look at stuff.  I saw a couple of starry rockfish, and a cute muppet fish in a crack.  Those were the highlights of the beginning of the dive.  Eventually we came around the north tip, and stopped there.  I was thinking of heading across the sand to the little pinnacles to the north, but the viz wasn't that good (not good enough to see those structures), so I figured we could just stay put.  I found a nice little flat spot at like 150' that had a really lush gorgonian garden.  I spent several minutes there, mostly just looking at the gorgonians, as the current dragged me across, then scootering back across, and repeating.  When it came time to go a bit shallower, we turned around and cruised back the way we came, only headed up the wall a bit shallower.  So, I am sad to report that there are barnacles all the way down to 160 feet on K2.  This is relatively new -- the last time I was there, they seemed to only be on the shallower parts (from maybe 120 feet up).  Also, I found a bunch of heads of hydrocoral that were covered with the little bastards :(

We made our way back to the peak, and after doing a thorough GPO inspection, I suggested we head further south to the little gorgonian canyon.  We scootered down it, against the current, and then when we got to the end, we just drifted back and enjoyed the scenery.  The viz seemed a little bit better here than it was on the north side.  More blue, less green.  We got back to the peak and meandered around there.  Eventually the HUGE school of rockfish found us.  I couldn't believe how thick with fish the water was, so I got out my hero cam.  We were at like 80 feet, so I hoped for at least some decent video just to show how dense the school of rockfish was.  It was really neat hanging out in the midst of all of those fish.  After wiling away the rest of our "bottom" time on top of the peak, I pulled my bag and we moved over to the west side of the pinnacle to put up the bag.  And that is when the fun started.  The idea was that we would be a bit further from the (copious quantity of) line.  I put up the bag, as a giant sheephead swam by, and as soon as the bag was up, I felt like I was flying a kite, or rather I was a kite, being flown by the bag :)  There was quite a bit of current, so once we left the pinnacle, we were really moving.  But I think there was also some wind tugging on the bag.

We got to 70 feet, and Ted started to switch to his bottle, as the line came into view.  I pointed out to him that we were drifting toward the line, and we kind of pushed away from it.  I handed the bag off and switched onto my bottle.  We were happily deco'ing, or at least I was, when about two minutes in, I realized that Ted was still holding the bag.  Just as I noticed this, he motioned for me to take it.  Okay.  He handed me the bag, and about 10 seconds later, I was suddenly snapped up to 62 feet, and I felt like my arm was going to be pulled out of its socket.  I may have actually ended up shallower than 62 feet, but that was the last number I saw on my gauge before I realized what was going on.  The bag was entangled in the downline.  Or, the way my arm felt, maybe the boat :)  I was kicking like hell to keep my hand on the bag, but once I realized what was going on, I had to let the bag go.  I dropped it and returned back to 70 feet to Ted, and showed him I had no bag.  He gave me this "WTF" look.  I tried to signal to him that it must be tangled in the boat's line.  So Ted pulled his bag and put that up.  In hindsight, we probably should have waited a minute, to drift past any further entanglement opportunities.  But I was probably not thinking that clearly right at that moment -- I was breathing pretty hard and I could feel my heart pounding from the excitement.  Once the second bag was up, we managed to not get snagged again.

Ted was acting a little odd on the deco.  At some point he took one of my scout lights.  I thought he took it to turn it off (though unclipping someone's light on deco, over deep water, wouldn't be my choice of how to turn it off).  Then later he was pointing at my left D-ring and telling me to give him something.  I had no idea what he wanted... I wasn't giving him my deco bottle :)  I could tell he was a little light, by his exaggerated moves to try to vent gas from his wing.  But I never put it all together and figured out what he was doing (because it was completely non-sensical!).  He was slightly underweighted, because he was using a set of Rob's tanks, and he underestimated the amount of extra weight he would need.  He was trying to take gear from me that would weight him down.  But a scout light?  Really?  I had some double-enders he could take too :)  Aside from this slightly odd behavior, the deco went by without much of interest.  We had been hoping for some jellyfish love, but all we got were tiny deco critters.  Those are still entertaining to stare at, but I was hoping for some pretty nettles after the previous weekend's dive.  On our 6-minute ascent, around like 11 feet, we were suddenly in completely bubbly, agitated water.  It wasn't whitewater white water, but it was white water, if you know what I mean.  It was totally disorienting.  One minute we could clearly see each other, and the next we had to be in touch contact to keep track of each other.  I'm still not sure what that was... perhaps the boat has driven over that patch of water and stirred it up?

When we surfaced, the crew told me they had caught my other bag.  There was a bit more to the story.  My bag got tangled around the ball, after flirting with it for a while.  Ted confessed that the reason he handed me the bag was that his buoyancy was all screwed up and he wanted me to take the bag while he dealt with that.  I guess the bag had snagged then unsnagged the line a couple of times (hence Ted's problems) before finally completely wrapping around the ball, without any hope of unsnagging it.  Sean got in the water to free the bag (which at that point we'd abandoned), and then Beto and Jim's bag tangled with my bag.  Meanwhile Ted put up our second bag, and it briefly tangled with the ball, but Sean freed it.  Yikes.  What a mess.  In the end, everyone and their bag made it back on the boat.  Ted and I hit the cup o' noodles while we waited for Jim and Beto to return, and then we headed back to the dock.  We had a quick lunch at La Tortuga and then headed home via Anywater Sports.

Afternoon Boat in the Bay

Leah was finishing up her GUE Rec3 class on Sunday, and Matt, Rob, and I had scored an invitation to share the boat.  The plan was a light Tech dive at Kawika's Garden, followed by a recreational dive somewhere in the bay.  Since the class was, well, having class, in the morning, and since we have a big van, Rob and I were tasked with picking up some gas from Bamboo Reef.  I had been planning on hanging out and then getting dressed for the boat before heading to K-dock, but with the gas pickup and the rather hot weather, I decided to just toss all of my drysuit underthings into my bag and change in the van at K-dock.  We got everything we need at Bamboo Reef and headed to K-dock.  Because it was noon, the parking situation sucked, so we had to park pretty far away (in line with the building with the pub).  The boat was similarly parked in a bad spot, basically right out in front of the pub.  So it was a bit of a schlep with the doubles.  But not really that bad; I suppose that is the benefit of diving 104s regularly; it makes the 85s easier to walk around in.

We got our gear on the boat pretty quickly.  And when I saw "we" I mean everyone at K-dock.  I only had two bottles, but somehow it took Luke, one of the crew from the Monterey Express, and Chris (from AWS, who wasn't even working) to get them down to the boat.  Turns out if you just stand at the top of the ramp with something heavy, batting your eyelashes, you won't have to carry it to the boat yourself.  I'll have to remember that one.  I went back to the van to change, and realized I'd left my bag at Beto's.  Doh!  Luckily I keep a spare pair of socks in the van, and I just happened to have my base layer top (or second from base layer, since I usually wear a poly-pro tank top under it) in the van.  So I could make do, even though I had a minor meltdown when I first discovered this.  It was really hot, but since we had a short ride out, I figured I should don my drysuit before we got going.  And we were out at Kawika's in no time!  We hopped into the water and swam (can you believe it?) to do the downline.  I was a bit annoyed when I got to the ball and turned back to give my team the signal to descend, and found that they had already both descended without any sort of signal. Hmph.

The viz was really good for the bay, but nothing epic.  I have had better viz at Kawika's, but not for a long time.  It was also reasonably bright at the bottom, which was nice -- on some of the best viz days that I have had there, it has been dark as night.  It was a nice dive, though the best part was on deco from 20 feet up, so forgive me if I speed through the bottom portion.  We pretty much saw the usual suspects for the site -- lots of gorgonians, lots of Spanish shawls and Tritonia festivas, lots of canary rockfish, some really big vermilions, and a couple of jumbo lingcods.  We also found some squid eggs on the sand.  I was keeping my eyes peeled for a Tochuina, but didn't see any; turns out the other team saw one though.  I also saw a few juvenile yelloweyes, including what I would describe as a "large" juvenile.  Much bigger than the ones I usually see, but still with the juvenile coloration.  Matt also saw a large juvenile yelloweye (could have been the same one, but it was across the reef from where I saw one).  So maybe we will start seeing some adult yelloweyes soon :)  It was a relatively short dive, so deco flew by.  There were a lot of sea nettles on the ascent.  They weren't scary-dense, but they were there.  There were some realllly looooong ones.  The were so cool to look at.  I know that sea nettles are the devil, but I think they are so pretty!  I don't know why I didn't get some video of them :(

At 20 feet, Rob pointed past me and I turned to see a mola.  No, two molas!  And not the dinner-plate-sized Breakwater molas, but bigger ones (not the gigantor obese aquarium molas either, but a respectable size).  I happened to be running the bag (because, as Rob explained on the boat, I "need to work on my bag shoot"... eye roll).  As soon as I saw the mola, I went for the hero-cam (which I conveniently had clipped off), pushed the bag toward Rob and dropped it.  I knew he would know what to do.  Then I proceeded to swim along videoing the closer of the two molas, as the second one occasionally swam into the frame.  I was glad to not be decoing on O2, since it meant I could be a bit more, hmmm, lenient with my buoyancy window :)  At one point, Rob reached his hand out for the mola, and it actually swam up and rubbed its face along his arm.  Matt was watching as Rob reached out, looking sort of like "yea like that's going to happen".  Then as soon as the mola came by and rubbed Rob, Matt stuck his had out too :)  But the mola had lost interested and headed a bit shallower.  We caught up with him again on our 6 minute ascent (with very patchy bad viz).  It was totally fun having them their on deco -- I think it was my best mola encounter yet!

We headed back to the fuel dock for our surface interval, and Rob procured some snacks from the Breakwater deli while we waited.  Then we headed back out to Shale island.  The boat was anchored, but we were instructed to shoot bags and ascend wherever.  I was a bit confused about this, but you know Jim's temper, you don't want to question him on these things (hehehe).  We brought 32% stage bottles for the dive.  As we headed down the line, I realized that Rob's bottle had my initials on it.  So obviously my bottle must have Rob's initials on it.  I was a bit horrified that  I had let the crew clip the wrong bottle to me.  I had checked the MOD sticker, and the analysis tag (which had my initials on it, since I frequently analyze Rob's bottles and vice versa), so I guess it's not surprising that I could end up with Rob's bottle.  I suppose as long as the bottle has the gas I am expecting, and I analyzed it, it doesn't really matter.  But I was bothered by it in principle.

Anyhoo, Rob was leading the dive, whether intentionally or not, and he headed clockwise around the island.  I was in the back for most of the dive.  I was convinced that I could will an Acanthodoris rhodoceras to appear before me on the reef, but it turns out my powers of nudibranch-willing are not up to snuff.  So I really wasn't too productive in my critter finding on this dive.  Luckily, Matt and Rob made up for that, and found 3 octopi, all sort of reasonably sized.  I tried to get one of them to crawl on my hand, but he was not interested.  When Matt found the first octopus, I couldn't figure out what he was pointing at.  I kept looking and looking and trying not to scare whatever it was with my light.  But I guess since I had no idea where I was to be looking, I did move my light in the wrong place, and all of a sudden a plume of ink appeared in the water.  Once the ink appeared, I knew exactly where to look, and saw the octopus.  I don't think I've ever seen an octopus ink before (squid yes, but not an octopus).  That was neat!  Probably not so neat for the octopus, if he felt the need to ink me.  Other than that, it was a pretty standard Shale island dive, but with really good viz!

We surfaced like 20 feet from the bow of the boat even though we ascended off of the anchor on a bag.  I complained that the boat did not come to pick us up :)  We had a quick trip back to the dock, and then headed to RG Burger for dinner (again).

Everywhere at Lobos

I was feeling very wishy-washy about diving this weekend, or which day to dive, probably because the viz was such crap the previous weekend.  After rejecting a couple of offers to dive on Saturday (and Lobos tickets), eventually Kevin asked if I wanted to dive, so I decided to.  And I managed to cash in those offers of Lobos tickets, and brought along Clinton and Matt (who had been planning a Breakwater dive).  So we were a happy foursome, with no particular plans except to do something with 32%, and maybe O2.  I had been mumbling about maybe going to Great Pinnacle, which I haven't scootered to in ages, especially with 32%.  I've visited it a few times via Twin Peaks.  I proposed this once everyone had arrived, and eventually we settled on going to Shortcut Reef, and if the viz was really good, we could hop over to Great Pinnacle or Marco's Pinnacle.

The viz was good in the cove, but probably not as good as it had been the previous weekend.  But the viz everywhere else was WAY better.  Some might even call it epic.  It was so clear and blue; it was the best viz I've had at Lobos in a really long time.  It was definitely the perfect day to do a long scooter dive to the far reaches.  We took the shallow route out to the Lone Metridium area, peeling off from the sand channel at about 30'.  I don't know if that little path has a name.  The viz was unbelievable back there!  I realized too late into the ride out that I should really get my Hero cam out, since shallow water with great viz is perfect for that.  But I didn't feel like dealing with it on the way out, and figured I could get it on the way back in.  Eventually we popped out from the shallow path in the vicinity of Lone Metridium (or maybe one ridge over) and made our way out to the Sisters, and then over to Shortcut Reef.  We stopped there and kicked around for a bit.  Clinton was shooting macro, so I attempted to find some critters for him.  I wasn't very successful at that; I think all the nudibranchs went away because of the barnacles :(  There were a lot of them out there.  I was successful at scaring away a warbonnet that Clinton found; or so he says -- I never actually saw it, and he didn't get a picture (that's what he gets for being a good buddy and showing it to me before taking a picture).

Eventually it was suggested that we head out to Great Pinnacle, since the viz definitely met the "really good" criteria.  We headed out there, pausing briefly to visit a jellyfish, but pretty much scootering straight to the pinnacle.  When we arrived, we were greeted by a nice big school of blue rockfish (with a few olives -- there are always a few of those hanging around, pretending to be blues).  I spent a few minutes getting video of them, since these were pretty much the best conditions I could imagine for that.  There was also a smaller school of perch swimming just on top of the tallest peak.  It was, in general, a very fish day.  I also found a nice big lingcod hanging out on a little ledge, and pestered him with the Hero-cam.  Then I chased a kelp greenling for a bit.  After I was done annoying all of the fish of Great Pinnacle, I decided it would be fun to scooter down the face of the pinnacle until I either hit the bottom (not likely) or hit the MOD of my gas (more likely).  I told Kevin to follow me over there -- he had no idea what I had in mind -- and I pointed my scooter down, and down we went.  It was pretty fun.  Clinton and Matt appeared a moment later, presumably wondering where we'd wandered off to, and we joined back up with them and scootered around the pinnacle.

Kevin then suggested heading to Marco's Pinnacle.  I haven't been there in ages.  I don't know why -- it's so pretty!  Kevin led us straight to the "good side" of the pinnacle.  There was lots of hydrocoral, and it was much less barnacled than similarly shallow areas of Lobos.  In fact, that is probably why I thought it looked particularly pretty -- it was very colorful without the barnacles.  Also, there's a lot of nice hydrocoral there.  I also saw several cabezons (at least one of whom was harassed by the hero-cam) and lots of kelp rockfish.  Clinton found something really interesting -- white hydrocoral!  It may technically have been very very pale pink hydrocoral.  But it really looked bright white.  And it was tucked between a patch of pink and a patch of purple hydrocoral, which looked really cool.  It appeared to be perfectly healthy, other than its abnormal color.  It was pretty cool looking -- too bad Clinton was shooting macro (though he did a very nice job of capturing it with what he had).  Eventually we headed in; I think I suggested that because I was getting cold.

On the way in, we were scootering pretty far above the bottom, over boulder after boulder covered in barnacles.  So I was keeping an eye out for Onchidoris bilamellata, and I was not disappointed.  I found one boulder completely covered in them.  I dropped down to look at it (without alerting my team, oops).  They eventually noticed my unpresence and stopped to see what was going on.  I don't think they were particularly amused with me for dropping out of sight without a signal.  Bad kitty!  We got going again and eventually made it back to the sand channel, where the general fishiness of the dive continued.  First there was a school of tubesnouts off to the right.  After we passed them, I was thinking we might see senoritas as we got shallower.  So I left my hero cam running, just in case.  I was waiting and waiting and finally saw a measly two senoritas in the cove, but then a moment later we saw a school.  Woohoo.  We eventually stopped to switch onto our deco bottles.  I suggested we do 8 minutes at 20 feet, which was generous -- the dive really barely called for deco.  Since I guess I was technically deco captain (or rather, the only person on the dive who knows how to plan deco for such profiles), Kevin made me lead.  Great... I have to lead us back through the one part of the navigation I can never pull off... the cove.  I ended up surfacing us like 30 feet from the ramp; not bad.  In those last few feet as we surface scootered to the ramp, my scooter started making the "I'm about to die" noise.  Good timing.

I've become a bit of a one-dive wonder of late, but considering the epic viz, I couldn't pass up a second dive.  And Clinton never passes up a dive, so I didn't have to worry about a buddy.  Kevin and Matt decided to pass on a second dive (LAME).  Clinton and I had both left our stage bottles behind on the first dive (while Kevin and Matt brought them), because really, making a nearly-"recreational" dive into a two-bottle affair is just silly.  So we schlepped those out to the float, and after not that long of a surface interval (where Ben shared some delicious apples with me), we got back in.  We left the scooters behind despite many many offers of spare batteries and scooters with burn time (thanks everyone for offering).  It's good practice to kick every now and then.  Even with a stage bottle :P  Clinton suggested going out to the left side of the sand channel near the beginning of the sand channel.  I haven't done a dive there in a while, and it was really nice on the way out on the first dive.  I tossed my hero cam in the car (Matt's car, since he was my designated carpool buddy for the afternoon... while Rob and Leah were carpooling elsewhere), and Clinton pointed out that there is often a little school of blue rockfish that hangs out over there.  The battery was nearly dead, but I figured I might as well bring it.

We kicked out and dropped not very far out, since I destination was not very far out, and the viz was awesome.  The conditions were still very nice, and we just slowly kicked around looking for critters.  I saw some Hopkin's roses and a couple of Limacias (haven't seen one of those in a while).  But what really struck me about this dive was how colorful that area is -- it really hasn't been taken over by the barnacles at all.  During the dive, I kept thinking to myself "this is what shallow Lobos is supposed to look like!".  Near the end of the dive, I looked over toward the sand channel and saw a school of fish, which I thought were perch.  I told Clinton I was going to go over to video them, and as I swam closer, I realized they were blue rockfish that Clinton had promised.  Those fish were definitely on the smaller side, but the shallow, super clear water made for some nice video.  I think it's the best blue rockfish footage I have!  Shortly after that I called the dive on being cold.  This "dive until we suck our stage bottles dry" thing doesn't really work in such shallow water.  Unless you are much less of a cold weenie than me I guess.

We headed in and were happy to see a still relatively high tide, and managed to get ourselves out without a problem.  After cleaning up, we made contact with Matt, and agreed to meet at the Monterey RG for lunch.

Granite Point by Braille

There was a BAUE Lobos day on Saturday, which Rob and I attended.  Rob got home late Friday night, we got a slightly late start.  Lucky for him, his lovely wife setup his gear for him while pining for him on Friday afternoon.  We didn't have any very concrete plans for what we were going to do, but I think we somehow settled on Granite Point.  Turns out Clinton and John were going to Granite Point too, so we decided to all dive together.  As we were loading gear onto the float, I realized that this could be my opportunity for some Gavin lessons.  I recently acquired a Gavin scooter (but it lives in Florida), so I've been meaning to borrow one locally to learn to drive it.  Hehe.  So I proposed a swapperoo with John and he agreed.  He gave me some tips and then we all got geared up.  Rob and I managed to get into the water first, and were greeted to epic viz by the ramp.  I couldn't believe how good the viz was!  While we were waiting for John and Clinton, I did a little test drive on the surface with John's scooter.

Once we were all in the water, we scootered out on the surface and dropped down a bit before the worm patch.  I think we ended up in the little sand channel-lette just to the left of the real sand channel, so we made our way to the sand channel.  But I really can't be sure for two reasons: a) the viz was pretty bad, b) I was distracted dealing with the beast, err, the Gavin.  Yes, that's right, the viz at the ramp was epic, but at the start of the sand channel, it was not too good.  And it just got worse from there -- I couldn't believe it!  The trip out to Granite Point is all a bit of a blur.  I was a bit distracted dealing with the scooter, and trying to keep up with the team.  When we were still in the sand channel, at maybe 35 feet, I was scootering right on the edge of the kelp forest, and encountered a stalk of kelp that was laying out horizontally in front of me.  My scooter and arm went under it, but my body was about to go over it.  So I stopped, and attempted to pull the scooter back and over the kelp.

Lesson #1 on driving a Gavin: You do not move the scooter; the scooter moves you.

Yes, that's right.  I couldn't pull the freaking scooter back out from under the kelp just by the handle.  I had to grab the shroud with both hands.  In the meantime, the guys just kept on going.  Luckily John noticed that I had fallen behind and he waited for me.  The trip across the sand on the way to Granite Point proceeded likewise.  I had pitched the scooter down, because John said I would need to match the speed of the X's.  But apparently I pitched it down too far.  So on the way across the sand, I was falling behind.  But I knew if I stopped to pitch the scooter up, I would fall even further behind.  And with the crap viz, I wouldn't have to fall much further behind to lose the team.  Luckily John was hanging back keeping track of me.  I'm fairly certain if he hadn't been, I would have been left in the dust.  Rob denies that however :)  We stopped partway across the sand because I guess Rob saw a squid, but I didn't see it.  Just Rob signalling that he saw a squid.  Then we finished crossing the sand, and found the first wall.  We headed further north from there, stopping along the way every now and then.  I was actually rather surprised that we made it as far as we did, considering the viz.  My hand was killing me on the scoot out, and I eventually came to the conclusion that it was because the tow cord was a bit too long, so I was stretching my hand to reach the trigger.  But adjusting the tow cord fixed that.

There really isn't too much to report from the dive, in terms of interesting sightings or anything.  The viz was so bad that it took basically all of my concentration just to keep track of the team, or even one person from the team.  We would pretty much stop at a spot, swim around a bit, then Rob would suggest getting on the trigger and we'd go a bit further, and repeat.  It really wasn't a very fun dive.  Eventually we turned around and headed back south until we got to the main wall.  We actually had to stop and look around to be sure that that's where we were, before heading back over the sand.  When we finally made it back to the end of middle reef, I think there was a collective sigh of relief that we had made it back in that viz :P  We headed in along middle reef, and stopped to visit our friendly residents, the transect 4 warbonnet (who we couldn't find the last time we stopped there, so I was glad to see he's still there), and then the wolf eel -- there was one very big wolf eel in the usual spot.  By the time that we got back to the worm patch, the viz was clearing up, and then once we got into the cove, the viz was awesome!  We should have just dived in the cove!

On the way in, Clinton found a pipefish, which was really neat.  I got out my hero cam and took a little bit of footage (which is good, since Clinton and Rob collectively took 0 pictures on the dive!).  It's a bit small for the hero cam, but at least I got a little something to post.  When we got close to the ramp, we surfaced, and Rob suggested that we go check out "the rock" near the ramp.  You know, the one that sticks out of the water in the middle of the cove, near the beach with the seals.  What a great idea!  I've never gone over there before, but this was definitely the day to go... awesome viz and dead still water.  We went over there and spent maybe 15 minutes swimming around and looking at stuff.  There were zillions of Hilton's nudibranchs, a surprising number of fish, and Rob found a Triopha maculata!  After the dive, we all agreed it was not worth a second dive, so we adjourned to RG for snacks and then to Gary's house for a little BAUE get-together.

Kitty vs. Burn Test

I once read on Wikipedia that cow cats are known to love water.  Seems they may have been onto something (though that claim has since been removed).

Not at all related to the burn test, but awfully cute:

Long Weekend in FL: Peacock to Waterhole

On Saturday we went to Peacock.  I don't remember whose idea it was to do Waterhole, but it was a dive we'd wanted to do, since David told us it was really nice.  We did not know precisely where the jump was (in terms of number of feet), but there is that board near the path to the spring, which has a map on it.  And that had some sort of numbers on it.  I don't remember the details of the map, but it led me to believe that the jump was somewhere (slightly) before 850 feet.  So the plan was to head up the peanut tunnel and over to Waterhole, and then possibly further up the peanut tunnel on the way out (because I'm a "compulsive recalculator" or so Rob tells me).  Ted and Kevin were diving at Peacock also, and we got there in time to watch young Ted on his first foray down the walkway into the water at Peacock :)

We got in the water and I ran a spool to the Peanut line.  I was diving my wimpy 10W light, and in the bright light of open water, I couldn't see the spot.  So I looked at the light head to check if it was on, and saw water in the light head.  Hmm, that's not right.  I shut it off, showed it to Rob, and he thumbed it.  We surfaced and found that the ring on the light head was loose.  After opening it, dumping the water out, and drying it as best we could, and putting it back together (and actually screwing the ring on tightly), the light worked.  Freshwater is nice like that.  So we headed back in, and headed up the Peanut line as planned.  The beginning of the dive was pretty usual -- everything was how I left it the last time I dove there :)  Around 800 feet, my ears perked up and my whiskers started to twitch in attention, as I looked for the jump.  I couldn't clearly remember the jump from when I have dived the peanut line before.  I was a bit worried when we crossed the 900 foot arrow,  but then shortly after that, we saw the jump.  I guess that map we looked at was not quite right.  Subsequent web research indicates that the jump is nominally at 950 feet.  We installed the jump, and left our stage bottles at the jump.  I was under the impression that this tunnel is kind of small, which is why we left our bottles there.

The first bit of this line did not seem all that different than the mainline.  But at some point, it transformed into looking like no other part of Peacock that I've been in before.  For some reason, it seemed more like blue water with light walls, versus the green water with brown walls that I typically think of at Peacock.  If there is one thing I would saw about this line, that's what it would be.  But it was also just a fun line to go down, with the cave alternating from low, wide areas, to tall narrower areas (which were my favorite) and little underpasses and twists and turns connecting all of those.  There was also some nice lighter colored clay.  The tunnel wasn't really small in the way that I had somehow imagined it would be, but it was definitely very delicate, so leaving our stage bottles at the jump was probably a good call.  It eventually started to look like we were near an opening, because there was lots of black-brown organic material on the bottom.  Then it started to get shallower.  I knew nothing about the opening here, so we decided to surface and see for ourselves.  Shortly after the line started to ramp up, there was a big obviously line trap.  I don't know if "line trap" is even the correct term.  To me, line trap implies that the line *could* end up running in a way that would make it difficult or impossible to follow in no viz.  But in this case, it already was running that way.  The line ran under a big boulder.  The line disappeared under the boulder, and then maybe 4 or 5 feet later (I would estimate it to be a bit less than my wing-span), the line popped out again.  I noted its presence, decided that I could reach across the boulder and find the other side, and kept on going.  I suppose Rob did the same thing.  As we approached the surface, the viz got worse, and we found a tangled web of tree branches just below the surface, where the line ended.  I popped to the surface, then Rob appeared shortly after me, having installed a spool from the end of the line to the surface.  I made fun of him for installing a spool for that last 2 feet, but in hindsight, it was a pretty smart thing to do.

The surface was not worth visiting.  It was basically just a crappy little mudhole, that smelled like sulfur and had lots of tree branches in it.  After a minute or two, we agreed to head back in.  I went first (I'm not sure why, since I led on the way in).  The viz below us was terrible, I guess in the process of bumping against all the tree branches, we had knocked crap down in the water below us.  I followed Rob's spool to the start of the line, and somehow in the process, I had thread myself through tree branches in such a way that I was wedged in.  I was stuck in the tree branches, no more than 3 feet below the surface.  I had a bit of a Ted moment at this point.  Ted has this story about getting turtled in doubles at the Breakwater once.  I think in the story, he didn't have a reg in his mouth, and possibly there was no mask on his face either.  Anyway, in this story, Ted says that he had this thought go through his mind "I am NOT drowning in 6 inches of water at the Breakwater".  I had some similar thoughts about being stuck in the tree branches in 3 feet of water :)  I wriggled around a bit, and then let a little gas out of my wing, which made me slip a little and then I was freed.  I decided to return to the surface to regroup, and found Rob was already reeling his spool down, so I told him to come back up with me.  This all transpired in maybe 20 seconds.  So it really wasn't as dramatic as it seems :)  When we got to the surface, I told Rob what happened, and that he should give me a minute to get out of the way before he starts to cleanup the spool again.

Then I disappeared again, and this time I managed to not get tangled in the branches.  I was heading down the line, in touch contact, because the viz was spectacularly bad at this point.  I know I was in "open water", but since I was facing down, I could see only a few feet in front of me, wherever my light was pointing.  So I was inching down along the line, trying to avoid any tree branches.  I'd made it to about 10 feet, and I saw rock sloping down in front/above me, and I guess I put my hand out because I almost ran into it.  And then, at the least convenient possible moment, my light died.  I considered that I could have knocked the light off when I maneuvered to avoid the rock, but I really didn't have a hand free to figure that out.  So I looped my arm around the line and managed to get a scout light on, and then continued down the line, with the light still clipped to me, but in my hand.  I figured when I got to the bottom, I would deal with cleaning up my primary.  So I continued down, until the line suddenly disappeared under that boulder.  Oy.  I couldn't see the line come out on the other side, because the viz had deteriorated so much.  I figured I would need to tie a spool in and search around for the other side of the line, but step 1 was cleaning up my primary light (still on my hand), so I did that.  By the time I'd done that, Rob appeared, and I pointed out the problem.  He told me to stay on the line, and then he held onto my ankle (or maybe my fin), while searching around for the line.  I guess his wingspan plus my length was enough, because a moment later, he let go of my leg, and then kept giving me an okay.  Which I returned.  Then he returned it.  Then I returned it.  I was kind of like... is that an "I found the line okay?" or an "are you okay okay?"  But after trading okays back and forth a few times, I figured it could only be the former, and I swam toward him and saw the line.  We continued along until the water cleared (which it did as soon as we weren't under the icky hole), then I decided to fiddle with my light, to see if it would miraculously come back to life.  But alas it did not, so I exited on my backup.

The exit was uneventful and expedient.  When we got back to our bottles, I lamented the fact that we had *so much* more gas, but couldn't head further up the line as planned.  Stupid light.  I suppose that is what I get for hastily fixing a lighthead that is full of water on the surface before the dive.  After the dive, we took it apart and let everything dry and the light was fine.  I guess that's one more plus on the side of freshwater diving :)  I don't think it the light would have been as forgiving in the ocean!

So I suppose the lesson for today is not to swim over a line trap.  And surfacing at Waterhole isn't worth the effort.

Long Weekend in FL: Ginnie Springs River Intrusion Tunnel

After years of talking about it, we finally convinced Ted to go with us for a long weekend in cave country.  We flew in on Friday morning and stayed through Monday evening.  Kevin met us too, though he did not arrive until Saturday.  Ted spent the first day with Mark M. doing some sort of cave refresher/intro to Florida caves.  So on Friday, it was just Rob and me.  Rob had lofty ideas of getting to Ginnie Springs by noon, which of course was folly.  By the time we got our gear from storage, got all of our fills squared away at EE, and got some lunch, it was after 2 by the time that we got there.  We were slightly delayed because the last time we were in FL, I bought a new backplate to keep there, but hadn't gotten around to webbing it.  I hate webbing backplates, and came up with some complicated scheme involving taking my normal backplate with us, so I could match up the sizing.  But recognizing the silliness of this scheme, Rob offered to just do it for me.  I was a bit doubtful of his ability to size my harness on the spot, but he claimed he could :P  So we had to take care of that, and there were a couple of webbing misfires before we got it quite right :)  Of course we finally got to Ginnie just in time to get a text message from Ted saying that they were heading back to EE for lunch, but would be back at Ginnie later.  While we were at EE, we were asking Doug about ideas for where to go at Ginnie, since it seemed like we'd been to pretty much all of the places we could get with a single stage.  We showed him where we had been and he pretty much agreed.  So then he gave us a suggestion if we double staged, the river intrusion tunnel, though we were undecided if we wanted to do a double-stage dive.  Or more like I was undecided about it, since I was feeling kind of tired from the flight, and I've never double-staged at Ginnie before and it seemed vaguely scary.

When we got to Ginnie, I told Rob we could double stage if he ran the reel.  I didn't want to have to deal with pushing two stages through the eye and dealing with the reel.  Rob agreed to that.  But I did want to lead the dive, so he agreed to let me lead once the reel was tied in to the mainline.  He's so good to me.  Since I hate the mainline, or at least the flow on the mainline, I proposed that we go up the roller coaster line, then to the Hillier tunnel, then back to the mainline (at the dome room line) and then to the river intrusion tunnel.  So that was the plan.  When we got to Ginnie, we still had to setup our rigs, but that went reasonably quickly.  We counted up the number of spools we needed, and added one or two just in case we miscounted :)  We weren't entirely sure if we could jump from the Hillier tunnel right back to the mainline or if we would have to jump to the dome room tunnel then to the mainline (neither of us remembered it being that far, but couldn't remember just how far it was).  We put our bottles into the water, got into our suits and went for a little cool off swim before getting geared up and back into the water.  I dropped down and did a valve drill first, since I was still dubious about my cold-webbed harness.  But I could indeed reach my valves.  We got our bottles and headed into the eye.  Getting through there with two bottles was not too bad, but I was glad I wasn't running the reel :)  It was really only a pain in the one spot that's a pain with one bottle; and it didn't seem to be that much more geometrically challenging with two versus one bottles.  When we got to the mainline, Rob let me go ahead of him.

I quickly made my way up to the top left of the gallery, and found a nice spot where I could dodge the flow quite nicely.  Rob has taught me well.  Or maybe the flow was just down :P  The double stage experience was not too bad, once we were to the mainline.  I was a little nervous about going through the lips, so I took an extended pause right before the lips before starting through.  Again, not really that big of a deal -- you aren't actually any taller with two bottles, the tall part is just a little wider.  So it was just as ungraceful as usual, but not more, getting through the lips.  As we approached the hill 400 jump, I spied a good spot to drop our bottles, so I suggested we drop them there.  Ahhh, phew.  I've only done the roller coaster jump twice before, I think, so I was quite paranoid about swimming past it -- would I recognize it?  I knew it was somewhere in the vicinity of 700-800' in, but I wasn't really sure.  To make matters worse, before the dive, Rob had asked me if the jump was before or after the little low part where the center of the passage has a bump running through it.  I told him I thought the jump was before it.  So then when we passed that area and I still hadn't seen the jump, I was a bit worried.  Then a moment later we came to the jump and of course it was quite recognizable.  I put in the jump and we headed through there.  That's a fun passage; certainly a lot more fun than taking the mainline :P  When we got to the end, I started to install the jump when a team of scooter divers appeared out of the tunnel we had just come from.  Rob and I were embroiled in a discussion of where to drop our stages (since the Hillier tunnel didn't seem like a good place to drop them), so I tried to get out of their way.  They disappeared from my visual field and my consciousness.  I wasn't sure where they went, but I thought the mainline.  We found a nice little rock to leave our bottles on, and then finished installing the jump.  We headed up the line, which we thought, at that moment, was the Hillier tunnel line.

Then the line ended after like a minute.  This is not what we were expecting.  But we could see another line that this line effectively T'd into (except not, it was a jump).  I knew that right was the right way to go based on a) basic geometry and b) the direction that the arrows were pointing on that line (to the left).  I went to my pocket to pull a spool, but before I got it out, Rob had pulled a spool and started to install it and swim over to the other line.  Yea, you read that right.  While trying to pull a spool, I felt a bunch of line spaghetti in my pocket... obviously some line had come off of one of the spools in there.  When I caught up with Rob at the line that he jumped to, he asked which way to go.  I pointed the way to go (duh), but not with much force, because I wasn't ready to go yea.  Then I told him to hold.  I pulled my pigtail out of my pocket because it was in the way of fixing the spaghetti.  Rob just gave me this look like "why the f--- do you have your pigtail in your hand?".  Then I pulled a spool out and told him to hold on.  I was passing the pigtail between my hands, trying to figure out how to spool up the loose line while also hold the spool and my pigtail.  I think this is about the point where Rob started yelling at me through his regulator.  I'm not sure what he was saying, but it started with "Dude!"  Eventually I got the spool cleaned up and put back in my pocket, and pointed the way to go.  As you can possibly imagine, I was a bit annoyed with Rob by this point.  Like a minute later, as I was swimming along, Rob kept swimming PAST me, so I stopped and yelled at him with hand signals to tell him I was the captain and he should stay the hell behind me :)  He mostly behaved for the rest of the dive after that.  A couple minutes up the Hillier tunnel, I remembered, while visualizing the map of the cave, that the Hillier tunnel line runs all the way to the bats, and there is a little connector between the mainline and that line.  Doh.  Well I won't forget that again.

Dropping the stage bottles before the Hillier tunnel was a good call, since at least in some areas there would not have been good options for leaving bottles on.  When we got to the end of the line, I looked off to my right to see if I could see the main line, to jump directly to it, and I could not.  So instead I put the micro-jump (actually more of a nano-jump) to connect the Hillier line with the dome room line.  And managed to bonk my head on a spit of rock sticking down from the ceiling in the process.  Ouch.  We headed toward the mainline and of course it was super close, and I could easily have run a spool directly to it.  Grumble grumble.  We jumped to the mainline and headed up it.  I was expecting a torturous swim up the mainline, since there is quite a bit of flow and not much to pull on, but it wasn't too bad.  I guess the flow really was down.  That part of the mainline always seems so dark to me, because it's big and so less light reflecting around me.  So I was worried about missing the jump, since I couldn't necessarily see the right wall that well.  But it was not a problem.  I let Rob install the jump since I was out of jump spools, and I could tell that he really wanted to install a jump.  And I even let him lead from there.  Not that he really deserved that, based on his earlier behavior.  The river intrusion tunnel was weird.  The water looked really clear but it seemed like our lights did not penetrate it very well at all.  But I liked swimming in behind Rob and his giant light; there was a cool light effect in that tunnel.  We passed a T, where we went right, and not too much longer after that, the tunnel sort of pinched down and went up a little.  I saw that coming up, and noticing that I was going to turn on gas in just a couple minutes, I tried to signal Rob before he made it into the smaller passage (since it would be easier to turn around before getting into it), but he didn't see my signal.  I guess that is the downside of being behind Rob and his big bright light.  So by the time I signaled him to turn around, we were both in a sort of tight spot where it was annoying to turn around.  For all I know it opened back up into bigger tunnel up ahead, and I was just making our lives harder by turning a little early.  Actually after looking at the map, that doesn't seem likely, but I guess I'll have to investigate that at a later date.

On the way out, Rob pointed out stage bottle rock.  Doug had described this rock to us, and I had been looking for it and not seeing it on the way in, but that's because I thought it was just before the river intrusion tunnel; in fact it is just after it.  Rob knew that, probably because he stays up late at night, studying cave maps.  When we got back to the jump off of the mainline toward the dome room, Rob remembered that we had switched positions, which meant I had to clean up the spool, unfortunately.  The flow made that sort of annoying.  I managed not to hit my head while cleaning up my nano-jump and then we were back in the Hillier tunnel.  The viz got VERY bad in one passage while we were in there.  It was so bad that we were both on the line for a brief period.  But it eventually cleared up, and the rest of the way back was clear, and uneventful.  We didn't see any GPOs or anything.  When we got back to our first stage (the first that we dropped, the second that we came back to), Rob was fidgeting a bit about getting on his bottle and when we got to the park bench, I realized why... he wanted to jump off of there.  So we dropped our bottles there and headed up that line.  I often forget that there is actually a bit of flow on that line.  It's not like most of the other jumps off of the mainline, where once you take the jump the flow goes WAY down.  It's an especially rude awakening after you have been riding the flow out for a half hour, and then you take that jump.

We headed up that for a while, with Rob leading, since he'd been leading on the way out.  We passed the first jump to our left, then the second, and I figured he was just going to keep going up that line.  Then he stopped at some point, at an arrow on the line, where it turned to the left 90 degrees.  I didn't know if the arrow was for a jump or what, but there was what looked like a tunnel to the right.  Rob swam off a bit to look around and then came back and said he was going to install a line.  I told him that was fine.  I figured he had found a line on the other side.  Then he swam off.  And swam and swam.  And never stopped to tell me to cross once he had tied in the jump.  I was sitting there rolling my eyes about this and eventually decided that I had to follow him, because he was getting beyond the point where I could see him.  So I followed him line, only to find that there was no other line to jump into.  He was just running line.  Eventually he came to a room, with a pile of stuff in the center, which was the "White Room".  I didn't realize that there wasn't a line to the room.  After that, we headed out -- all the way out.  Rob re-took the lead once we got back to the park bench and got our bottles.  I made it back through the lips without a problem, phew.  When we got to back to the reel, I must have made some sort of stray hand signal, which Rob thought meant "go ahead, I'll get the reel".  Once I realized that that's what he thought, I signaled him again and was like "uh uh".  He sort of shook his head and then waved me ahead.  Hehe.  I waited for him in the 50 foot room while he cleaned up the reel to that point.  That seemed to sort of take forever :P  Then I crossed my fingers, hoping I wouldn't get stuck in the eye on the way out, and headed up.  There was some definite clanging along the way, but it was a pretty controlled passage through there.  I waited for Rob in the 30 foot room and then we got our O2 bottles.  After we picked them up, we saw someone hanging out at the entrance, looking down into the room.  I thought it was a diver waiting for us to exit, but we were hanging out at 30 feet for a minute or so, which Rob tried to signal.  Eventually after no one came by, but I got sick of waiting, I went up to the 20 foot ledge, and the diver was gone.  It turns out it was Ted, just peeking in to take a look at the eye (they had entered through the ear for their dives).  We settled in on the ledge and negotiated deco.  Once that was set, I whipped out my wetnotes, took a few notes on the dive (none of which did I reference while writing this report, oddly), and then we played some hang-man.  Or hang-kitty, as I prefer to play -- if you consider each whisker a separate body part, you can be really bad and still not lose.  Among today's phrases were "Ted the Cave Diver" and "I love the Station Bakery".

When we finally made it out of the water, we found a note from Ted on our car.  Apparently we had been in the water so long that they had come and gone while we were diving :(  Bastard.  We were both disgustingly hot when we got out of the water.  Rob went back in for a swim in his drysuit, but I just couldn't stand being in my suit any longer, so I changed into my swimsuit in the car (while perhaps flashing everyone in the vicinity of the turkey roost) and went to meet him.  Brrr.  As hot as I was,  the water was still painfully cold!  After a very short swim, we got out and got going.  We stopped by EE, which was closed, but Doug and Mark were both lurking out back, so we chatted with them briefly before heading back to the Country Inn, where we finally found Ted.