Blog for Nayan

After a long hiatus in my diving, I finally decided to dive on Sunday 27th July. Sundiver was headed off to San Clemente (SC henceforth) and Kim from ValleyScuba was going to get her AOW (Advanced Open Water), so i decided to join that boat.

SC is a 5-6 hour boat ride on Sundiver so we were supposed to get on the boat saturday night. Packed my stuff and got ready to leave my place at about 8.30ish pm and finally after one u-turn i reached Alamitos Bay landing where the Sundiver is located. Completed the paperwork, met Kim and checked out the bunk assignments, we were supposed to share bunks and i was assigned the lower one which was closest to the bow. I checked out the bunk and it was pretty comfortable, more than what i expected. I managed to sleep well and didn’t have any problems as such.

Woke up early at about 6.30 am and we were already there, for me the breakfast was a bagel and banana. The first dive was going to be a deep dive and i was looking forward to hitting 100ft and beyond but alas that wasn’t the case to be. We all got geared up and since i didn’t have any buddies i wasn’t sure with whom i was going to dive. I assumed that i will dive with the folks taking advanced class so it will be easier for me, but i decided to be the nice guy and buddied up with Derrek who was from Missouri.

Derrek had an interesting experience when he came aboard Sundiver, he was expecting to rent all his gear on the boat and then dive. He didn’t realize that he had to go to the shop i.e Ocean Adventures and get his gear. I guess the folks on the boat managed to find him spare gear to dive in but he was wearing a 3mm wetsuit. He would normally freeze in Cold Calif water but today it was 67 F on the surface so he supposed he could handle the cold. Also he wasn’t AOW but he told me that he had been in 100 ft of water, i decided to stick a depth of 60 or less even though ended up going to 68. Before getting into water, this another girl comes up to me and asks if it would be cool for her and her buddy to follow us since it was their first time diving in Calif and she was afraid of getting lost in the Kelp. It was fine with me and told her that i might get lost too :D.

So after doing the routine checks, I got into water first and then the rest of gang followed me. We decided to just explore the reefs which were in about 30-40 ft of water, I descended, Derrek followed immediately but out of the two girls only one of them descended the other was nowhere to be seen. After spending couple of minutes in about 20 ft of water, we decided to surface to find the remaining of our party, this girl had some problems since it was her first dive in cold calif waters. She was mainly scared and not confident enough to dive, so we took our time at the surface and with about 2000 psi remaining (in my tank) we decided to give it another try. This time the only people at 25 ft was me and Derrek, I decided not to surface again and we continued our dive.

For a change my dive light was functioning properly and I was able to use it, found quite a few lobsters lurking in the cracks. A group of fishes feasting on a dead sea urchin didn’t mind us. Nothing too exciting just saw the usual california marine life, i need to refresh my Fish ID knowledge to put in a few more names out here :). About 25 minutes into the dive Derrek was feeling cold so we decided to end the dive and after the safety stop we were out of the water.

Family of Lobsters, chilling in the crevices.

Sea Fan????????

Urchin feast, seemed yummy for them.

Dive 1: (this is all i get from my computer without downloading dive log)

Max Depth: 65 feet

Total Time: 30 mins.

After the first dive, I hydrated myself ate some just the usual. It seemed that the class doing advanced dove to about 81 ft only because that was the deepest they could go, so even if i hadn’t buddied up with Derrek i wouldn’t have gone beyond 81 ft. We moved to a different spot which had underwater caves and i was excited by it. Derrek spotted a sea lion and told me that he wanted to go after it, his whole intention of diving in Calif was to swim with Sea lions, bad choice buddy SC is not famous for Sea Lions, SB or Anacapa is. This time around the two ladies were going to dive on their own and not going to follow us or something. 

We decided to head in the direction of the caves and they were amazing. We were able to go underneath them and take a closer view and stuff like that. The structures wouldn’t be even classified as caverns in terms of diving, just some overhead reefs and passages through which we could swim. It was really cool. The marine life was usual and i think Derrek wanted to find that sea lion so he headed off towards the sands. He saw a ray pass by and i just caught a brief glimpse of it. We then explored the reefs little bit more and saw the usual critters. We ended the dive soon. I had some problems with my ear during this dive and i wasn’t sure if i could make it the next dive. My main concern was equalizing my ears.

Unknown Entity

Dive 2:

Max Depth: 68 Feet

Dive Time: 25 mins

We now moved to a different side of the island and as we were moving i could see the water changing colors, it was getting more blue and clear as well. When we reached the calm waters near the Fish eye rock, the conditions were simply amazing. We were able to see the bottom from the boat i.e the visibility was 60 feet easily and the sun also had come out, it was simply amazing. I really hoped i would be able to equlize my ears during this dive, i just didn’t want to miss it. Derrek spotted a couple of sea lions chilling on the rock and he wanted to swim out there, I wasn’t too excited about the idea. I would explore the kelp rather than chasing sea lions. 

I reluctantly agreed to his idea of going after the lions on the rock, he got into water and i soon followed. Instead of swimming over the kelp i decided to head for the rock from underneath so i dove to about 20 ft, Derrek was on surface and i followed him. It was a totally different growth closer to the rocks, no kelp but lots of grass and stuff which was really cool. When we got to the rock, i surfaced and we saw that the lions had vanished and they went over to the other side. There was no way that i was going to follow them out there, so i convinced Derrek to continue the dive and explore the kelp rather than to chase the sea lions. So we headed back and were exploring the kelp all the time. Came across a couple of lobsters, there was so much junk at this location. Various steel boxes, exhaust pipes etc were littered on the ocean floor. We came across a tiny little nudibranch which was cool, i tried photographing those juvenile Garibaldis but they would run away from me the moment i got closer. We were 43 minutes into the dive and i still had about 800 psi left in my tank, at this moment Derrek signalled he was at 500 psi so we decided to end the dive.

It was so amazing out there that i decided to snorkel, it was relaxing just to lay out there and watch the ocean floor from the top. I must have snorkeled for about 10 – 15 mins and then called it a day with one of the best dives i have done. The last dive made the whole trip totally worth it.

The Greens, you can see sun rays.

The Kelp Forest.

Nudibranch

Dive 3:

Max Depth: 53 Feet

Dive Time: 44 mins

There wasn’t anything special as such for me to have for lunch but i managed to survive on mashed potatoes, salad and the chocolate cake which was awesome. Had a brief nap on the way back and when i woke up we had reached Catalina and there were another 2-3 hours left before we reached land. Just did timepass on the boat in general and when i turned on the cell phone there was a message from Cory (my supervisor at work). 

I had to get in the office and figure out an issue we were having. We took sometime to dock because there was another small boat docked in our place, the harbor patrol came and towed the boat away. So finally at about 8.15 pm we docked and i reached my place at about 9pm. Dumped everything in the tub and then headed off to work to fix that small problem. It wasn’t big of deal to get it fixed and then after having pizza for dinner , I finally dozed off at about 12. It was end to a very long and satisfying day of diving.

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