Weekend conditions were looking placid, so we made some last-minute plan changes and headed to Monastery instead of BW. We were stymied at N. Monastery by a monstrous stream that had to be two, maybe even three feet across, and over 6 inches deep at the middle, blocking our way to the beach, so instead of engineering a solution to such an insurmountable problem we relocated to S. Monastery.
There, we geared up and proceeded to perish as we trudged across the sand and over the berm in full gear. We decided to kick out really far on the surface, but on descent I had some kind of sinus blockage and couldn't get below 20ft, so we just did a few drills and headed back to shore (regretting the decision to kick out so far in the first place). Steve offered to take the camera, so I got out of the water and they headed back for a glorious dive. I took a nap in the truck and gorged myself on the snacks that were meant to be saved until the end of the dive. Turns out it was a beautiful ~40-50ft of viz (obscured by huge swarms of mysid shrimp at the bottom of the water column) but 46F temps...ouch. At 20ft, it was a fairly warm 50F and you could really see mixing of the hot/cold thermocline throughout the water column.
I know my OW class doesn't want me to log a dive that's less than 20 min, but I'm doing it anyways, cause anything that requires me to wash my gear as if I actually dived is enough to fill up a spot in the logbook
[youtubehq]wgbv0aDl9_4[/youtubehq]
There, we geared up and proceeded to perish as we trudged across the sand and over the berm in full gear. We decided to kick out really far on the surface, but on descent I had some kind of sinus blockage and couldn't get below 20ft, so we just did a few drills and headed back to shore (regretting the decision to kick out so far in the first place). Steve offered to take the camera, so I got out of the water and they headed back for a glorious dive. I took a nap in the truck and gorged myself on the snacks that were meant to be saved until the end of the dive. Turns out it was a beautiful ~40-50ft of viz (obscured by huge swarms of mysid shrimp at the bottom of the water column) but 46F temps...ouch. At 20ft, it was a fairly warm 50F and you could really see mixing of the hot/cold thermocline throughout the water column.
I know my OW class doesn't want me to log a dive that's less than 20 min, but I'm doing it anyways, cause anything that requires me to wash my gear as if I actually dived is enough to fill up a spot in the logbook
[youtubehq]wgbv0aDl9_4[/youtubehq]