Rainer
Contributor
Last week, Jennifer and I were able to get in four straight days of diving in San Diego. Our last day saw us on the Lois Ann for dives on the Yukon and Ruby E. Turns out kathydee and her friend, Rick, were also on the charter.
A group of eight of us had done the Yukon the day before, and again, conditions on her were decent. We descended into 20-25' of visibility, and soon we were scootering toward the bow. Slowly, we kicked our way under the massive ship. After that, we toured both the forward and rear guns, before spending some time on the upper structure. We did 40 minutes on the bottom before heading up the mooring line. We were treated to a dive bombing sea lion who stayed with us from 50' to the surface. What fun!
After a few bites to eat and topping the cylinders off, we were ready for our dive on the Ruby E. She's a former US Coast Guard cutter (formerly "Cyane"), nearly 170' in length, now sitting in about 80' of water. We'd dived her earlier in the year, but had a miserable 3-5' of vis then. This trip would be significantly better (around 15-20'; much better on the port side for some reason). The scooters are a bit overkill on this smaller wreck, but I wanted some video, and well, they're just plain fun. We explored from bow to stern, and back again, making a couple very light swim-through penetrations (the middle deck is quite open). This is a very pretty ship, just covered in strawberry anemones. Large schools of blacksmith were picking off the few squid that still remained after an apparent large lovefest (the sand was covered in patches of squid eggs). After another 40 minute bottom time, up we went, before making the short boat ride back to the harbor.
[vimeo]18374847[/vimeo]
A group of eight of us had done the Yukon the day before, and again, conditions on her were decent. We descended into 20-25' of visibility, and soon we were scootering toward the bow. Slowly, we kicked our way under the massive ship. After that, we toured both the forward and rear guns, before spending some time on the upper structure. We did 40 minutes on the bottom before heading up the mooring line. We were treated to a dive bombing sea lion who stayed with us from 50' to the surface. What fun!
After a few bites to eat and topping the cylinders off, we were ready for our dive on the Ruby E. She's a former US Coast Guard cutter (formerly "Cyane"), nearly 170' in length, now sitting in about 80' of water. We'd dived her earlier in the year, but had a miserable 3-5' of vis then. This trip would be significantly better (around 15-20'; much better on the port side for some reason). The scooters are a bit overkill on this smaller wreck, but I wanted some video, and well, they're just plain fun. We explored from bow to stern, and back again, making a couple very light swim-through penetrations (the middle deck is quite open). This is a very pretty ship, just covered in strawberry anemones. Large schools of blacksmith were picking off the few squid that still remained after an apparent large lovefest (the sand was covered in patches of squid eggs). After another 40 minute bottom time, up we went, before making the short boat ride back to the harbor.
[vimeo]18374847[/vimeo]
