NCD dive report stillwater 05-12-07

dive report for the may club dive

stillwater cove
3-5 swell, calm in cove
25+ vis
wind was strong and builds as the day progressed
whitecaps
no fog
good company

it was a nice day to dive. but unfortunately I sat this one out. Yankee my dog and I sat beach side and gave moral support and played Frisbee. the usual faces were present. Kevin showed up alone and the rest of the Johnson clan stayed home due to a Denise not feeling so well. I can relate. this is why I decided not to dive at this time. I just haven't been feeling 100%. peter and Jim seemed to pair off. and Odie, Kevin and tao made a nice trio. when I arrived about 9:30am . the whole crew was just getting back from some ab diving. everybody seemed to get there limits. Odies girlfriend took charge and cooked up some fresh abalone for us all to enjoy. I cant remember her name but kudos to her. and Dara and her seemed to have a nice time taking photos as the guys all went out diving. our pirate was busy with a family doing open water training. ho and while Andy was cleaning his abalone he found treasure. leave it to the pirate to find the treasure. I large ab pearl about the size of a quarter. WOW!!! this was a treat. I offed some alum 80s to Odie from ZKY for a good deal. now he wont be renting tanks!!! and he is more equip to dive with us more often!!!! thanks all for the good day on the beach. peter should be posting some photos soon as you all know he is quite the photographer!! I left early so there might be more of a report. and there is is. enjoy ER!!

It was definitely a nice weekend. I couldn't believe the visability on Saturday morning. It was at least 30' and I actually was able to spot the abs before diving on them for a change. I finally got to meet Taoh, who came up from San Jose. He is quite the free diver and instead of using a pry bar, he just used his hands. We both got our limit in a fairly short amount of time. Speaking of abs, as Brian mentioned I found a nice sized pearl. It just happened to be the birthday of one of my students so I gave it to her as a present. She was quite thrilled!

I must say we have a really great group of people and more show up each time. I like the way our group is so open to new people. My students felt right at home.

Water temp: 48F
Max depth 1: 41-fsw
Max depth 2: 52-fsw

It was a nice weekend and I haven't dove in nice vis like this for a while. It was nice to meet everyone and I hope to make time to dive more frequently than what I've been doing.

Grabbing abs with bare hands (or gloved hands) is something I saw someone else do when I first learned to dive for abs about 3 years ago but I still keep my iron in my float in case I decide to use it. I didn't start trying it until last year and I can pull it off if I'm not exhausted, the ocean isn't kicking me around and I can get into a position where I don't disturb the ab before I try to grab it, sometimes trying to get abs even with an iron can be difficult when it's rough. It took some help from Andy to find 2 of the 3 abs because I exhausted myself looking for and swimming to my runaway float. I have a habit of not anchoring because I tend to get away with not losing it if I'm just doing a quick search on the bottom (maybe because some of my searches have been within kelp beds) but it's something I'll have to stop doing if I don't want to search for my float again. The black and red color of my float cover doesn't seem to help with spotting it when it strays away either.

It was good to use my SCUBA gear again since I haven't used it in a while. I got good advice on some tweaks I need do to my equipment and will get around to it by the next dive. Being my first dive with SCUBA on the North Coast I was a bit surprised to see so many abs starting at around 30+fsw. Some of the urchins also looked good enough to eat but that will have to wait until I decide to start collecting urchins. Aside from those two, I noticed lots of stars, snails, sea cucumbers, and a few fish. Bottom time for both dives were in the 35 minute range for the steel 72s I had rented. I wanted to get steel 80s but AWS seems to only have 2 of such tanks for rental and none were available when I went to pick them up on Friday. I'll have to get higher capacity tanks next time, I think some of my dive buddies might've had enough air to last a while longer. Anyway, I'm glad I rented 2 tanks because I originally planned on doing just 1 SCUBA after the freedive.

I had fun and hope to see you guys again.
Tao

wish I was there

Here are some pics...
Andy teaching his family of OW students

The young divers

Crab and Abalone