BrianV
Contributor
Ok, please don't take this the wrong way, but two weekends ago I took Catalina Express to Avalon and dove Casino Point.
I did two dives and was extremely excited. However, I felt like it had been over-hyped by everyone I talked to. Please let me know if my experience is just bad coincidence.
So the day started with a beautiful catalina express trip on one of their nicer vessels (Starship Express; damn that thing is fast, and those turbo diesels sound AWESOME). We took the earliest trip there and arrived there at like 8am.
We walked (with our gear), not a long walk at all to the casino point dive park. We looked to be some of the first people there. We parked our stuff closer to the stairs next to someone who had laid out a tarp. I rented two tanks and two weight belts (gouge, $12 / tank). We began setting up our gear on the cement near the concrete wall. Our gear was about 5 feet from the aforementioned tarp. I was putting my dive skin on and temporarily threw my shirt down where about 20% of the tshirt was laying on that other guy's tarp. About then, the guy comes out of the water and makes a huge scene about my shirt being on his tarp. He then goes on to say, "EXCUSE ME, blah blah, We have this custom here where you stay clear of other people's stuff." I said, "Sorry!" and immediately moved my shirt and our stuff another few feet further away. He went on to say, "These tarps are here so we have dry ground for our gear." The funniest thing was both me and my shirt were bone dry at the time and he was dripping water off of his gear and suit and he stood firmly in the middle of tarp (drenching it).
About five minutes later the guy came up and apologized and admitted he was sort of being an *******. He did end up spending time with us, pointing out which buoys went where, and where to go. He actually turned out to be strikingly pleasant after the first incident where I thought he overreacted. I think his son, who he was diving with told him he was being a d!ck. I was still unnerved by the original overreaction but appreciated his local input.
I decided to move our gear to a less densely populated area (inconvenience) just because I still was uncomfortable around that guy, and my g/f was especially unhappy about the situation. So we parked our stuff way far away and began our dive.
We went out to the far morey directly straight from the entrance stairs, descended to 65', saw that small wreck there, and zig-zagged our way back to the stair case 50 minutes later. Seeing the kelp forrests was cool, but I had expected it to be cooler. The underwater life was minimal. We saw a handful of girabaldi and a couple of dullish black/pink fish. For some reason I was expecting bat rays, octopus, horn sharks, sheep crabs, etc.
When we resurfaced we found that our spot had been completely taken over by a dive master/instructor and his two students. Umm, if it's common courtesy to stay like 10' away from people's stuff, then don't park your gear in front of ours. If it's local courtesy then wouldn't a local area instructor know that??? Now we were forced to move and put on our gear leaning against the casino itself. It was obvious when we went to pick up our gear and move it that we got jacked. Hell, we were interrupting their dive briefing as we were reaching for our stuff. Not once did they say sorry or anything. Also, it's not like they were next to our stuff, they were ON TOP of it. Oh well, I didn't make a scene or say anything, we just moved. I was born and raised in California and moved to Texas four years ago, and everytime I visit (almost once a month), I notice how people become less sensitive and selfish so I wrote that off again.
Again, don't take this as a massive criticism or a generalization, but in my short career of diving, I've found that divers are some of the friendlies, generous, and polite people in the world; just didn't see that in any of my interactions at Casino Point.
Our second dive, we went off to the right of the the stair case, descended to 65' again and worked our way back, following a 270 degree compass setting. We saw some larger kelp forrests, but still nothing that significant.
We then surfaced and packed our stuff up. Of I forgot to mention, on my first trip out of the water, I paused for like 3 seconds as I attempted to stand up to take my fins off, and this lady behind me was like, "You gotta go, come on, go, there are people waiting." It was just her, and I had just gotten there and had patiently waited for the student in front of me to get out of the water. I had been weightless for 50 minutes, have 24 lbs, a 10mm suit, and a steel tank on; it takes me a few seconds to get to my feet.
In addition, as we had just finished packing up, this guy made an inappropriate comment to my g/f. My girlfriend is Vietnamese, and this guy walking with his 6 year old son, says, "And son, meet our Thai friend here." My g/f says, "I'm not Thai." Then the guy begins guessing every other Asian race except Vietnamese. No biggy, she gets that a lot, but for a guy to randomly say that out loud, as if my g/f didn't understand English (she was born here and English is her first language) seemed rude. I can't explain the tone of the way he said it, but it came off offending, and we're not easily offended. We didn't make a scene and she politely informed him she was Vietnamese. He then said, and I can't believe this, "Oh you have those big Thai ears." It was just icing on the cake.
We then had a pleasant couple hours in Avalon and returned home on another pleasant Catalina Express trip. We had lunch at some place (can't remember the name), and ended up in a conversation about world cup soccer with a very polite crowd of people, so it just seemed to be the divers. In fact, on our boat ride home we spoke with several people and they were all extremely pleasant.
At the end of the day, I had expected more from the dive. In fact, the visibility was only slightly better than Malaga Cove and there was substantially more underwater life at Malaga, and it was bigger underwater life. I figured it might be because of the holiday weekend, but we were there on Saturday, first thing in the morning so I'm sure it hadn't been stirred up yet.
Being that it cost $110 R/T for Catalina Express, and $52 for tank/weight rentals for two people, it seemed fairly expensive for diving that could've been done from local Redondo/Palos Verdes' shores.
Next time I think we'll take a chartered boat and dive off of the boat, which was the original plan, but I had read so many great things about Casino Point, and figured my g/f would enjoy spending time in Avalon (which she did so I'm still glad we went).
Did I just catch Casino Point on a bad day? We covered a lot of ground on our 105 minutes worth of diving, both in and out of the kelp forrests.
Thanks,
Brian
I did two dives and was extremely excited. However, I felt like it had been over-hyped by everyone I talked to. Please let me know if my experience is just bad coincidence.
So the day started with a beautiful catalina express trip on one of their nicer vessels (Starship Express; damn that thing is fast, and those turbo diesels sound AWESOME). We took the earliest trip there and arrived there at like 8am.
We walked (with our gear), not a long walk at all to the casino point dive park. We looked to be some of the first people there. We parked our stuff closer to the stairs next to someone who had laid out a tarp. I rented two tanks and two weight belts (gouge, $12 / tank). We began setting up our gear on the cement near the concrete wall. Our gear was about 5 feet from the aforementioned tarp. I was putting my dive skin on and temporarily threw my shirt down where about 20% of the tshirt was laying on that other guy's tarp. About then, the guy comes out of the water and makes a huge scene about my shirt being on his tarp. He then goes on to say, "EXCUSE ME, blah blah, We have this custom here where you stay clear of other people's stuff." I said, "Sorry!" and immediately moved my shirt and our stuff another few feet further away. He went on to say, "These tarps are here so we have dry ground for our gear." The funniest thing was both me and my shirt were bone dry at the time and he was dripping water off of his gear and suit and he stood firmly in the middle of tarp (drenching it).
About five minutes later the guy came up and apologized and admitted he was sort of being an *******. He did end up spending time with us, pointing out which buoys went where, and where to go. He actually turned out to be strikingly pleasant after the first incident where I thought he overreacted. I think his son, who he was diving with told him he was being a d!ck. I was still unnerved by the original overreaction but appreciated his local input.
I decided to move our gear to a less densely populated area (inconvenience) just because I still was uncomfortable around that guy, and my g/f was especially unhappy about the situation. So we parked our stuff way far away and began our dive.
We went out to the far morey directly straight from the entrance stairs, descended to 65', saw that small wreck there, and zig-zagged our way back to the stair case 50 minutes later. Seeing the kelp forrests was cool, but I had expected it to be cooler. The underwater life was minimal. We saw a handful of girabaldi and a couple of dullish black/pink fish. For some reason I was expecting bat rays, octopus, horn sharks, sheep crabs, etc.
When we resurfaced we found that our spot had been completely taken over by a dive master/instructor and his two students. Umm, if it's common courtesy to stay like 10' away from people's stuff, then don't park your gear in front of ours. If it's local courtesy then wouldn't a local area instructor know that??? Now we were forced to move and put on our gear leaning against the casino itself. It was obvious when we went to pick up our gear and move it that we got jacked. Hell, we were interrupting their dive briefing as we were reaching for our stuff. Not once did they say sorry or anything. Also, it's not like they were next to our stuff, they were ON TOP of it. Oh well, I didn't make a scene or say anything, we just moved. I was born and raised in California and moved to Texas four years ago, and everytime I visit (almost once a month), I notice how people become less sensitive and selfish so I wrote that off again.
Again, don't take this as a massive criticism or a generalization, but in my short career of diving, I've found that divers are some of the friendlies, generous, and polite people in the world; just didn't see that in any of my interactions at Casino Point.
Our second dive, we went off to the right of the the stair case, descended to 65' again and worked our way back, following a 270 degree compass setting. We saw some larger kelp forrests, but still nothing that significant.
We then surfaced and packed our stuff up. Of I forgot to mention, on my first trip out of the water, I paused for like 3 seconds as I attempted to stand up to take my fins off, and this lady behind me was like, "You gotta go, come on, go, there are people waiting." It was just her, and I had just gotten there and had patiently waited for the student in front of me to get out of the water. I had been weightless for 50 minutes, have 24 lbs, a 10mm suit, and a steel tank on; it takes me a few seconds to get to my feet.
In addition, as we had just finished packing up, this guy made an inappropriate comment to my g/f. My girlfriend is Vietnamese, and this guy walking with his 6 year old son, says, "And son, meet our Thai friend here." My g/f says, "I'm not Thai." Then the guy begins guessing every other Asian race except Vietnamese. No biggy, she gets that a lot, but for a guy to randomly say that out loud, as if my g/f didn't understand English (she was born here and English is her first language) seemed rude. I can't explain the tone of the way he said it, but it came off offending, and we're not easily offended. We didn't make a scene and she politely informed him she was Vietnamese. He then said, and I can't believe this, "Oh you have those big Thai ears." It was just icing on the cake.
We then had a pleasant couple hours in Avalon and returned home on another pleasant Catalina Express trip. We had lunch at some place (can't remember the name), and ended up in a conversation about world cup soccer with a very polite crowd of people, so it just seemed to be the divers. In fact, on our boat ride home we spoke with several people and they were all extremely pleasant.
At the end of the day, I had expected more from the dive. In fact, the visibility was only slightly better than Malaga Cove and there was substantially more underwater life at Malaga, and it was bigger underwater life. I figured it might be because of the holiday weekend, but we were there on Saturday, first thing in the morning so I'm sure it hadn't been stirred up yet.
Being that it cost $110 R/T for Catalina Express, and $52 for tank/weight rentals for two people, it seemed fairly expensive for diving that could've been done from local Redondo/Palos Verdes' shores.
Next time I think we'll take a chartered boat and dive off of the boat, which was the original plan, but I had read so many great things about Casino Point, and figured my g/f would enjoy spending time in Avalon (which she did so I'm still glad we went).
Did I just catch Casino Point on a bad day? We covered a lot of ground on our 105 minutes worth of diving, both in and out of the kelp forrests.
Thanks,
Brian
