Dive Report, Breakwater, Sunday 12/20

[pacificgal]

Met Bogie, John and Eric with my buddy Paul at Breakwater Sunday morning at 7 am. Wel, I was there at 6:35 and watched the sun rise while waiting for my buddies. Beautiful day. It was Paul's 100th dive, so I wanted to do something special with him. He's never been to the metridiums, and James, John and Eric knew exactly where it was so we started the long ass surface swim out to the met fields, and dropped right on top of them. Buddy teams were James, John and Eric as team #1, Paul and I as team #2. Everything was great, viz about 20', 54 degrees, Since we dropped right on them we got to swim around quite a bit going from rock cropping to rock cropping lookng in all the crevices. Paul and I swam back in underwater mostly, surfaced pretty close to shore. As I was swimming back in I looked down and could still see the bottom so told Paul to stay right there, I was going to see what the vertical viz was. 17' clear as gin. Nice. Max depth 68 fsw, time 37 mins.
Second dive Paul and I struck out on our own to find the barge again. I'm familiar with Paul and know we have similar gas management and felt that this time we could probably do a better job finding our way back from the barge than last time we tried.
Kicked out to the end of the BW wall and while we were getting set to descend, Paul points behind me and it's a mother otter and her baby, about 4 feet from us, then they came to about a foot of me and swam away. What a treat. We then dropped, swam out to the barge, dodging sea lions the whole way. We were starting our first sweep of the barge and Paul gets my attention and points off in the distance, I start swimming towards where he's pointing till I see a realy big dorsal fin and I'm thinking...***! Shark!? No. Got a little closer and found it was a pretty big mola. Thank goodness! And I was swimming towards it, lol, what an idiot, if it had been a big shark, well, who knows.
Did a much better job navigating back in (I really think I'm getting this compass thing down) till buddy reached rock bottom psi, we surfaced and had a great swim back in. Max depth 69 fsw, 36 mins.
What a neat, neat day. I'm up to 93 dives, going to need yet another logbook after this coming weekend. Gone through a whole logbook since 9/26. Need a bigger logbook, I think.

 

[Peter_C]

WOW! Sounds like you had an awesome dive! All kinds of wildlife interaction

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

Go to an art store and get one of those hard bound black sketch books with blank pages. They have them in all sizes but the smaller ones around 5x7 are compact and work good. They're relatively cheap and give you plenty of room to log dives, write down notes or a report and highlights of a dive. They give you plenty of room to do table math and plan dives out on paper if you wish. You can even do some sketches of something cool you might have seen underwater.
You can configure your logging anyway you want and aren't constrained to any any pre-printed log book.

 

[ryssyr]

I use a moleskin for my logbook now too. they are cheap and durable.

 

[Guy Alcala]

Second dive Paul and I struck out on our own to find the barge again. I'm familiar with Paul and know we have similar gas management and felt that this time we could probably do a better job finding our way back from the barge than last time we tried.
Kicked out to the end of the BW wall and while we were getting set to descend, Paul points behind me and it's a mother otter and her baby, about 4 feet from us, then they came to about a foot of me and swam away. What a treat. We then dropped, swam out to the barge, dodging sea lions the whole way. We were starting our first sweep of the barge and Paul gets my attention and points off in the distance, I start swimming towards where he's pointing till I see a realy big dorsal fin and I'm thinking...***! Shark!? No. Got a little closer and found it was a pretty big mola. Thank goodness! And I was swimming towards it, lol, what an idiot, if it had been a big shark, well, who knows.
Did a much better job navigating back in (I really think I'm getting this compass thing down) till buddy reached rock bottom psi, we surfaced and had a great swim back in. Max depth 69 fsw, 36 mins.
What a neat, neat day. I'm up to 93 dives, going to need yet another logbook after this coming weekend. Gone through a whole logbook since 9/26. Need a bigger logbook, I think.

Sounds like you're becoming a barge junkie I counted up how many times I've been out there awhile back, and found the total was 30 (out of 270 dives).
A good navigational exercise, a decently long swim, typically better vis than shallower at BW, and usually lots to see - what more could I want?

Guy

 

[kathydee]

Ah Kristina sounds like a really fun day! A huge mola mola & baby sea otter how cool!

 

[pacificgal]

It was really neat. Thanks for the info on logbooks, it seems silly to continue to spend $15 to log 40 dives. Both the ones I have, half of them are training record. Time to move on to something else. Barge junkie? Yeah, probably, I'm now out looking for neat stuff, not just out to be out. I still haven't found any spanish shawls though, that'll be my next challenge. Oooh, or leopard shark.

 

[micboucher]

That sounds like a great day at BW Kristina! It always amazes me how much can be seen there.

I've been on a quest to see Leopard sharks again for a while now. I've only seen them once at Lobos and it was right around this time of year. Unfortunately, my camera housing was fogged so my video was really bad.
MVI_3413 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

[pacificgal]

Doesn't matter, Michelle, I saw your shark! Wasn't fogged that bad, honey.
I've heard of them at Lover's and Monastery too. Do enough diving I hope to find them, they sure are pretty.

 

[ae3753]

Sounds like you had a great time! Thanks for sharing with us, especially those who were dry all weekend.