bkyaffe
Contributor
I drove down from SF this AM and made it to Bamboo Reef Monterey at 830am. Their morning weekend staff is always endearingly bleary/hungover in the morning. We commiserated over the ungodly hour of the morning for a weekend and a few minutes later, a tank of ean33 and ean21 (they only had one nitrox tank left...) and weights were in my car and I made the 2min trek to McAbee Beach to meet Norbs007 at 9a. The streets were pleasantly empty and the new parking meters take Visa... $3 for 2h and allow you to re-up between dives.
Water was absolutely glassy.
Our first dive was out to the right and circled a few kelp beds at about 25'. Viz was the best I've seen... about 30' with no crill or other fishpoop-like floaties. No surge. Highlight of the dive was seeing a juvenile harbor seal chasing his breakfast... which led him through a rock constriction in which he got jammed. He looked pretty embarrassed, backed out after a few seconds and went on his way, checking us out every few minutes and poking Norbs in the fin once. (48min, 26ft, 54deg)
Surface interval for just under an hour with Norbert's family by the cars and then back to it.
Dive 2 we made entry mid-beach and took a bearing on the smokestacks across the bay (0 deg mag). We swam out to the thick band of kelp and dropped in about 25 fsw. Viz was back to normal... buddy was getting fuzzy at 15'. We kept our bearing and poked around rocks to 52 fsw near the far end of the major kelp band. Lots of fun crabs, rock fish, a couple of lings and about a hundred feet of some pretty old 8" chain (laying due north/south at about 35 fsw). (43min, 52ft, 52deg)
Back to the cars to see Norbert off for his daughter's birthday lunch. I returned the tanks and headed back to SF.
-Ben
Water was absolutely glassy.
Our first dive was out to the right and circled a few kelp beds at about 25'. Viz was the best I've seen... about 30' with no crill or other fishpoop-like floaties. No surge. Highlight of the dive was seeing a juvenile harbor seal chasing his breakfast... which led him through a rock constriction in which he got jammed. He looked pretty embarrassed, backed out after a few seconds and went on his way, checking us out every few minutes and poking Norbs in the fin once. (48min, 26ft, 54deg)
Surface interval for just under an hour with Norbert's family by the cars and then back to it.
Dive 2 we made entry mid-beach and took a bearing on the smokestacks across the bay (0 deg mag). We swam out to the thick band of kelp and dropped in about 25 fsw. Viz was back to normal... buddy was getting fuzzy at 15'. We kept our bearing and poked around rocks to 52 fsw near the far end of the major kelp band. Lots of fun crabs, rock fish, a couple of lings and about a hundred feet of some pretty old 8" chain (laying due north/south at about 35 fsw). (43min, 52ft, 52deg)
Back to the cars to see Norbert off for his daughter's birthday lunch. I returned the tanks and headed back to SF.
-Ben
