opisthobranch
Contributor
At 9 AM this morning the 46042 buoy was reading 12 feet with nearly 20 knot winds. The Navy Wave Model was showing orange for most of Northern and Central California (12-15 foot waves). The forecast the night before had been for a 9-12 foot swell though the 9AM forecast only said 7-9. As we arrived at Whaler's Cove a group of divers were just getting out of the water and made quite a production out of telling us how terrible it was; very bad vis, rough, etc. Even made a point of telling me "And we dive a lot" to underscore the point that we shouldn't bother suiting up.
So conditions were terrible right? Judge for yourself! Seriously, don't base your decision to dive on a number on a webpage. Buoy data is not the same thing as dive conditions. You shouldn't always believe a dripping wet diver either. In this case I asked him how deep his team had gotten. Answer: 29 feet. Well, I don't expect good vis at the worm patch on a day with a larger swell. Sometimes you gotta go look for yourself.
Full image set here: (And if I'd had a decent day with the camera it would have looked even nicer).
Middle Reef and Hole in the Wall
This concludes today's lesson in Monterey Dive conditions.
Clinton
So conditions were terrible right? Judge for yourself! Seriously, don't base your decision to dive on a number on a webpage. Buoy data is not the same thing as dive conditions. You shouldn't always believe a dripping wet diver either. In this case I asked him how deep his team had gotten. Answer: 29 feet. Well, I don't expect good vis at the worm patch on a day with a larger swell. Sometimes you gotta go look for yourself.
Full image set here: (And if I'd had a decent day with the camera it would have looked even nicer).
Middle Reef and Hole in the Wall
This concludes today's lesson in Monterey Dive conditions.
Clinton
