I'm in the same boat, so to speak, so this is a helpful thread for me. My dive buddy (boyfriend) and I got certed at the same time and did our checkout dives at Breakwater. We logged... I think 15 dives there. It's nice, but the long surface swim out to deeper water is a pain since with the vis at low depth, it's a long swim without much to look out unless you swim right along the wall which can bring it's own hazards (got a starfish in my hair!)
We tried Lovers once, but didn't read up enough so did absolutely everything wrong. Ended up fighting kelp and wasting air. We've tried Lovers again and it's our favorite dive site so far. It's in Pacific Grove and there's a big park. There are supposed diving restrictions on weekends and after 11 am weekdays, but I haven't seen or heard of any enforcement on them. There's a flight of stairs and easy beach entry (the beach that DOESN'T have the snack bar and the dive/kayak shack). If you turn to the right at the foot of the stairs and walk the whopping 100 feet to the other end of the beach, you can follow a clear channel out through the kelp and drop down to about 40 feet. The visibility tends to be good, and the surface swim out there starts being beautiful before you're chest deep. It has sandy patches where rays hang out, rocks covered with invertebrates, and kelp forests. Supposedly lots of octopi, even during the day, though we haven't seen any. In fact, dive buddy and I finished our first night dive there approximately (checks clock) six hours ago. Harbor seals there are really friendly.
We tried Coral Street yesterday for the first time. Looks like it would be a great dive under good conditions, but today even though we aborted the dive after surface swim before going down, we felt lucky to get out with gear and bodies intact.
I've heard mixed reviews on McAbee. We dived it yesterday at the recommendation of our OW dive instructor (we like to hang out with him when he's doing classes at Breakwater). He had just been over there and said it was beautiful with clear visibility once we dropped. We were concerned on the surface swim because we could barely see five feet below us, but he was right, cleared to 30 feet of vis once we dropped. It's a cool dive with a nice reef. Go behind El Toridos, swim out from the beach to the white buoy and head slightly to the right and drop. Not too bad a surface swim. We had a VERY persistant harbor seal with us for almost all of the dive "don't look at that stupid crab!!! That's just a crab!!! Now give me another piece of your fin." It was very cool. I have heard though that it can get really murky there. I've also heard it's boring, though with the reef, I'm not sure why.
Whew, long post. Also, I haven't done this dive, but after the night dive at Lovers, we went over to Breakwater to rinse our gear and return the tanks. Apparently Breakwater makes a great night dive. All the divers we talked to loved it, and it's worth going simply to look off the jetty into the water and see all the different colored glow sticks and signal lights. That alone is strangely beautiful, particularly when you have a fair sized group of divers doing a swim-in.
My mom used to dive Monastery (she was an assistant instructor back before little me came along) and I've heard enough about it to make me not want to dive it for quite a while. I had a kind of nasty time one day crawling out of Breakwater on an icky surgey day, so I don't want to contemplate how poorly I'd do trying the infamous "Monastery Crawl".
Ishie
