Thanks to our wonderful ScubaBoard SoCal Kelp Divers community, I had a great time this weekend at the April Winkles dive at Leo Carrillo campground.
I wasn't sure that camping and diving actually went together, but now I'm hooked and can't wait for the next time! Campfires, s'mores, cold beer and good-enough wine, STARS!, 1 minute drive to the dive site, hot showers, BLUE skies, frog songs at night and birds all day....it was a sensory delight! Yeah, I cheated and slept on an air mattress, but I popped out of the tent ready to dive each morning. Secret to Dive/Camping: a heavy duty rack to hang wetsuits afterwards. Thanks to Myrna and Jim for showing us the way!.
The Saturday dive: Diving's always an exploration, and Saturday was no exception. We kicked out in high wind to the brown-water-turns-to-green line, hoping for the best. Viz got up to 3 or 4 feet, but it was nothing but sand that far out from the cove at tower 2. So, back in toward the reef and kelp, which had 1 to 3 foot viz. Enough to see lobster, lots of invertebrates on the rocks, (Spanish shawls!) and get GREAT practice at navigation and buddy communication. Carlos helped make it so easy I didn't realize until later how challenging it had been, with high current, brown to occassionally black viz, 48-50 F temp, and plenty of structure to discover with parts of your body other than your eyes. And we came up smiling because just getting to explore around underwater is always a blast! And there were all these cool friends waiting back at the campground so we couldn't lose. Smiles from Christian, TeqP, Captain Marvel, TechAdmin, and RossJC, said that ALL the divers took the conditions in stride and made it part of the weekend full of fun. The afternoon and evening at the campground was perfect California paradise...nobody pinch me, 'cause If I was dreaming I don't want to know. Perfect sunset lit the cliffs gold, and we toasted marshmallows and laughed for hours. The wind died Saturday afternoon, so we went to bed late but optimistic for morning dives
The Sunday Dives: Still air, warm blue sky, and ScubaInspired arriving early to say, "let's go diving!" He and I volunteered as guinea pigs to splash in and report back. It was an easy kick over glassy green to the outer edge of the visible kelp, but dropping down brought us to 1 foot viz and a brown snow storm of debris at the bottom. It only made sense to head away from shore, so we tapped-tapped long and found a tall vertical wall blocking our path....beats the heck out of sand! We rose up from 32fsw to see that we had found a deeply crennulated reef with 4 or 5 pinnacles rising 12 feet off the bottom, and the viz got up to 5 feet once we rose off the bottom. This was GREAT!!! We both had lights, the rock was stuffed with critters and fish, and we could see each other enough to work our way over and around all parts of this big pinnacle! Spanish shawls and eggs, Giant feather duster worms, huge anemones, sheets of sponges in orange, gray, and brown, rock fish, garibaldi, painted greenlings, ghost gobies, brittle stars, orange ball sponges, little lobster, giant keyhole limpets, rock shrimp, chesnut cowries. We worked that pinnacle for all it was worth, knowing this was IT! Our needle in a haystack. And we had a great time, even with 50 degree water. It was still glassy when we surfaced. After a fun surface interval at the campground with bunches of wonderful friends, we hit it again. Headhunter and PeterMacGuiness lead the way across the still glassy water to the outer kelp line. Unfortunately, viz had deteriorated to a steady brown snow storm. ScubaInspired and I found some cleaner (3-4 foot viz?) water around several nice pinnacles stuffed with cool fish and invertebrates. The E-ticket surge had us drift-diving a good 6 feet back and forth where the current accelerated next to walls and crevices, but we both know how to relax and enjoy, so all was fun. When I grabbed a rock to look at a ling cod, the surge swept me horizontal and I fluttered like a flag in a windstorm until it let me go. You can't buy this kind of entertainment!! I put my hand down on the murky bottom, only to have the "sand" leap up and bolt off, as 14 inches of outraged halibut hurtled away. It was like stumbling around in a carnival fun house wondering what was going to happen next. 45 minutes left us both pretty numb but laughing as we headed back to camp and hot food from the grill. Camping and diving go together perfectly when all the right people show up to make it great. My son, Jacques, said it was the best camping trip ever with the nicest people. Yeah, what he said!!
Thank you, one and all, for three days of continuous fun!
See you May 7th in La Jolla!
Claudette
. I'm glad I was with someone as experienced as you. Even though we were not under for long, I wrote quite a bit about the dive in my log. It was a very good learning experience.
