Took a day trip to Monterey to go diving with my friend Dave and Wes today, had a great time. Wes hasn’t been in the water since his certification course, and was a little nervous, but he had did great. Dave has had plenty of recent experience diving off the California coast, and was a great resource since I haven’t been in this cold water for at least a couple of years.
Quotes of the weekend:
- “Speaking of chumming the water, that’s like throwing in a fucking cow!” – Wes
- “Damn, now I wish I had brought that laminated flamingo!” – Wes
Just as we were getting to Monterey, a small pickup drove by with a not-in-one-piece bovine carcass and Wes yelled out, “they’re going chumming!”.
It was one of those rare glass smooth, high visibility, sunny and warm days down in Monterey. Our first dive was at Monasterey Beach right off Highway 1 outside of Carmel. Usually the waves are big enough that you have to body surf to shore with all 60 pounds of gear and then crawl out of the water. Today we had a swell of about…three inches. Walked right out, sat down in the ocean, leisurely got our gear on, and proceded to have a really nice dive amongst the kelp forests and through the rocks.
I had borrowed a waterproof case for my digital camera from a friend, but he couldn’t remember the depth it was rated for. I really wanted to take some shots, but was worried about getting the camera inside wet. Dave had a brilliant idea that I just take the empty case down in order to test it’s integrity. Glad I did, as when we hit 40 feet the test paper that I had put inside started to get really wet. Guess I’m gonna have to order a quality case from Canon if I want to use my Powershot under water. Pity too, as I saw more fish down there than I’ve ever seen before in California waters.
The second dive was at the Coral Street Beach, which is one of those places that you never get to dive at because it’s too rough. Today it was beautifully smooth. Our only regret is not getting an earlier start on the day, because by the time we got to Coral Street (about 2:30 in the afternoon), clouds were rolling in and the water was churning enough to mess with vis but not enough to make entry and exit a pain. Even with only 20 feet of visibility, there was still a large amount of color and plenty of fish to enjoy. More scenery than I’ve seen on my certification-only diving trips in CA.
Unfortunaly we didn’t see any mammal marine life like sea otters (which I have seen on many of my previous Monterey dives), but all in all a great day.
Wes has a thing for Flamingos. Very strange. He has to laminate it because he might get it “wet” at home.