We’ve had two SCUBA milestones this month. First, Jeff and I finally made it to Farnsworth on our fourth try. And second, our club president Kaz finally made it to Santa Barbara on his seventh attempt, on a trip that was his birthday present from the club. It’s been a lucky month!

Farnsworth was a bit of a disappointment, mainly because we didn’t hit it on such a great visibility day. We did, however, finally get a glimpse of the famed purple hydrocoral:

Sadly, the wind chop started making people pretty ill, so the captain opted to only do one dive at Farnsworth. We finished out the day with some really gorgeous dives on the frontside of Catalina, and even had an easter egg hunt at the last dive site (Jeff won a snorkel).

This past weekend’s trip out to Santa Barbara Island was far more memorable. There were about a dozen members of the Sole Searchers on board the Great Escape, which was actually chartered by Reef Seekers – they’re always a pleasure to travel with, and tend to have terrific DMs on board. Although our first dive was uneventful, the second two were fabulous.

Dive number 2 was at Black Cavern – and I would just like to say, WOW.

There’s this enormous cave cutting through a vertical wall, with openings at about 85 and 95 feet. The cave bends halfway through, so you can’t see the exit when you go in. However, it’s very roomy inside, so not too creepy (well, a little creepy once the divers have kicked up enough silt to make it extra dark). It was a really neat swim-through, although we didn’t have nearly enough time to poke around when we were that deep!

My favorite thing about this dive was spotting my first Electric Torpedo Ray – known for giving unsuspecting divers nasty shocks. It was scared out of the cavern by the first group of divers that went in, and cruised right by my video camera.

Jeff’s favorite sight was the Wall Of Nudibranchs above the cavern opening, where we tooled around offgassing for a while before our ascent. He took this picture of a hermissenda crassicornis:

For our last dive, we moored by the sea lion rookery. This was what Kaz had been trying to see for all these years, and he wasn’t disappointed – we had dozens of sea lions come check us out and goof off.

While they’re always fun, I have to admit the novelty is finally starting to wear off after the sea-lion-intensive year Jeff and I have had. I was much more interested in the Angel Shark that a divemaster pointed out (or rather, poked with his spear gun to make it swim out of its hidey hole in the sand and right towards my camera).

On our way home, Kaz broke out some non-alcoholic champagne to celebrate his success, and to thank the club for his trip. The trip home was marginally spoiled by the presence about about three billion flies which migrated onto our boat from the island, and completely covered you anytime you tried to stand still.

The captain says it can take about 2 days for the flies to completely clear out of the boat after one of these trips. Yikes!

Farnsworth pics here; SBI pics here; dive logs here.