In case 10 weekends of wall-to-wall ADP wasn’t enough, we were all given a project for September: on our own time, divide into groups and do a beach survey. This shall entail:

• Getting a group together on a free weekend. This is quite a task in and of itself, logistics-wise.
• Selecting a beach everyone is interested in.
• Writing up everything there is to know about said beach
• Diving at the beach, AND
• Conducting a formal survey of a roughly 200′ by 50′ patch of underwater, using lines, buoys, and slates to record depths, substrates and marine life on a grid.

I joined up with a bunch of folks who decided Old Marineland, on the south side of Palos Verdes, would be a fun dive. None of us had actually dived it before, but OML is a famous dive spot among locals; it tends to have nice conditions and really cool stuff to see, if you can manage to get in the water. There’s a bit of a hike down (and hence, back up), and the most popular entry is off some rather tricky boulders. A slightly easier entry is offered at a cobblestone beach, out from which there’s mostly sand.

Cobblestone beach, as seen from the walk down – that’s us with our float:

I remember this dive site as the location of one of my first beach dive attempts with the Sole Searchers, where I was roundly scared away by the surf pounding on the slimy boulders (at entry #1) and the surf tossing around all the loose rocks (at entry #2). Jeff and I huffed all the way down and back up without actually diving.

This time, we had better conditions. Eight of us gathered in the parking lot above OML, and were ready to hit the water by 10am or so (downright late in the morning by ADP standards). We spent a bit of time coordinating logistics of the survey in the parking lot: how to stay in formation, how to signal each other when we were done taking readings, whether or not to lug the floats along with us (we did), etc. Then it was down the once-scary hill, which didn’t seem as hard as I remembered it, and onto the cobblestone beach (not wanting to wrangle the floats over the already-tricky boulders), which didn’t look as scary as I remembered it. So far, so good.

And it stayed that way. Meca and I were first into the water with a float (with Mike’s help ‘tossing’ it out to us), which we dropped towards the west end of the cove. Then we hit the bottom and started unspooling line in the direction of the reef (west towards the boulders). Even with my fancy new PVC line spool, assembled the night before, working with lightweight line underwater was a bit of a bitch. We persevered, and laid out 100′ of line over… sand. Boring, boring sand. We finally hit a bit of rock at the end, where the reef appeared to just be starting.

Back on the surface, we were joined by Sam and David sporting float #2, which they anchored at the end of our line. We decided instead of doing either side of a single line, we’d just go straight down the middle of one long line, and hopefully catch some actual topography. Sam and David dropped down with their own 100′ marked line and laid it out over a slightly more interesting section of reef than the first line.

By this time, the remaining two buddy teams had joined us at float #1. We broke into groups of 4, each on one side of the line, and headed out to survey the area.

It’s incredibly easy to do this on land. Put a line down on the grass. Line up perpendicular to the line, everyone arms’ length apart. Take 2 steps forward. Write down what you see. 2 more steps. Repeat. Etc.

It’s a bit nastier underwater, because of surge pushing you back and forth, so every 5 feet in each direction becomes more like “5 feet plus or minus another 5 feet.” Additionally, keeping even 4 divers in a straight line is – well – damn near impossible. We didn’t use a buddy line because we thought there would be kelp (there wasn’t). Passing the “stop, go” signals back and forth was also a little tricky due to difficulties getting each other’s attention, so everyone wound up with a slightly different number of readings.

Our site survey area, on a Google Maps pic of OML:

Still, I had a really fun dive, even just checking out the “boring” side of Old Marineland. We saw plenty of fish, including a big school of jack mackerel and a rainbow seaperch (my first). Spanish shawls, sea hares, keyhole limpets and chestnut cowries all made appearances, as did a few soles in the sand. Mike spotted a batray in the shallows on his way out. So, despite our less-than-scientific underwater survey, we all had a good time – and learned a few things for the next time we try a site survey.

I first stumbled onto an episode of The Crocodile Hunter while I was on break from Pomona, at home in South Carolina channel surfing with my mom. It took about five seconds to draw us in – we couldn’t believe this person actually existed, charging in to grab crocodiles and snakes without fear, all the time positively on fire with enthusiasm and excitement. Say what you will about Steve Irwin’s hands-on methods: he made nature shows fun again, and we were hooked.

I didn’t have cable back at Pomona, and I tried in vain to describe Steve’s antics to my friends for a year or two until I remedied the cable situation. By that time, Steve Irwin was practically a household name, famous for his passion, insanity, and the childlike wonder he never lost towards wild critters.

Jeff, although not as big a fan of Steve, liked his shows well enough to dress up with me as Croc Hunters for our first Halloween together. Kids swarmed him as soon as we walked in the door.

We were out diving all day Monday, and came home to an email that Steve Irwin had been killed by a stingray. I hoped it was just another internet hoax making the rounds, but it didn’t take long to realize that the story was authentic.

I’m hearing “at least he died doing what he loved” a lot, a sentiment which has never rung true to me. He may have loved making documentaries, but I doubt he enjoyed taking a 6-inch serrated barb to the chest. It’s just a terrible, sucky thing to happen, and there’s no point trying to make it any more palatable.

Although not usually one to get weepy at celebrity deaths, I have to admit I’m really sad about this loss. No more Steve Irwin late-night interviews where he overwhelms his host with his energy (and his animals). No more good-natured spoofs of his style in commercials and comedy routines. No more chance to visit Australia Zoo and check him out in person one of these days – a dream of mine for years. I always thought his kids were so lucky to grow up with such an interesting and amazing dad – and now they won’t.

I guess what it comes down to is this: it made me happy to know that someone like Steve Irwin existed on this planet. Now he doesn’t, and I’m not ashamed to be sad about it.

(Yes, I missed a weekend… I was in Tucson, walking into sliding glass doors, while my class went to Catalina for the day.)

But I was back in plenty of time for our next beach dive: rescue drills at Malaga Cove, on the northwest tip of the Palos Verdes penninsula.

I’ve been to Malaga before, though not for SCUBA. I’ve snorkeled, and hung out at the beach. It’s a nice place to hang out for a day, if you don’t mind not having any bathrooms. And if you don’t mind The Hill. The distance from top to bottom probably isn’t any worse than many of Southern California’s beach diving sites, but it’s steep.

By 8am, we were heading down The Hill, all geared up and lugging whatever we’d need for the next few hours: floats with anchors and bottles of water, snacks, etc. In other words: heavy. By the time we hit sand at the bottom of the paved path, most of us were ready to drop our burdens right there. But oh no, this is ADP – we keep walking. Sigh.

We finally set up camp just a little bit down the beach, away from boogie-boarders and surfers (despite the relative lack of surf: 1-2 footers, no problem).

Then we spent the next 5 or 6 hours going in and out, in and out, in and out of the surf. Think I’m kidding? First we took the floats out and set them up in a line. Then we started with rescue drills on skin (fins, mask/snorkel). We split into groups of 6, and then did the drill 6 times so everyone had a chance to play rescuer – but all but two in that group went in and out of the surf zone (2 stayed on the beach to help the others come back out).

And once we’d finally done skin rescue six times… it was time to do it all again ON SCUBA. Now the “victim” sank down on the bottom at the float, and the rescuer started from just behind the surf zone, swam out in full scuba gear, went to bring the victim up, ditched all the gear, and then did the skin rescue back into shore.

Whoof.

It went really well, though, especially considering I’d missed the rescue pool session and my rescue class is 3 years behind me. I don’t think I “killed” my buddy too badly, and only swallowed a small amount of seawater myself, despite the set of 2 footers that started breaking over my head while I was being dragged in. Timing.

Then, at 2pm, it was time for the fun dive. We hauled our gear back to the bottom of the hill, and then broke into buddy teams to enter over the rocks into the kelp bed. Despite the unpleasantness of the entry (clambering over slimy rocks when already exhausted – I was not at my most graceful), I had a fantastic dive.

For starters, visibility was 15-20 feet, much better than is typical at Malaga. We found two octopi, one curled up asleep in a half-buried shell. The whole area was full of juvenile fish of various species; in particular, I stumbled across least five mostly-blue super-juvenile garibaldi, juvenile rock wrasse, and young blacksmith and senoritas. We also bumped into a large school of salema, a fish I hadn’t seen before.

On our exit, we surfaced a bit too far west where the feather boa kelp was too thick to easily paddle through. We dropped back down and returned to our entry point, and hauled our tired butts back up the rocks. And then – back up THE HILL. I’m proud to say I made it on one trip (mainly because there was no way in hell I wanted to make that walk TWICE).

By the time everyone had finished putting away gear and debriefing, it was 4pm and we were seriously starving. Luckily, enough of us had remembered to bring food (and one person remembered to bring a bbq), so even without formal planning ahead we pulled off a halfway decent bbq. You’ve never seen people inhale hot dogs so fast. Divers can eat.

So, pretty much no downside to our rescue day. I had a great time with the drills, managed the surf without fear (it wasn’t terrible surf, but it was worse than I would have been comfortable in a month ago), and even got a dive in that was 100% for-fun.

So: I have a new drunk/stupid story! (Which brings me to a grand total of two, count them, two drunk/stupid stories. I am so boring.)

The weekend of August 19th, I flew to Arizona for Sarah’s bachelorette party. Sarah is NOT having a wedding (sniffle), but at least she knows how to throw my kind of party: five chicks hanging out, telling stories, and drinking. Even better: three of the five chicks have just become nurses, and already have a good stockpile of funny and/or disgusting tales to tell.

Most of the party took place at the house of one of Sarah’s friends. After several hours of gabbing indoors (topics covered: school, Prozac, divorce, weddings, breast implants, just to name a few), and many, many beers, we adjourned to the patio where those of us who felt like smoking could do so. We didn’t bother to turn the lights on; we just hung out in the dark swinging between topics as wide-ranging as the spread of AIDS and the hamper story. (If you don’t already know the hamper story, I’m not telling it here.)

After beer number seven, I decided to make a trip inside to the bathroom. I stood up, and Sarah’s dog Ruby got up to follow me. It was dark where we were, but well-lit inside the house, so I had no trouble finding the screen door and walking around it…

…BLAMMO, face-first into the sliding glass door I’d forgotten was there.

And then, another, smaller, blammo as Ruby did the exact same thing.

My poor, previously-broken nose was sore for 5 days. But wow… good party.

Hanging out with my old suitemates Sunday morning, not at all hungover (but very, very tan):

We pulled up to the parking lot at Nicholas Canyon in Malibu at 7:30am Saturday morning, and wandered to the edge of the hill to check out the waves below. The original plan was to dive right below the parking lot: there’s a rocky area to the left and sand to the right, so we could practice both types of entry. However, the surf was up (as in, big red letters saying “HIGH SURF ADVISORY” on the LA County beach website), rendering the rocky entry too risky. The sandy entry would have been do-able (and by do-able, I mean for crazy ADP people; not for divers just out for fun). But it was chock full of surfers: several dozen crowded the area. I was amazed at how rarely they ran into each other, but it seemed unwise to throw a bunch of divers into the mix as well.

A semi-paved path headed downhill to the west, out to more sandy beach. Some mild rip currents were muddying the waters out there, and making for less-perfect waves, so it was surfer-free. That’s where we decided to dive.

The surf… well, like I said, it was up. Kevin described it as 3′-5′ surf, but I’m pretty sure I saw some 6 and 7 foot faces. Whatever: they were big. On the plus side, there was both a long period between waves during sets (15 seconds or so), and nice long lulls of smaller waves between the big sets. With timing, it was totally do-able.

We all put on our skin gear (except for a few safety divers on scuba) and went for it. Well, mostly we stood around waiting for the lulls.

After the last big wave of a set had crashed, the next batch of divers would start crabbing sideways into the water, and flop onto our stomachs to start kicking as soon as possible. I made it out without incident (hooray!), and we started the long surface swim to reach a decent depth to set the floats.

After floats had been anchored, it was time to head back in. This is actually the scariest part for me. When you’re going out into the water, you always have the option of bailing and heading back to shore. But once you’re past those breakers… well, now you don’t have any option. You have to go through the surf zone to get back out.

My buddy and I took our time finning back towards the beach, and relaxed on the far side of the surf zone, bobbing on the swell. We faced out to sea, keeping an eye on the swells coming in and waiting for it to get flat, indicating the next lull.

When we were reasonably sure we weren’t about to get smacked by one of those 7-footers, we fired up our fins. Even the small waves had a decent amount of power when they broke right behind you, so everyone came out on hands and knees to avoid getting knocked on their faces.

The downside of crawling out of the water? You drag your equipment through the sand. I apparently managed to get some pretty serious sand inside the inflator hose on my BC, because when I hooked it up to a tank for my scuba dive, it stuck every time I tried to put a little air in. (Resulting in it adding more and more and more air until the BC gets overfilled and vents out the emergency valve.)

Doh.

We tried rinsing it, we tried whacking it, we tried to take it apart. No luck. A few folks tried to convince me that I could just orally inflate, but I wasn’t really up to that level of task-loading on a high-surf beach dive! We were going to be doing navigation exercises in 1-foot visibility: I didn’t want to be worrying about taking my regulator out of my mouth every time I needed to add a little air to my BC, something I’ve only recently begun practicing in the pool. I guess I should practice doing it on my next easy boat dive, just to get more comfortable for when this happens again.

So, once again, I sat out the actual beach dive. I made myself useful by hiking back up the hill to retrieve water, snacks, and my camera, so I could record others getting their asses kicked by waves.

Not one of the biggest ones:

Once again, I tried not to totally waste my time: I played a bit near the surf zone with Kevin. Both of us got whacked pretty good by some of the larger rocks that were getting knocked around, and built up some really impressive collections of pebbles in our wetsuits and booties.

As the divers finally headed back into shore, I pitched in where I could: yelling “wave!”, helping to take off fins, grabbing floats from divers as they hauled them through the surf. I was pretty bummed about missing the dive, even though it sounds like I didn’t miss much.

Then it was back up the hill again and time to eat. That’s something all divers are pretty darned good at.

Rinsing out my gear at home that evening, I was astounded at how many pebbles worked their way into nooks and crannies of my BC. (Not to mention sand, but at least that eventually goes down the drain.) I basically brought home a few pounds of beach – and I didn’t even actually dive. Yikes!

More pics here: Nicholas Canyon

This week in ADP went a bit better than last. First of all, I’d had an additional two weeks to get comfortable in the water (thanks to some extracurricular pool and ocean sessions with Ray). But the main reason was probably just that conditions were nicer. (That, and I refused to humiliate myself by wussing out again!)

Our second beach dive was at White Point, a south-facing beach on the Palos Verdes peninsula.

Those arrows show our approximate path. Here’s what we did:

• Point A: We had the choice of doing a fins-on or fins-off entry here over cobblestones and rocks. The 1-2 foot surf made this a pretty simple matter, though I realize it would have made me pretty nervous once upon a time.
• Point B: The first order of business was to swim over to this rocky promontory and practice “washing on” and “washing off” the rocks. (Did anyone else just have a little Mr. Miyagi moment?) Aside from the fact that my washing-on turned into more of a washing-off when I let go of my handhold at a bad moment, this went fine. Next, we took turns towing our buddies over to Point C (my team left everyone else in the dust!)
• Point C was where all the real fun happened! First we tried another wash-on/off, this time onto a little step halfway up a steep rock. Basically you just let a wave deposit you up there – much easier than it sounds. Then, we got to play around “shooting the channels.” You can just barely make out a series of crevices in the satellite image: deep channels in the rocks that turn into shallow tidepools. A skin diver (wearing a wetsuit and gloves) can ride the swell in and then back out, and go for quite a ride in these channels. Kind of like a waterslide, but with more rocks. Our instructor pointed out that water never goes THROUGH rock, so you don’t really have to worry about getting creamed by a rock as long as you flow along with the water. Still, it’s a good idea to keep your hands in front of your face.
• Nothing too exciting happened at D. We waited for everyone to catch up, and practiced freediving down to the bottom.
• Point E was our exit spot for the skin dive, and also our entry for the SCUBA portion of the day.

Strangely, I have very little to say about the actual SCUBA portion of the day. It was supposed to be a navigation exercise, using floats and transect lines to form points and edges along squares and triangles. But it turned into a bit of a cluster-you-know-what due to missing anchors, tangled lines, and miscommunication. My buddy and I tried to do some squares and triangles on our own, only to discover that people on the surface were moving the float around that we’d used as a fixed point.

We had a nice dive on our way back into shore, though, and got a chance to see White Point’s characteristic thermal vents. Huge white bacterial mats form on the rocks next to the vents, and sometimes you can feel the temperature change (though not, apparently, through gloves).

In the afternoon, we all gathered in the picnic area for our first ADP picnic, a Carribean-themed BBQ. I somehow talked Jeff into driving down for this, despite the hour or more that he had to sit in traffic to get to Palos Verdes. Next time I make him come, I’ll also make him take pictures, so that my ADP blog entries aren’t so boring-looking.

I’m going to start by talking about Sunday, because I liked Sunday the best. It started off with four hours in the pool, during which I continued my ass-kicking even though I was frequently freaked out by what we were asked to do!

Scary Skill #1: Skin Ditch and Recovery (D&R)

• Put on weight belt, fins, mask/snorkel
• Dive down to the bottom of the pool (10′)
• Remove fins, remove mask/snorkel. Remove weight belt and use to hold down everything else.
• Surface. Catch breath.
• Dive down to bottom. Put weight belt on lap to hold you down.
• Put on mask and clear it
• Put on fins
• Buckle weight belt
• Head towards the surface, clearing snorkel en route
• Surface wearing all gear, with no water in mask or snorkel

Yeah.

So I started slow, working on just doing the mask part. This required a certain confidence that my contacts would not float off my eyeballs if I opened my eyes in the pool, and luckily, they didn’t disappoint me. It took two or three nerve-wracking tries, but I finally relaxed enough to be able to dive down, put on the mask, exhale into it to clear the water, and still have breath left to clear the snorkel.

Then I worked my way through removing/replacing one fin, and finally both. I was all set to try removing the weight belt as well (making the second dive down a bit harder, since I’d be buoyant), but we ran out of time. I got farther than the rest of my group, though, and I’m pretty sure I can nail this one with a bit more practice.

The next breathholding skill was a lift bag exercise, also in 10′ of water. An empty water bottle was attached to a 10 lb weight on the surface. In the pool, we let water into the bottle to sink it to the bottom, with just enough air left at the top of it so it would float above the weight. Then everyone took turns diving down, removing their snorkel, and exhaling into the water bottle until it became buoyant enough to lift the weight.

A few hardy folks managed to do this on one breath; I took two, but apparently had good form (didn’t lose any air outside the bottle), so I guess my lungs just aren’t as big as some people.

Finally we moved on to SCUBA skills. And that brings us to…

Scary Skill #2: SCUBA Bailouts

• Assemble SCUBA gear, but don’t put it on. Turn air off.
• Hook fins and mask over your right arm, weight belt over your left.
• Use both hands to grab the tank/BC assembly while standing at the edge of the pool.
• Lift up and step off into the water.
• Sink to bottom (10′) – don’t forget to equalize. Like I did. Ouch.
• Put regulator in mouth. (Upside down is fine, as I proved, as long as you fix it later). Turn on air. Catch breath.
• Drape weight belt across lap to keep you stable on the bottom.
• Hold tank/bc assembly in place between your knees.
• Put on fins.
• Put on mask and clear it (at last, you can see).
• Put arms through BC, and lift up and over your head to fall into place on your back. Untangle snorkel as it snags.
• Cinch straps on BC.
• Roll into weight belt.
• Show the divemaster how much air you have.
• Make a controlled ascent.

I was the first one in my group to try this, and although my instructor had loads of constructive criticism for me, he gave me an overall thumbs-up. (And I was the only one in my group who didn’t have to do it at least twice to satisfy him.)

So Sunday morning was basically about ignoring my fear and taking the plunge, and I got a pretty good ego boost out of succeeding at these skills – a sorely-needed ego boost, after what happened Saturday.

Let us now rewind to Saturday: the first beach dive in ADP, scheduled at Redondo.

We all arrived at Veterans Park at 7:30 and looked down at the surf. It was pounding. The size of the waves were what I would consider to be seriously borderline for diving – doable, but no fun whatsoever. And there were occasional extra-big sets that would really give you a pounding. But the best part was the short period between swells – there just wasn’t a break. The lulls were short and unpredictable. I was not happy.

Up first was a wetsuit-only entry to get a feel for the bottom without struggling with our fins. I made it into the breakers, bracing myself against them. As we got deeper, and waves started breaking right over people (necessitating the duck-under strategy), I basically panicked and backed the hell out of there, back onto the beach where I told the course director I didn’t think I could handle this surf yet.

He sent me back in, this time with my own personal DM (thanks, Ken!), who walked me past the foamy breakers (“Brace!”) and into some of the over-the-head breakers (“Duck!”). I managed a few of these, and then got creeped out again and headed back to shore.

At this point, everyone else was gearing up for a skin dive (fins, mask/snorkel, weights and BC). NO WAY was I going in through those waves. Worst of all, once I was out there, who’s to say they wouldn’t get even bigger and block the way out? I made my apologies to my dive buddy, and told the course director I’d much rather sit this one out. But, I didn’t want to waste my time there entirely – I’d play in the surf and just practice getting comfortable with it.

And so I did. First in just a wetsuit, and then eventually with fins on and a mask/snorkel. Mostly I stood in waist deep water, where the breakers hit a little further out and reached me as a wall of foam. Kevin, the course director, worked with me for a while on improving my bracing stance, and not getting knocked off my feet – this is crucial with fins, which are kind of difficult to stand up in. After about 30 minutes of this, he talked me into slightly deeper water for a few over-the-head waves to duck under. I did fine, but was still pretty creeped out. Sure, as long as you get low enough, you’re in the “calm” part. But if your legs float up even a little, they catch in the tumbly part and send you spinning. Bleah.

The skin divers struggled back out of the surf zone, and it was time for a scuba dive. I figured since I hadn’t even managed to get in on skin gear, no way was I going to try scuba. About 5 other folks also sat it out for various reasons (wusses like me, or seasick, or lost gear on the skin dive).

While everyone was making the dive, I started to feel sort of lousy about bailing. At this point, I felt like I could maybe handle the waves – I could probably manage the skin dive. But everyone else had moved on, so I practiced more breaker-surviving and got some video of divers getting tossed around in the surf.

Most of the instructors didn’t give me any crap about wussing out; Kevin in particular was really great about it, reminding me that it’s all about improving during the class, and at least I learned some more about entries and exits. I’ll have more chances to dive. I’ve read a few dive reports from experienced divers who were still freaked out by the surf that day (several folks estimated 4+ foot surf, which makes for waves with up to 7′-8′ faces). So those also make me feel less like a wuss, or at least more like a SMART wuss.

I’ve got two weeks to psych myself up for the next ADP beach dive, which will be a rocky entry at Palos Verdes. Before that happens, I’m hoping to make it down to Redondo with just one or two other people (including my friend and dive instructor, Ray), and maybe get a chance to prove to myself that I can deal with surf. Not that I would mind if it winds up being a nice calm day instead.

Ugh… beach dive in two hours. Mentally, I’m not really that worried – the surf reports look good, and I’ll be with a bunch of great folks. Physically, I’m all in knots. :( It took about a dozen boat dives before I stopped being sick in the morning before those, I guess. (But I’ve already got almost a dozen California beach dives under my belt.)

Note to instructors: this is what happens when you attempt to take your students beach diving for their very first ocean dive in high surf conditions. I’m just saying.

With the second weekend of ADP swiftly approaching, I realized I’d better hurry up and write about last weekend, which was the opening of LA County’s Advanced Diver Program. From now until October, I’ll be spending two out of every three weekends getting my diving butt kicked into shape. It adds up to over 100 hours of instruction, including lectures on every conceivable topic, beach dives at a variety of locations, pool instruction, and random adventures like visiting with the Long Beach Search and Rescue folks, or moving underwater pipes around in Lake Castaic.

Opening day was pretty uneventful. I dragged myself out of bed around 6:30am on a Saturday morning to drive down to Carson and sit in “classroom” at Victoria Park with no air conditioning. ADP is as cheap as it is because all the instructors are volunteers, and the facilities are donated by the county. Beggars can’t be choosers! There were about twenty students signed up for the class this year, of all levels of experience. We spent the morning getting an introduction to LA County’s dive programs, and in the afternoon heard a lecture on the history of diving.

Sunday was more exciting: our first pool session. Up first was the swim test:

• A 300 yard swim was up first: 6 lengths of the double-sized (50 yard) pool. It’s surprising how many scuba divers are pretty lousy swimmers; the lifeguards actually got all ready to dive in and start saving people. Since my usual swim at the Caltech pool is 2500 yards, I pretty much kicked ass at this.
• I also kicked ass at treading water, since for me that’s basically just floating with the occasional foot movement. I kicked significantly less ass (read: none whatsoever) at treading water with my arms up in the air. Turns out my arms are both heavy and quite buoyant; without them in the water, I sink like a rock.
• Kicked some more you-know-what at the underwater swim, which actually worried me the most. Swim 20 yards underwater (from the middle of the pool, so no pushing off); pick up a weight belt at the 10ft end of the pool, and carry it to the surface. I nailed this on the first try, after watching an ex-navy guy have to do it twice. Rock on.
• My final swim-test success: the tired-diver tow. We had to tow an “unconscious” diver the length of the pool (50 yards), unless we were going out for the instructor scholarship (which I plan to do) – then we were advised it would take 100 yards to impress our divemasters. Apparently they just wanted to see if we would do it – but I did.

It always boosts my ego when my chubby self is in better shape than 75% of the skinny folks. I probably shouldn’t get too full of myself, though, with all those beach dives looming…

The rest of the morning was spent doing boring old pool skills (mask removals, regulator retrievals, etc). This was made marginally more exciting by the fact that I worked with a divemaster who’s been teaching scuba diving for more than 40 years. He was just a joy to watch: so smooth and confident in the water, with absolutely perfect form.

In the afternoon, we all traipsed over to Sea Lab in Redondo Beach for a seminar on fish identification. I didn’t find this terribly useful, since I’m already a big fish id geek from years of captioning Jeff’s photos. The fun part came post-lecture, when we got to take a tour of all the fish tanks in the back. You’d be surprised how much fun you can have with a huge bucket full of kelp bass. Those dudes are seriously amusing!

Weekend #2 starts tomorrow, and features our first beach dive. Here’s hoping I don’t get creamed too badly by the surf; it would kind of undo all that ego-boosting that the swim test achieved. (Also, it would hurt.)

It can’t be a surprise to anyone who knows us that our usual birthday celebrations involve diving. Jeff’s November birthday lends itself well to 3-day trips on the Vision. My June birthday usually means a couple of days in Catalina. This year we splurged: three days in Catalina.

We took the last ferry out Thursday night so that we’d be able to spend Friday diving at Casino Point, and beat the weekend crowds. Usually we stay at the Atwater, which is right in town, but this time we tried out a new place: Seaport Village Inn. The main draw was gear shuttle service to and from the dive park. We used to just haul the gear there ourselves, but now that we’re sporting drysuits and two cameras, there’s just no way! The shuttle – actually a small golf cart – often resulted in a bit of waiting and repeated calls to the desk, but it saved us money on cabs.

Friday morning we hit the park at high tide and had ourselves three lovely, dry, warm and toasty dives.

The water wasn’t the clearest – it was full of what I’ve heard some divers call “whale snot,” and what Jeff refers to as “egg drop soup.” In the summer, the algae blooms and all kinds of things start growing and spawning, so if you think too hard about what you’re swimming through you might get grossed out.

We still enjoyed ourselves, with trips to the various wrecks in the park and plenty of oddball fish behavior to amuse us.

Male sheephead battle it out:

The other highlight of the day – and I don’t know why we didn’t take a picture – was seeing the T-shirts sported by a Christian dive club at the point: “He died for us… We dive for him.”

I don’t know if I’d put scuba diving up there with getting crucified, in terms of sacrifices one could make. The dive club was full of perfectly nice folks – a bunch of them were on the boat with us Saturday – but I just couldn’t stop mocking them inside my head because of the shirts. I’m going straight to hell.

Saturday we dove on the King Neptune with 16 Christians (mostly new divers), 2 guys from Northern California, and Dr. Bill. The divemasters let us heathens skip the briefings so we could beat the crowd into the water on all three dives, which was nice. On our first dive, we asked Bill for permission to follow him around, figuring he’d be bound to find something cool. We weren’t disappointed! Most of our dive was spent following these guys around:

The male was carting the female around, often picking her up completely off the ground. Bill said they didn’t seem to be mating – they would have been stomach-to-stomach – so he guessed they’d already finished and the male was just trying to keep her away from other males. We took turns shooting video (Bill and myself) and photos (Jeff), and I think we did a pretty good job of not getting in each other’s way.

Dive #2 was a bit of an adventure for everyone. We anchored a bit far away from the reef, and had to swim over sand for some time to reach it. Jeff and I actually had more fun in the sand than we did when we finally hit reef: we found a siphonophore floating around in the water column, several sheep crabs, and saw our first California pipefish (who promptly hid in the sand). We were in a large cove, but there was the danger of current if you got too close to the edge of the point, plus lots of wind at the surface, so we were careful to keep track of our heading going out and coming back. To my delight, we surfaced about 30 feet from the boat. Compasses are wonderful things.

And the Christians didn’t have any, apparently. In groups of three and four, they started surfacing off in the distance and swimming back on the surface. (With a compass, you can take a heading and then descend 5 feet to swim back – much easier). Our divemaster hopped in to help drag back the ones that were too tired, and pretty soon we had a deckful of exhausted swimmers (including Dr. Bill, who’d lost track of where he was and surfaced at the end of the current line, but hauled himself in and had a good laugh at his own expense about it.)

One group was a good 200 yards off, closer to a second dive boat than to us. We could see them, but couldn’t go get them until everyone else was on board. They blew whistles and inflated safety sausages, even though they weren’t drifting (still well inside the cove). It’s always scarier when you’re the one bobbing on the waves, I guess! And I know firsthand how easy it is to surface far from the boat…. but I have to say these folks really started rubbing me the wrong way back on board. All I heard was bitching about how that was way too advanced a dive site, and why did the boat make them swim all the way back instead of coming to get them? (They did go to get the farthest group, but everyone else was within range of the current line.)

Some were talking about how they thought they might die, and kept thinking of their kids; this seemed more than a bit melodramatic to me. Others immediately started bragging about the swim they’d just made, and how it must have been a mile. Um – not.

I helped get people out of BCs and dragged fins and tanks around on deck, and tried to have sympathy for the tired and crying ones – but the whining ones just pissed me off, especially after seeing how the crew bent over backwards to drag everyone in.

I could have told them it wasn’t that hard a dive site, and that the conditions were actually quite nice, but I didn’t want to scare them away from future dives in SoCal…

Sunday we opted out of diving and gave topside a chance. We’d never taken any of the inland tours before, so we signed up for the 2-hour “Skyline Drive” bus tour up to the airport and back. It was interesting to hear about the history of Catalina from the tour guide, but the tour itself was pretty boring – especially because the bus didn’t stop at all except at the airport, which just isn’t that photogenic. We did see some buffalo off in the distance, and Jeff managed to get a shot from his seat in the bus with a telephoto lens:

When we made it back to town, we really wanted to head back up into the hills so we could take some scenic photos of Avalon. We decided to shell out to rent a golf cart for an hour, which you can drive up to the roads that make a perimeter around the town.

And that was pretty much the end of our weekend. We had a great time diving, making fun of people (seriously, the people-watching on Avalon is outstanding), eating, and golf carting. I just wish we could do this every weekend!

Feel free to check out topside pictures, underwater pictures, and my dive logs.