We spent today at Catalina on the Cee Ray. When we crawled into our “double” bunk last night, I remembered why I’m not a huge fan of this boat! There are 4 double bunks, and they aren’t, really: at the feet, they’re the same width as a single, and they widen to about 1.5 times that at the head. Comfy.

It was a pretty rough ride out; for the first time, I thought I might actually wind up hanging over the rail. We had 3-4 foot swell all the way out to Catalina. The plan was to dive Farnsworth, on the far side of Catalina, but our captain took one peek at the conditions on the other side of the island and turned the boat around to stay on the lee side. Smart move!

We had some great dives anyway, at Eagle Reef and Doctor’s Cove. Eagle Reef may be my new favorite Catalina dive site: it’s basically series of huge piles of rocks, covered with kelp and lots of fish. Since it’s actually made up of distinct boulders, there are lots of nooks and crannies to go poking around in, and I scared up quite a few lobsters and shrimp. Mostly, I enjoyed the fish-watching. There were huge schools of baitfish (anchovy, topsmelt, sardines) darting all over the place. We also saw all the usual suspects: sheephead (I saw some fighting each other, mouth-to-mouth), garibaldi chasing away intruding fish, senoritas who darted at their reflection in Jeff’s dome port, juvenile kelp bass that would drift right up to your mask, the pretty blue-and-yellow juvenile blacksmith, rock wrasse and opaleye. And of course, the rocks were littered with bluebanded gobies, one of my favorite fish.

Jeff puttered around getting some practice in with the camera, while I settled in for 45 minutes of fish-watching (with occasional breaks for Jeff-watching). Visibility was great, and the water was warm – great place for 2 long dives!

Our second site of the day was Doctor’s Cove. Not quite as nice: a shallow kelp forest next to lots of sand. We didn’t find anything too exciting in the kelp, but on both of our dives we ran into bat rays out in the sand, munching around in it to dig up food. Each time, the ray was swarmed by other fish trying to get some leftovers. We also scared up a couple of soles in the sand and chased them around for a while, and several times ALMOST managed to get a picture of a giant kelpfish – unfortunately, when you play hide and seek with a kelpfish IN THE KELP, you’re bound to lose.

It’s a good thing I had some Drammamine left: if we thought the ride out was rough, the ride back was even worse! The wind and waves kicked up quite a bit while we were parked at Doctor’s Cove. We were right at the northwest tip of the island, and could see around the corner where the whitecaps were really picking up. As the boat headed for home, I popped a pill and went to try to sleep through the worst of it. Luckily, I succeeded, but woke in time to enjoy some of the “smaller” 6-8 foot swell as we surfed our way back towards the harbor. Our bunk was up in the bow next to the outside bulkhead, where we could hear something (the bilge? Water tank? Sewer system?) sloshing around every time the boat rocked. And lying on your side was impossible; you got knocked back and forth so much that lying flat on your back was the only option.

I felt fine – yay for Drammamine!

Pics for this dive are here: http://gallery.laityphoto.com/v/underwater/uw-20040919_catalina.