Cold Water Escapades

? 10/14/2005 - My dive in Monterey, CA

My wife and I weren't able to celebrate our 1st anniversary on the day because she had qualifying exams for her PHD program.  But we made ourselves feel better by taking a trip right when her test was over. For our little 5 day vacation, we started in Monterey, hit the aquarium, I did a dive which I will detail in a bit, buzzed up to Sonoma, hung out in San Fransisco, actually went back to the Monterey area and visited Carmel and Pebble Beach.  Since this is a diving blog I'll just focus on the aquarium and the dive.  I don't have a UW camera so all the pics are from the aquarium.  Sorry! I like aquariums so I dragged my wife to the Monterey bay aquarium the first day.  She actually really enjoys them too...once she's there.  Honestly, I think MBA is my favorite of all I've been to.  Its very area focused which I always find most interesting - I mean, I'm in Monterey, I want to know what?s special about the area I'm in!   This was slightly suspicous though... So my dive day, I got to the dive shop at 9 and got geared up.  I do not have a stock body so wetsuits never fit right.  This time was no exception.  The rest of the equipment was ok.  Nothing was spectacular, but its rental equipment - what can one expect.  This particular dive shop organizes "guided tours."  This essentially means they find a fairly experience diver in the area and asks them to take you on.  I had expected to do shore dives (and was kind of looking forward to it as I'd never done one before) but Steve had a boat and was taking two of his friends out.  I got to tag along.  His boat was a big double-decker (it had a living room).   We started out with the idea of getting out of the bay.  The sea was a bit rough and they didn't want to throw me (a fairly inexperienced diver) into rough seas so we moved back into the bay.  It was kind of funny because we ended up diving right off the coast from the aquarium I'd visited the day earlier.  We got geared up and were ready to hop in.  The only catch was we had to enter from the top floor of the boat as that?s where we were to gear up.  The drop was about 6-7 feet.  Didn't bother me any.  Prepared myself for the drop... hand on mask and reg...long stride...I'm wet!  Cool I thought.  Signaled ok.   Felt some strange feeling kelp on my leg....wait...that?s not kelp...its my weight belt.  I reached down.  Right as I got my hand down there, the belt slipped off and went on my dive without me. @!#!$!% I tried to stay right where it went down.  We were only in 50 ft of water so maybe they could find it.  My two buddies came in and did a search of the area but couldn't find anything.  *sigh*  It was my shallowest dive to date.  My first pool dive in the shallow end was deeper.  My buddies went ahead with their dive.  I went back to the boat and ditched my gear. I figured what the heck, I have a snorkel (first time I used one on a scuba dive), I'm gonna tool around in the kelp.  It was very enjoyable actually.  Swam around with a harbor seal for a bit.  Having never seen kelp up close before, I poked around and watched snails, small fish, and basically enjoyed my time in the water. After 40 min or so my buddies came up and we all got back in the boat.  One of them was using these dives as a checkout for a new Halcyon bp/wing and Suunto d9 he'd just got.  He got what he needed from that one dive and graciously offered his weight belt.  The only problem with the backplate, he didn't carry that much weight.  We cobbled together all we had extra and it was still cutting it close.  No problem he says, forget that aluminum tank and use my steel one.  THANK YOU!!!!.  OK, lets try this entry again.  Prepared myself for the drop... hand on mask and reg...other hand with death grip on weight belt...long stride...I'm wet!  Cool I thought.  Signaled ok.  Double check...yep have everything.  Buddy came in and we got ready to go down.  Buddy could descend, I was having trouble.  I think I was just excited and moving too much.  Feet first wasn't working so I upended and went down face first.  No problem.    Finally I was under water.  Visibility from 0 to 30 ft was crap.  Maybe 7-10 feet.  After 30 it opened up to probably 15-20 feet.  It was so cool having gone to the aquarium the day before as I was able to recognize much of what I was seeing.  Metridiums, black eyed goby (he cracked me up), a big (at least I thought it was) sheepcrab, a really small flat fish (not sure exactly what) that I absolutely could not see until it moved, and sunflower stars.  I really like the fish that hang out by the kelp and sit there almost vertically.  They kind of just chill there looking at you as if they are thinking "so what I see you, wanna cookie?"  I did want cookies but apparently they don't actually give out cookies.  Another highlight was a little crack containing about 7 shrimp.  My buddy lent me a little light, without which I would have missed them completely.  I think the geography was probably my favorite part of the dive.  I loved how it was flat and sandy with big granite boulders jutting out.  And the kelp... wow is that cool.  Some of the other divers were complaining about having to swim through it on long surface swims, but I think its fantastic.  Its so mesmerizing how it sways in the surge, towering all the way up to the surface.  So cool.  CA divers, be thankful.  I'd take arduous surface swims any day to be able to swim amongst that on a regular basis. After about 25 minutes, my ill-fitting wetsuit was taking its toll.  I tried to hold out as long as I could, but once I started to shiver, I thought I'd better call the dive.  Here came the part I was slightly worried about.  A free ascent.  Gentle reader, if you go back a few posts, you'll read about a dive that didn't go so well during the ascent (another free one).  I had promised myself when booking the dive a week prior that even if a line was used, I was going to try to do it free (next to the line just in case).  Turns out I didn't have that option.  I had been doing some research in the prior week on various techniques for ascents.  One of the tips was to make sure you held your inflator in front of you where you could see it.  This gives you a visual clue as to how much air you're letting out.  Another tip was to swim up in 10' increments, going slow, but making each 10' take at least 20 seconds.  If you reach your next 10' mark before 20 secs, wait for the remainder.  I endeavored to try these.  Putting the inflator in front of me really helped I think.  I kicked gently towards the surface, maintaining a slow pace of about 1' every 2 seconds.  Every little bit I'd burp the BC and low and behold it worked like a charm!  We got to 15' and I was completely neutral and ready for my safety stop.  What a confidence boost.  I got a great reward for my awesome ascent.  A 15" mood jelly decided to swim around us as we hung there.  They can really move!  Before I knew it, our 3 minutes was up.  I wouldn't have minded staying a bit longer (still had 1100 psi) but we went up and finished the ascent without any issues.  I tell you what, the dive was great.  The ascent went just as I'd hoped.  My buddies were very kind.  And I now own a weight belt that I put somewhere off the Monterey Bay Aquarium in about 50ft of water. The vacation as a whole was nice as we haven't been able to travel much.  We decided that we were going to call this our second honeymoon and try to go on subsequent honeymoons every year.  Sounds like a plan to me!

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