π
2012-09-01 01:01
in Diving
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I was there for a conference and visited San Diego. I realized I had never dived around San Diego, so I figured why not?
Little did I know that San Diego actually has colder water than LA and Catalina, and barely warmer than Monterey that is freaking cold (make sure you know where the hole in the ice is, so that you don't get trapped under the ice sheet when coming back up :) ).
Then I had another brilliant idea, if the water is cold, why not sign up for 6 dives in a day. I didn't even know it was possible if you were not on a liveaboard and none of those dives were night dives.
Smallish boat compared to my typical liveaboard, but good enough for a day :)
My 3 morning dives were pretty miserable. Diving in kelp wasn't bad, but 15C was monterey cold and my rental was only a 7mm suit with no vest (in monterey I had a vest for that). Unsurprisingly, I was quite cold, and while I got to see a few things and it's cool to dive amongst kelp, the temps just made it pretty miserable.
look carefully, these were the steps back up to the boat
In the afternoon, they thankfully gave me a 2nd wet suit, so I was now wearing 3mm plus 7mm on top, and the 10mm did the trick. The water was still only 15C, but bearable now.
The first 2 dives were to the yukon, which is indeed a huge ship and impressive to see. We didn't really go inside because I'm not trained for diving inside wrecks, especially because this ship is on its side, so up is not actually up :)
The Ruby was a smaller ship, but because the day ran behind it was a dusk dive turning into a night dive, so I didn't get to see as much. At last I saw the toilet that was there :)
hard to go on the toilet with 2 dive suits
I'll be honest in saying that I'm just not a fan of cold water. Having to wear 7mm with a suit and hood and still being very cold is not fun. The vis was also far from stellar and I'm told was actually pretty standard or even slightly above average. I did learn that I do need at least 10mm or an additional vest to dive in 15C water.
It was actually nice to see the Yukon which is indeed a pretty huge shipwreck, and kelp is interesting to see, but otherwise sea life was pretty minimal compared to the pretty high standards I'm used to.
It wasn't a waste of time, and it was cool to do 6 dives in a day in cold water no less, but I don't really need to be doing this again anytime soon :) |
