Posted by DougD on December 02, 2001 at 11:45:34:
One day during the summer I went down to Divers Cove in Laguna and did some snorkeling. The vis that day was amazing and the surf was flat. Well, I've been itching to do a dive down there ever since then but it never worked out until yesterday, when I hooked up with the South Coast Divers.
It took me almost 2 hours to get there thanks to 4 car pile-up on the 405, so it was a good thing I gave myself plenty of time to get down there, or I wouldn't have had time to hit the Starbucks before I arrived at the rally point.
Once I made the meeting point I was questioned by Rich about my experience and training. I confessed that I still consider myself to be a relative newbie to beach diving, but that I have logged more than 20 dives since July, just completed the ANDI Nitrox class, and am now in the process of taking the SSI AOW.
In total 16 divers rallied at the meeting point and we all headed over the Cress St. Another diver hitched a ride with me, and so became my "defacto buddy" for the morning. On the drive over he told me he had asthma and that this would be his 5th dive since being re-certified a year ago.
At Cress St., Rich and some of the more experienced divers didn't think the surf looked "too bad" (better than last week), but I was happy when some of the others said they didn't like the look of it (I was thinking, Hawaii Five-O)and we moved over to Crescent Bay.
Crescent Bay was much flatter and much more to my liking. My "defacto" buddy needed to use the head, so we ended up being the 13th, and 14th divers to enter the water. My entry was well timed. I got in and got my fins on quickly, but had to swim back to "defacto" and help him put his fins on. Once I got one of his fins on I grabbed a strap on his BC and started kicking to get us out of the surf zone while he struggled with the other fin. Right out of the surf zone I could see bottom and I knew that the vis was going to be great. Rich waited for us about out in the middle of the cove and the three of us kicked out to the rest of the group floating over the dive site. The surface temp was 59 degrees and the air was probably low 70's with the sun shinning. We waited several more minutes for the last two divers to join us and then descended.
There was no giant kelp but the reef was fantastic with a lot of life. Visibility was probably 30 fsw. We headed in a westerly direction with the beach due north. I saw hundreds of lobsters. Several that looked legal. I looked into several holes with my light that probably had fifty of the crusty little bastards, unfortunately all out of my reach. Scallops everywhere! A Great Sculpin that was about 15 inches or so. Seahare, Keyhole Limpetts, the largest Seacucmber I have seen. I was so excited by the reef I didn't even pay much attention to the fish, but they were there. I did see one large female Sheephead that looked edible. :P Did I mention lobsters? I saw one diver with a short in his hand. Not knowing what to expect I neglected to even bring a game bag, so I wasn't in the hunting mode. Maybe a night dive there sometime would be good.
Once we had reached the end of the reef I was already down to about 1900 psi. Rich approached "defacto" and tried to get a air reading from him. "Defacto" didn't seem to understand what Rich wanted. At that point Rich took control of him and stayed with him the rest of the dive.
We turned the dive and started back to the east. By now we were all pretty spread out but two other divers were in my area so I stayed pretty close to them. When I got to 1000 psi it was time to start back and I hooked with the diver closest to me.
During our swim out of the cove Rich had told me that on the swim in I was to keep the rocks on my left until I hit sand at about 30' and then head North. That was exactly what we did. I got to 500 psi first so I signaled the other diver (later found out his name is Travis) and he signaled to surface. We were in about 20 fsw and no more than 50 yards from the beach. We had the shortest surface swim of the whole group.
All in all it was a great dive, and I look forward to diving with the group again, even though I'm a Valley dweller.