Posted by brianc on December 26, 2001 at 08:28:07:
In Reply to: Need a Dive buddy, Monterey posted by Steven on December 22, 2001 at 09:55:12:
Steve,
You will find a lot more Monterey Area people through BA Diving (Bay Area).
It's a Yahoo group at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ba_diving/
BTW. Pt. Lobos is fantastic, but it's also a State Reserve with regulated diving. Unless the gate people are acting differently in the winter, they'll require you to have a buddy when you check in at the gate.
If this is your first cold water diving, make sure that you go with someone who has experience introducing divers to this environment. You need to make certain that you have proper exposure protection and are with someone who will take the time to help you work out your weighting and buoyancy. I moved back out here from Sout Florida a couple of years ago and was shocked at the difference. In classes that I DM, it's common to find warm water divers having more initial problems here than new diviers. That's because the warm water divers have preconceptions of what they can do and try to go at it a bit too fast to get acclimated.
The diving in Monterey is well worth the extra effort though. My first dive at Pt. Lobos convinced me that cold water can have much better diving than many warm water locations.