Posted by Eric S on March 25, 2002 at 21:58:07:
Sunday, Matt ( one of my regular dive buddies), a friend of his, and I took the dory up to Albion with three scheduled tanks to blow.
It was screaming cold once again at 7:00 am at the coast as we began to assemble our gear and load the boat when my buddies friend realized that the dive shop that rented him his BC forgot to include the low pressure inflator assembly. DAMN!
Matt and I went out for a first dive anyway as his friend went into Fort Bragg to a dive shop and waited for them to open.
I had marked Bull Rock on my GPS from Watkins' book and my new garmin led us right to it. I saw in coming up as the 8 ft. swells would explode over the top. The top of the pinnacle was submerged, but those big sweels coming out of deep open
ocean have a way of really climbing up on anything sticking up.
We anchored about 300 feet away (which still seemed to close) and my depth finder kept giving me stange readings, 120, 35, 74, 100, 26 ? I figured it was on the blink. When we back rolled in off the gunwales and gegan our descent down the anchorline I realized that the finder was fine, we were over a sheer wall and the boat was just swinging back and forth from the swells.
Our main mission was scallops, and we began finding them right away. I only found empty shells, but Matt was finding some good ones.
I sensed a shape of a giant spider above me and as I turned up to look I saw a huge box crab just launch himself off of a ledge about 40 ft above me and parachuted straight down with all legs completely spread out. I put out my scallop bar and caught him in the water column. I remembered a guy telling me that if you can ever get a box crab they are the best eating of any crab.
This thing was huge. It weighed in excess of 5 pounds, maybe more. I wrestled with this crab for 15 minutes trying to get him in my bag but all the points and spikes and claws were making it impossible. Finally somehow he went in. I checked my depth and saw I had drifted down to 117 feet (oops) with one minute left of NDL (whoa). I better pay better attention. I looked up and saw my buddy hard at work still looking for scallops. I was starting to get low on air so I signaled to him and we started our ascent. After we got back on the boat he was bellowing about this huge scallop he got and wanted me to pull in the equipment line with our game bags attached. when I pulled in his bag I saw that he had for some reason hooked it on upside down and all his bootie had fallen out while it was hanging in the water. What a bummer. Matt was pissed!
I realized then that Mr. Murphy and his stupid laws had decided to pick on us that day.
I'm getting tired...part two tomarrow.
It gets better!