Posted by Roger on May 12, 2004 at 15:43:02:
In Reply to: Jim! no telling! posted by Roger on May 12, 2004 at 15:33:38:
Hmm, I blew the link to the scallop pic. Let my try again and make up for it by adding my own trip report.
Eric, the Peace skipper, put us on a lot of open water pinnacles the 1st day, and we did an oil rig the 2nd day. The first day we did Skyscraper, near Wilson rock, Egg Rock, a pinnacle in between miguel and rosa, some really nice canyons off church rock, then some heavy kelp near church rock. We did a night dive someplace, Elaine and Chris were the only ones to do the night dive, Chris had a UV light & filter setup for his camera to try out. The second day we did oil platform grace for 2 dives, then did 2 more dives at santa cruz at scorpion rock.
Conditions were pretty good, vis came and went, at times it was great, but at times there was that green springtime water on the top or hints of it at the bottom. Some dives had strong current, I had trouble making it to the anchor line from the bow gate 1st dive. Nice to be diving with a group that can hang with conditions like that and do so well that the skipper does more pinnacles.
My drysuit is used, zipper is old, been trying to keep it alive with trident cement. Anyway, I was using it so much the 1st day that I wore it out. The zipper grabbed a thread, frayed it, pulled it off, balled up a bunch of the cement, and just shredded what was left of the rubber in the zipper. It came came off the tracks and all. Ugly. I got pretty wet the last dive, dried my undies in the dryer that night (nice to be on the Peace), and in the morning, I had them glue me into my drysuit. We didn't use enough glue, and I was fully wet the first dive, ankle deep or so the second, knee deep the third, damn cold, and skipped the 4th.
My camera, an oly 5050, lasted almost all day the 1st day, 6 dives, maybe 5 hours, over 300 pictures, in cold water (cold batteries don't last as long), maha 2200 mAh batteries. It finally ran out on the 6th dive.By comparison, my old 3040 camera using rayavac 1600mAh batts would go after maybe 3 hours, 200 pictures. I haven't worried about battery life since I got the 2200's. I used to worry about it, it used to happen all the time. I was surprised to see it this time, I forgot it could happen.
My strobe ran out of juice on the 5th dive. Never seen that, either. I was using the modeling light a lot, and I am using a new bulb that may burn more juice. My strobe battery acted weird: I charged it between the 5th and 6th, the charger said it was full. It died again on the 6th dive. I tried to charge it overnight and give it a good trickle loading, but someone unplugged it, since the tiny camera table on the Peace was taken over by knapsacks. I meant to charge it again during the day, but got distracted by other things. I meant to unplug the charger, but forgot, and it burned up and smoked the galley. not sure what happend, maybe something shorted it, maybe it overheated under all the knapsacks. So I'm not sure if I was having charger trouble of battery trouble or both.