Posted by seahunt on September 19, 2004 at 21:53:08:
The North Coast is dynamic.
Where else can a person say "the cliffs come and the cliffs go"?
The diving is great year after year.
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The Russian Fort at Fort Ross is worth seeing on its own. It is an amazing, rough hewn wooden
structure that vividly brings to mind the not only the historic Russian presence on the coast,
but the roughness of the land and the time. The diving around it is great though... when it's
not to rough.
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I'll bet it got muddy in there in winter.
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By the way, I remodeled my web site. Check it out. seahunt Diving For The Fun Of It
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The shortest way to the North Coast diving is to go across from hiway 101 in Santa Rosa across
River Road to Jenner at Hiway 1 on the Coast. Most of the best diving is north from there. You
start up the hill called the Dramamine Hiway and about 5 miles later the road gets a lot less
windy and steep. It's about 12 miles to Salt Point State Park and Gerstle Cove Reserve.
Traditionally, most divers have stopped there because the abalone diving there has been excellent
for years as well as that it's some of the best coastal access there is. Now divers tend to go
further for a couple of reasons, but it used to be that most divers just didn't go as far as Fort
Ross. Now a distinction should be made. There is the main protected cove at Fort Ross which was
the reason the Russians built a fort there. It has had a fair number of divers, but north of that
is a large cove known as Clam Beach. The cove is about a mile across with a point on each side.
This is where I did a lot of diving. The most convenient place to access it is towards the north
side of the cove where the road goes nearest the shore. There are some trees there and you can
identify the spot by the stairs that go up and over the fence there. You can also tell the spot
because there is usually a few cars parked there where the trees start on the north side of the
field. It is about 180 yards to the northern point there and there are a lot of large offshore
rocks. It is about 1000 yards to the more interesting areas on the south side of the cove. I
usually go to the south side because it is more protected. Really, you can dive anywhere in the
cove that you can get to. It's just a bit longer swim in the middle of the cove.
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This is a huge dive area from just offshore to as far as you want to swim.
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The hike to the shore is part of the fun. There are often cows there in the fields. They seem
friendly enough though I never worked hard to make their acquaintance. There are rabbits as
well as a lot of red tailed hawks and I have watched turkey vultures soaring in the ocean
breeze 20 feet over my head. This is a cow field near the road, but it is still a somewhat
wild place. It is all quite beautiful. Pick your route across the fields to avoid low areas.
They can get marshy and very muddy. If it is Spring when there is a lot of water, it can be
hard to cross in places. Follow the small trails. Then you have to get down the cliff. That's
another reason to dive the points. It's easier to get down there. The difficulty of getting
down changes over time. The first time I was there, there were a number of trails down the
cliffs. Year by year it got steeper and harder to get down, until one El Nino year when all
the cliffs got smashed by the storms and getting down the cliff was relatively easy. Year
after year after that, the cliffs got steeper again. It is a great place to use one of the
backpack floats that you can put your gear in for the hike. As you go down the cliffs you
see interesting succulants finding a living in the rocks.
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This is the shape of the bottom. Boulders, shelves, cracks and holes, but all full of life underwater.
A lot of divers use a poncho made of two towels sewn together for changing before and after
a dive. It can keep you warm when the sea brreeze blows. Once you make it down the cliff,
follow standard roch shore entry procedures. Put fins on at the waters edge, get in and swim
fast to get past the waves. All the diving is good. Anywhere in the cove has the potential to
produce a nice sized abalone or a personal adventure. If it is low tide you have to cross a
lot of rocks to get to the water, especially in the center of the cove. The north side of the
cove is more dramatic with big rocks sticking up, but I figured the south side was further
and so fewer divers would walk all the way there. It is fascinating in that there is a ridge
of reef that goes off at one point with very shallow water going a ways out only about 5 feet
deep at a mid tide. It's to shallow for most divers to be comfortable on because of the wave
and surge action. Of course it's where I go if it's nearly calm emough. I was there with my
friend Dan on a particularly calm day and some divers were slowly moving along the shore in
an inflatable and making occasional dives. I told Dan to watch when they got close, that they
would start moving fast because they would be uncomfortable in the shallow water. Sure enough,
they went across the shallow spot much faster than they had been moving along. It was also
that day that it was calm enough that I was able to dive in just a couple of feet of water in
an area that is usually just to rough to dive. It is actually a small area right below the low
tide, but still in the real waves. I actually hunted there near shore, something I almost never
do, but it was a small area that rarely gets divers and I found some nice sized abalone.
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One of my early UW photography attempts. The kelp is like a wall, but there are paths through it.
Sometimes I would go there and take a long time getting abalone while looking around. I could
swim to an offshore rock, explore around it, climb on it and claim it for the people of the world
that love natural beauty. Other trips I would spend a long time swimming around exploring and not
really hunting at all. Sometimes I would see big ling cods or cabazon. I almost always saw various
perch and rockfish. There were a lot of invertebrates I couldn't identify and things that I still
wonder if they were natural or from some ship perhaps 200 years ago that visited the coast for
lumber or cattle. Some of the best diving could be in tide pools of various sizes and depths that
were actually inside of the surf. You could find deep shelves in some. The shallow clear waters
show off the life in brilliant colors. It was just a natural playground that I came back to over
and over.
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Notice my high-tech one gallon water jug dive floats there for my abalone bag. It is minimalist
diving and you have to be prepared to bail out up there. If that means ditching a bag, so be it.
I love it when I swim into the calm tidepools like that.
Lest we forget that this is the North Coast. I went there on a number of occasions when the winds and
seas precluded any chance to do a sane dive. Then you must just enjoy the rugged scenery, but that's OK.
Another one of my early UW photography attempts.
There was the trip I made with my sister's family. We drove from San Jose straight to Fort Ross. It was
a rough enough day to make diving marginal. It was a time when the cliffs were steep and Mohan was a
life saver helping me get myself and gear down the cliff. No one else tried to go down. I had fun. I
got my limit of abalone, but it was not a time to dawdle in that water. After spending the night in
Santa Rosa, we went back the next day. I was hoping it had calmed down some. As we got to Jenner, I
could see the sand bar at the Russian River mouth. A clean 5 foot wave was breaking on it. Shoot.
When we got to Fort Ross, it looked very lively. I was above the cliff for a while looking for a likely
entry when I saw two divers go in just below the north point. It tends to be rough there, but it looked
no worse than any where else. While I rarely buddy dive, I have no objection to them especially on a
rough day. I figure that they can tell the Coast Guard which direction the current took me. I ran across
and then down the cliff to follow them. The entry was a small sort of cove between two areas of rocks
sticking up. It was really rough in the rocks, but calmer in the deeper water between them. I got in
and it was easy to ride the water flowing out the cove to where the two divers were. They wanted to
get their ab limit and head out. It was rough all around the area we were diving in. I had carefully
scoped out the area from the cliff and knew that there was about an 80 foot wide area that didn't break
when the big sets came in. It got real rough around that. Each time I dove, I came up and checked that
I was still in that safe spot. On the first dive, I grabbed two big ones that were together. The other
divers wanted to finish up and head out. Then, as always happens, there was a big set. The calm spot
got down to about 40 feet wide foamy patch with big waves breaking all around us. You just stay put,
watch and perhaps hold on to some kelp to make sure that no current has you. When that happens,
rationally you know that it's going to calm down again and things will be OK. What you feel is another
thing. As soon as it calmed, the other divers headed out. I stayed and got some more abalone. As I
finished up, the next big set came in and I had to wait it out again. As soon as it calmed, I headed
in. Well, all that water that came to shore and over the rocks with the big waves is now trying to
find a way back out. It's all coming out that small cove between the rocks that I rode out here in.
It is sort of a permanent rip current. The divers on shore were nice. They were packed, but they
stayed to watch out for me. As I found myself in the rip current, I knew to move to the shallow rocks
at the side of the cove and pull and bounce my way in over the shallow rocks through the waves coming
from both the sea and the shore. It's still a lot easier than fighting that current. I think the divers
on shore were annoyed. On my part, my method of keeping people watching me comfortable is to swear. As
long as I am swearing they seem to figure that I am not panicked. I've done it on more than one
occasion. I got to shore. That is a wave tossed me as far as I could go into a tide pool. I laid
there relaxing, contemplating if I had gained any sense from the experience when one of the divers
came over and pulled off my fins. That was nice, but he never did say hello. What's the difference!
He had gone out there too. He just did it with a buddy. No matter what else I say, this is what the
North Coast is really about. Not the calm days, but the normal days, the rough days that test a
diver.
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The booty is part of the fun.
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Looking further south from where I hiked south to, shows how much more area there is to dive.
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The view I like.
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Enjoy The Diving, seahunt
seahunt Diving For The Fun Of It