Posted by bubbapug on November 01, 2004 at 01:17:34:
I was lucky enough to snag a spot with the sea divers, a great drinking and diving club, on the Great Escape Friday and Saturday. The initial plan was to hit Cortes Friday and Catalina Saturday. After clearing the breakwater the passage got rough, with most people getting slightly airborne in their bunks. You really can't sleep too well airborne, nor can you hit the can after three beers and a xanax....so what do you do? Drink whiskey only?
After 45 minutes of the wild baloney pony ride the seas became calmer...because the captain changed course to Catalina.
We awoke to a beautiful golden morning sunrise beside a DFG boat at XXXX off of Catalina. The soft billowing clouds, fog wisping off the water, sea birds cackling, and a ranger with a 9mm on his hip opening your game bag checking for shorts, it was a fabulous if not a visual dichotomy of sorts. I was a bit bummed to be at Cat because Cortes is so prolific bugwise with such great sweeping underwater vistas and no 9mm's exposed by skilled tanned swarthy beef cake DFG agents. (Rojas and Gilbert, very handsome, businesslike & friendly too) But the first dive proved that Catalina can be prolific too! A few skilled divers (and one dumb, old, blind, lucky one as he describes himself and me too) limited out at XXXX. And the bugs on average were large, 3 to five pounders. We continued to dive leisurly between the DFG search and the gobs of food the GE lays out to fill in the slow periods during location changes. We even hit the backside and did a few dives in search of the elusive lobzilla. Nightime, after an almost formal sit down dinner (my only beef about the Great Escape is the food...it's too much and too good, and I always gain a few pounds even if I do nine dives a day) we dove black rock. Again, a few people limited out, but the bugs were not as prevelant or as large as they had been on the first dive.
A few of us wanted to dive XXXX again, to get seven four pound bugs, but a misguided obviously intoxicated (hey I'm joking here a bit, taking some fictional liberty to spice it up)tree hugging, lobster humping outspoken non bug hunting majority (how the heck did I ever get the idea this was bug season and a bug trip?@#%&^?) wanted to dive the friggin Palowan in pea green soupy bacteria and toliet paper laden water, followed by more pea green soupy bacteria laden water dives in PV, which we did (sigh). Some of the most outspoken of the bunch never found the wreck (karma), but I can't complain, I got some bugs on all dives off of PV, (I even saw some charmin from the rain, at least you don't get tangled up in it like you do in some healthy catalina kelp forest), just not the chunky ones (bugs that is, not turds) I coveted in my friends games bags from XXXX. Sure, I felt like supplanting some turds in those game bags of the guys with waning testosterone levels who voted to dive PV along with th gals instad of XXXX...next trip fellas, I'll even take fiber! And oh yes, I did find the wreck and on the third dive I found something that looked like an airplane fuselage too, with bugs under it! Karma again!
Lessons learned...work the crowd early, lobby for beautiful viz over bacteria laden water wih visable pieces of human feces floating in it...even if your intention is to bug dive and never look at the friggin vis and don't expect the social director to side with bughunters over photo divers and those who want to plan YOUR next six dives while they only do one friggin dive a day. :) (my god man, it is bug season...you can take pictures all friggin year long, why even put it up for a friggin vote...this ain't Iraq for christ sakes), Democracy sucks at times...better to have your brother or attorney rent the boat next trip to help swing the election your way. Next time I want a weighted average based on dives attempted, and secret balloting to avoid peer pressure, and you have to pass a breathalizer test to cast a ballot and have more N2 in your blood stream than booze!
And where is XXXX....????????????? I'll never tell because I took a deco hit in the head and forgot...nor did I ever have the mental capaciy to remember in the first place.
Yours truly, Ernest Hemroidway