Posted by Scary Terry Diver on December 28, 2004 at 14:51:41:
I find myself back here on the golden coast visiting friends and relatives for the xmas and new years. We have had a great time and hope to come back again before lobster season is closed and get more "bugs".
We were here in October for a lobster hunting trip with one of the local shops who set up the 2 day trip. My cali buddy who was with us said that the boat we were on was supposed to be one of the best for hunting lobsters. Perfect weather and flat water was expected. Knowing these things we were really excited for the trip. But without naming names I have some complaints. I made the same complaints to the shop who agreed with my complaints and promised to talk to the boat owner before the next time they go out on a trip with them.
We got to the boat and were disappointed with the size. It wasn't very long or wide. I was told it was one of the largest and most comfortable to go on a trip on. Even the charter boat web site said it was one of the largest and most up to date diving charter boats in cali. But the trip was over booked. We had 35 people on it not counting the crew people. For that I blame the shop who agreed. The food was OK, and too was the crew in general, but the mean spirit and off color attitude of the captain was a bit too much for my wife and her brother. The boat looked like a 60 footer and was really cramped and smelly in the bunks. It was for sure not one of the larger dive boats I had ever been on in cali. It was also not one of the cleanest and best maintained. Oh well, live and learn from our missed expectations of a great and comfortable dive boat experience. They should change the web site and delete the mis information.
My other problem with the trip was that we never really moved from dive site to dive site in search of lobsters. We just went to a nice protected cove and dove there for hours and hours with no one really bringing back more than one lobster at a time. Is it common practice to only dive one spot for almost all of the day? I would think the best thing to do is to move around from dive site to dive site looking for the hot lobster sites to be more effective in our hunting ways. This was to be a lobster hunting trip. I asked the dive masters why we were not moving the boat around. They said that the choice of the dive sites was up to the captain and he wanted to stay here. We watched another dive boat in the area, one that I have been on before, move from site to site every couple hours it seemed.
The trip was somewhat inexpensive compared to what we have spent in the past, but those were larger and more comfortable dive boats with really helpful and friendly crew and captains. Maybe our problems were because it was lobster season trip is that why?
We only came home with less than a 2 day limit of lobsters each to show for the 10 dives we made. Two divers on the boat did get their legal limits, but many others came back with less than a single day limit for their efforts which included more dives than we made. We aren't maniacs but we are proficient when hunting lobsters.