Did an early morning dive at Point Dume yesterday.  Surf was not bad and the usual long shore current was not running, although half-way through the dive the current picked up.  On the long surface swim to the pinnacles we had to pass through some yucky sea-foam that had a lot of "peat" from the red tide in it.  A horrible thing happened; my Ikelite PC must have been banging against my leg and the cap portion with bulb, lens, etc. worked loose and dumped 4 C size cells into the drink.  This went unnoticed until we descended into the dark (the area was socked in with fog) and I needed it.  What a bummer.  I searched for them on the swim back but never saw them.  I guess they'll corrode away fairly quickly unless someone else can find them.
 
Vis was only about 10'-12' but there were still a few things to see, including:  1 medium sized ling, a school of blacksmith, a couple of small cabezon, somekind of nudi eggs, a small sheepcrap, a couple of small dungeness crabs, garabaldi, greenlings, and senoritas, of course.
 
On the east side of the small pinnacle there was a very warm patch of water, weird because the rest of the dive was fairly cold.  The surg picked up pretty good around the small pinnacle and stayed with us on the swim back.  We passed through clouds of the red stuff and it was hard to see my buddies in there.  We scared up a few small halibut out in the sand and surfaced in front of the rocks by the cliff face a short distance from our entry point.  A harbor seal gave us a once over and disappeared.
 
51' for 51' min.

• Re: Point Dume Yesterday Chris 17:30:54 07/18/05 (0)