Our Saturday trip (leaving midnight Friday!) is to Santa Barbara Island with Desert Divers (702) 438-1000 (please call for pricing). San Clemente is our backup destination. The plan is to do 4 dives at either island and Desert is bringing all experienced divers. If we make Barbara, the plan is two rookery dives and two challenging dives. If we go to Clemente instead, well, Capt. Ken is our Master that day and he's been to Clemente 1,000+ times over the last 30 years. I burned up about 800lbs of air laughing in delight underwater at just one of the sites we dove last Saturday...

Sunday is a day trip to Catalina with Dolphin Dive Center (626) 447-5536 (please call for pricing), currently our least expensive charter. We'll likely do three dives at mixed sites up West now that the recreational boating season has started again. Water temps last Sunday ranged between 56 degrees at Indian Rock to 62 degrees at Africa and the diving was nice. Crew member Frisby saw an octo so big it nearly took away the knife handle he offered it to play with! And two weekends ago, I saw at least 30 bat rays at Little Geiger. The water is warming up and creatures are on the move!

Dive this Saturday, visit the SCUBA Show Sunday!

Make it a double-play weekend! The weather and the dive conditions are predicted to be great this weekend. Great Escape Charters has a limited amount of spots available for this Saturday's Open Boat trip to Catalina Island.

The Great Escape leaves the dock from Long Beach's Queen's Wharf at 7:00am, returning between 5:00 and 5:30pm. Cost is $120 and includes our famous hot breakfast, Chef Rob's incredible lunch, and all in-between and after dive snacks, drinks and air fills. For those divers driving in from out of the area, you may board early and sleep on the boat the night before departure (please board after 8:00pm Friday evening).

Remember that Open Boat trips aboard the Great Escape qualify for our very popular Frequent Diver Program. Call or visit our website for more information. We hope to see you out with us this Saturday! (Don't forget, we accept and prefer PayPal !).

Don't forget the Magician has an Open Boat to Catalina every Wednesday!