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3/14/2010 Butterfly Outer aboard Escapade by Kenn Hwang -- [View this report only]

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Bottom Team: August Gugelmann

Visibility: 10' - 18' Time: 10:00 AM

Temp: 53F - 55F Surge: 8'

Max Depth: 85FSW Avg Depth: 59FSW

Bottom Time: 0:51 Total Time: 0:59

Bottom Gases: EAN32 Deco Gases:

Backgas Config: Double Deco Tanks:
Deco Profile:
It's been several months since we've had good surface condition forecasts, and Sunday looked to continue the down trend. But the ten of us scheduled for the 3/14 Rec Boat on the Escapade decided to cross our fingers and head out anyways, figuring wet was better than not, regardless of predictions.

After motoring down to Carmel, we scrubbed the first site after finding it swamped with a pretty steady current, and retreated to Butterfly House. While the current was gone, the surge was strong, blasting us through, around, over and into the boulders and canyon walls. That, along with limited visibility (~15ft), made navigation a bit of a crapshoot, but we all made our way around and back to the anchor. All in all, it was a great dive and probably well surpassed everyone's expectations!

For the second dive, we all wanted to escape the spin cycle, so we opted to head back into the bay where reports were that the surface was calm and the surge gone. We dove at Aumentos, in slightly greener water and less visibility, but calmer and more relaxing for sure. The teams were able to spread out a bit, and I think we only saw Masao and Vladimir on the whole dive. We pretty much got ourselves lost, but again stumbled across the anchor just as we were about to declare defeat and shoot a bag.

Video up at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASCpdUF6PVU

2/20/2010 Montana by Harry Wong -- [View this report only]

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Bottom Team: Harry Babicka, Harry Wong

Visibility: 20' - 70' Time: 11:00 AM

Temp: 51F - 54F Surge: 1'

Scooter: Gavin Long Burn Time: 1:05

Max Depth: 121FSW Avg Depth: 110FSW

Bottom Time: 1:05 Total Time: 1:52

Bottom Gases: 21/35 Deco Gases: EAN50,O2

Backgas Config: Double HP120 Deco Tanks: AL40
Deco Profile:
7,2,2, 3,2, 10,10
This is a dive that I've been wanting to do for awhile. It required the sun, moon and stars to line up, well at least a good combination of equipment, buddies and conditions. This was to be a scootering grand tour of the countryside, so to speak.

The day started out not too promising with swells predicted at around 10 feet with a 15 second swell intervals, but still Harry B and I decided to go down to Lobos and see what we could do. Passing the tall flag at the Seaside hotel showed no wind which was a good sign. Then passing Monastery Beach we could see several divers gearing up to dive Monastery, another good sign. Still, it was a west swell which meant while Monastery is protected, where we wanted to go may not be.

Nice, the view of Whaler's Cove revealed calm conditions as we were driving into the parking lot. Many of the usuals were there, Ted and Adelle (from Wallins) just finishing their dives with big smiles. Adelle did say she slipped on the very mossy ramp but was ok. Suzanne and Natalie, Clinton and John, Karl and Cynthia were all gearing up to go in as we arrived. Such a fun and social cadre of people. :-)

Our plan was to do the The Grand Tour and it definitely looked like a possibility today. Entering the water we had about 20 feet of viz in the cove, after doing our checks we headed out on the surface scootering in the Sand Channel until we got to Worm Patch where we descended to about 30 feet of water. Then we continued scootering to Granite Wall where the viz was still about 20 feet, maybe a bit more.

There was no surge and the water seemed calm so we continued going north and north-east around the structures of Granite Point Pinnacles. It never ceases to amaze me, the plethora of pinnacles, nook and crannies here. Staying NE at about 30 degrees at 70 to 80 feet we easily got into the Moss Cove Sand Channel, easily identified by the smaller "Monster Berry" sand. Visibility opened up to a good 30 feet.

We then traversed over other various pinnacles to arrive at Mono Lobo Wall. It's nice to see the different color lichens, moss and sponges in this area, definitely gives a different feel than any other place at Point Lobos, taking on a yellow coloration. Visibility was still about 30 feet here, still more than adequate for navigation.

Heading west we get to the northern face of Thumbs Up and sightsee for a moment or so. I stop to video a school of rockfish. I love the schools as they don't seem to mind if I'm close or in the middle of them. They must know I'm there just to shoot video and nothing else.

We get to Wall Street, first coined by Gary, marked by bountiful color and invertebrate life and fingering outcroppings of structure. Kind of like a flower garden actually. We hang out there for a bit where I took some video. Visibility started getting better at around 40 feet...a good sign and no surge. With a predicted 15 second wave interval I still expected to see a stirred up bottom an surge here, but it was calm.

Conditions were looking pretty good, the question was, could we go west from Wall Street and hit Montana? Traversing a bit south-west, we got to the structures before Montana. There was plenty of light, even at 100 feet and I could just maybe see a shadow of Montana, but maybe it was just a mirage. So here we were at about 110 feet and I could clearly see the bottom which was at 130 or 140 feet. This allowed us to stay shallow, avoiding an extended deco.

We ventured west, over open water and the mirage got darker and the huge shadow transformed into the top of the beautiful pinnacle we call Montana. The viz had opened up to over 60 feet! A quick hi-five and fly-by of the upper part of the pinnacle at around 120 feet and we were off in a south-east direction back to Granite Wall.

So all in all what started as a so-so day for this dive turned out quite well. All of the previous scheduled stops and depths and timing had to be on schedule for us to get out to Montana to keep our deco demand reasonable.

The sun, moon and stars did line up and we were pretty pleased. ;-)

Scooter trigger time: about 65 minutes
Dive Time: 112 minutes
Max depth 121 feet
Temp: 51 - 54 degrees F
Visibility: 20' to 70'
Round trip distance 6,100 feet
Gasses: Tx 21/35 50% and 100%
Deco: 7,2,2, 3,2, 10,10

2/19/2010 Cypress Canyon aboard Phil Sammet's RIB by Kevin Dow -- [View this report only]

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Bottom Team: Joseph (Karl) Haywood

Visibility: 40' Time: 12:16 PM

Temp: 55F Surge:

Scooter: X-scooter Burn Time:

Max Depth: 196FSW Avg Depth:

Bottom Time: 0:40 Total Time: 1:38

Bottom Gases: 18/45 Deco Gases: EAN50,O2

Backgas Config: Double HP100 Deco Tanks: AL40,AL80
Deco Profile:
6 and 4's
20 and up
Today was one of those days that you just don't expect to happen. It was a "plan D" type of day. Earlier in the week Karl and I had made plans to dive out at CRB. Due to a bunch of things that just didn't end up in the cards. Plan B was to dive at Monestary but that just seemed like to much work, so we settled on plan C: a nice dive at Lobos.

As we were busy getting gear together, Phil Sammett comes motoring back into the cove after diving with Ken. As a joke we shout out to him, "Hey Phil now that you are back you want to take us out?"

When Phil thought about it for a moment and shouted back, "Sure!" plan D was formed.

After a quick load of the tanks into the boat and relaunched we put-putted out to Cypress Canyon. The surfaces was flat but you could tell that soon it would be changing as the wind was gradually picking up.

We dropped down the anchor line in about 90 feet of water and quickly scooted north east to deeper water to find the Cypress Canyon wall. First thing we noticed beyond the nice blue water was a very large school of rockfish just hanging out along the reef's wall. We continued to the east stopping occasionally to ooh and ah at the various critters we saw when that was when we saw it....Crab-zilla

The biggest sheepshead crab that I have every seen. This thing was so big that he blew through large. Passed by huge without even slowing down. Only word that comes to mind is gynormous! Clearly the king of the reef. He was gripping an elephant ear sponge in one of his massive pincers that I would easily be able to fit my hand between.

After admiring him for a bit we continued on past another pair of rock crabs (also quite large) that appeared to be kissing! The bigger one had his claws around the smaller and they were face to face.

On the way back we meet up with the school of rockfish again and spend our shallower time scooting back and forth along the wall before finally leaving it at 70' when we shot our bag.

Deco was mostly Jellyfish free with only a couple visiting us at the 20' stop.

We surfaced to see the wind had picked up with a bit of whitecaping so we quickly loaded gear back on board and headed for the cove.

2/19/2010 Pt Lobos by Dionna House -- [View this report only]

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Bottom Team: Andrew Denevi, Dionna House

Visibility: 30' - 40' Time: 10:00 AM

Temp: 51F - 53F Surge: 2'

Max Depth: 100FSW Avg Depth: 65FSW

Bottom Time: Total Time: 1:12

Bottom Gases: EAN32 Deco Gases:

Backgas Config: Double LP95 Deco Tanks:
Deco Profile:
I had the day off of school and was able to Andrew Denevi to join me for a dive at Pt Lobos. We both just wanted to get in a blow some bubbles. We arrived at Lobos, the sea was flat with some light winds. We suited up for the dive and kicked out the sand channel. We descended just past the worm patch and immediately saw a huge sheephead. While kicking out to Hole in the Wall, we also saw a big cabezon. We kicked out to the Lone Metridium and out to the Shallow Sister, some where around 80ft. We headed northeast to Beto's Reef to visit the Wolf Eel, then back in passing Sea Mount. We kicked into the cove and meandered in on the east and west sides of the sand channel. Vis was about 40ft(milky). Great Dive and Great Fun.

2/11/2010 Pt Lobos by Alberto Nava -- [View this report only]

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Bottom Team: Joakim Linde, Alberto Nava

Visibility: Time: 10:30 AM

Temp: Surge:

Max Depth: 130FSW Avg Depth: 110FSW

Bottom Time: 0:45 Total Time: 1:30

Bottom Gases: 21/35 Deco Gases: EAN50

Backgas Config: Deco Tanks:
Deco Profile:
Joakim and I went for a dive yesterday hoping to get some good conditions before the forecast swell arrives. We jumped in the water to find very blue and clear water near the boat ramp.

Our objective was to have a nice relax dive and look for the wolf eel at Beto's Reef. We scootered th Hole-in-the-wall, sea mount and finally Beto's reef.

There were several very large lingcods and several large packs of their eegs, plus the usual
nudibranches at the bottom. We saw a very large
tritona festiva climbing on a gorgonia. There was a large school of rock-fish on top of the reef.

Torwads the end of the dive we locate the Wolf Eel near the top of the reef. Somebody said that the Wold Eel is called Beto and that's why the reef is called Beto's reef. Probably right...

After about 45min bottom time we switch to our deco bottle and spend another 40min going around some of the shallow structures on the west side of Whalers cove. Visibility was so great that we looped several of the reefs and looked for anchor points for the May mapping project.

We looked for the resident sail-fin Sculpin but it was not at it useful location :-(.

On the way back to the ramp we found a nice swells shark, and we spend good 5-8 minutes looking at it.

All in all a great day of diving :-)

1/23/2010 Ballbuster aboard Escapade by Kenn Hwang -- [View this report only]

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Bottom Team: Allison Lee, August Gugelmann

Visibility: 10' - 15' Time: 9:00 AM

Temp: 55F - 55F Surge: 10'

Max Depth: 97FSW Avg Depth: 67FSW

Bottom Time: 0:47 Total Time: 0:55

Bottom Gases: EAN32 Deco Gases:

Backgas Config: Double LP80 Deco Tanks:
Deco Profile:
min deco
We have a great showing on the first BAUE recreational charter of 2010. My buddies for these dives were Allison and August. The on-going El Nino storms were calling for 14-16ft west swells for the day, but the seas were actually fairly calm in the bay. We stayed within the protection of Point Pinos, and opted for sites inside the bay.

The first site chosen was Ballbuster. This was my second time there, the first being in somewhat spotty conditions that didn't give me a very good lay of the land. Seemed like this time would be the same. We dropped into a stew of sea nettles from 10-50ft, as in, you can't even look around or else you'd end up with your face in one of them. Allison got stung, as did August, but I was hyper-vigilant in protecting my delicate countenance and finished my descent unscathed. Because of the nettle canopy above, the site was dark as night, with intermittent and strong surge that pushed us 15ft back and forth and 10ft up and down. Wow. Everyone got a look at the GPO, which I just missed completely (even after Allison pointed it out to me)�I probably thought she was pointing at nudibranch nearby. We tried to make our way around the pinnacle a couple of times, and got washed any which way by the surge, eventually calling the dive at 47 minutes. The way up was naturally more fraught with peril than the way down, as the sea nettles had multiplied during the time we were down. The anchor line was slimed with nettle tentacles and we made haste back to the boat. Once everyone was accounted for, we noticed that the patch of kelp cover over the site wasn't actually kelp, but a huge colony of nettles on the surface. Glad we didn't jump directly into that.

After contemplating a few other sites, we decided to make Dive 2 at Anchors 2 and 3, also my second time there. It took 15 minutes to get there, so we loitered around the boat until we accumulated at least an hour of SI--I think I downed way too many pastries during that time. Unlike the first site, there were no nettles and no surge at the anchors. We dropped right over the anchors, and watched the resident vermillions (nicely camouflaged against the bryozoans). We then followed a line that somebody laid to the shale layer, and Allison took us on a nude-hunting tour. Though I'm probably getting the names wrong, we saw a good number of flabellina iodinea and hermissenda crassicornis, but I think I'll continue to refer to everything as sea lemons. On our way back, the line had been removed (isn't there some rule about not following a jump down someone else's line?) but there was a new, shiny anchor chain in its place. We contemplated this for a few minutes, but when we got back to the anchors we figured that the boat had re-anchored. Deco was uneventful, though Allison showed us that a real 30ft/min ascent rate was way, way faster than the pokey pace we were used to.

Lunch was at Turtle Bay. As usual, I over-gorge myself after a dive and was super-sleepy for the ride back home, glad I wasn't driving :)

Thanks for a great set of dives everyone, hopefully the waves on the next boat will be under 15ft :)

1/17/2010 Ballbuster aboard Escapade by Mark Lloyd -- [View this report only]

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Bottom Team: Harry Babicka, Mark Lloyd, Dionna House

Visibility: 20' - 30' Time: 9:34 AM

Temp: 55F - 57F Surge:

Scooter: X-scooter Burn Time:

Max Depth: 146FSW Avg Depth: 78FSW

Bottom Time: Total Time: 1:39

Bottom Gases: 18/45 Deco Gases: EAN50,O2

Backgas Config: HP120 Deco Tanks: AL40
Deco Profile:
Rob, Allison, Kevin, Susan, Karl, Dionna, Harry, and I, all boarded the Escapade on Sunday to see if we could squeeze in a dive between the storms. The plan was to get out of the bay to Pinnacle Point wall or something in that direction. Everyone was busy getting their gear on, stowing gear, and talking when Jim gave the signal he was leaving. As we were motoring out of the harbor Dionna said, "Where's Harry ?". Oops... Turning the boat around we re-docked and waited a few minutes. Hmmm... no Harry. Maybe he left thinking we left him behind. A few seconds later he appears not even realizing we almost left him behind :-). Now with all our team on board we set off again. The bay was very flat and I was hopeful that we would have great conditions. Alas, that was not to be. Once we rounded the corner out of the bay the waves picked up and the wind was strong. We did a U turn and decided on deep ballbuster. Our plan was to drop on Jim's float and all scooter as one team to Ballbuster from deep ballbuster. No problems dropping in, the teams met at the bottom, spent a bit of time around some deep structures then all scootered off toward Ballbuster as a single fleet. Pretty cool seeing eight scooters with powerful lights sweeping the bottom. We got a bit off track at one point and found ourselves in the sand. Once back on structure again we headed towards Ballbuster but ran into our planned bottom time before we hit it. Everyone deco'd on their own bag and once on the boat we found out that we were only about 50 or so feet away from the main pinnacle. Oh well, fun dive. We docked and some of us grabbed our gear and left while others wanted to do another dive to check on the Octopus at Ballbuster. Not sure how that went.

1/16/2010 E3 aboard Escapade by Clinton Bauder -- [View this report only]

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Bottom Team: Clinton Bauder, Jim Capwell, Joakim Linde

Visibility: 50' Time: 10:00 AM

Temp: 56F Surge: 6'

Max Depth: 155FSW Avg Depth: 135FSW

Bottom Time: 0:35 Total Time: 1:20

Bottom Gases: 18/45 Deco Gases: EAN50

Backgas Config: Double LP80 Deco Tanks: AL80
Deco Profile:
Deep Stops
5,3,3,3,3
17, 6 up.
For once I thought I was ahead of the game getting ready for a weekend of diving. I had all my gear including the camera ready to go on Thu PM since I was giving a talk at the Santa Clara Koi Club on Friday and knew I wouldn't have time that night. By Saturday morning though the best laid plans were starting to go awry. First Matt, emailed and said he was sick and couldn't make it. Then John arrived at the dock and realized he didn't have his drysuit! 2 to 0 dive buddies in about 6 hours. Fortunately Jim and Joakim were OK with adding me to their team.

The weather was better than forecast so we started by looking at Naia's wall. Unfortunately there looked to be a ripping current there so we "settled" for E3. Dropping down the vis was nice and blue and there was no current. Sadly only one of my strobes turned on. The batteries are getting old and I think they now self-discharge fairly quickly so my planning ahead backfired.

Arriving on the bottom it was clear it wasn't going to matter much anyway. While visibility was great it was plenty surgy enough to make macro photographer dodgy. I tried anyway and got a few mediocre slug shots before the other strobe died too.

E3 Slug Pictures

Despite the camera troubles we had a very nice dive enjoying a big school of blue rockfish on the pinnacle and sea lions and sea nettles during the uneventful deco. Slightly putting a damper on things was the discovery back on the boat that my trusty UK Remora dive knife had gone missing. Probably has done 1400 dives with me though I think I only used it once or twice in anger (to cut fishing line).

For dive 2 we headed over to Ballbuster to meet the new Giant Pacific Octopus that has apparently moved in there. For some reason we never had the conversation about where the anchor might be if it wasn't exactly on top of the pinnacle. Naturally we found ourselves at 100 feet with no pinnacle in sight. We tried East, South, and then West with no success. Fortunately North was the correct answer and as it happened the pinnacle was only barely out of our visibility from where the anchor was. We quickly found the octopus and introduced ourselves before we ran out of time and headed back.

Lunch followed at Baldemiro's which current evidence suggests was a mistake, though it was delicious.

12/5/2009 Outer Pinnacles aboard Escapade by Robert Lee -- [View this report only]

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Bottom Team: Allison Lee

Visibility: Time: 12:00 AM

Temp: Surge:

Max Depth: Avg Depth: 70FSW

Bottom Time: Total Time:

Bottom Gases: EAN32 Deco Gases:

Backgas Config: Deco Tanks:
Deco Profile:
A bunch of us wound up on the Escapade on Sat. for a recreational trip. Hopes were high as we rounded the corner and pretty soon we were steaming toward Lobos Rocks. Unfortunately, as we arrived, the long-period swell was pounding the rocks pretty impressively, so we decided to relocate to nearby Soberanes Wall.

This was my first time here, so as we dropped, I did my best to get my bearings in the 5-10' viz. We slowly worked our way around the pinnacle a couple times before heading up. Highlights of the dive were a large (18"?) Treefish, as well as some kind of yellow mollusk that we haven't seen before (almost like a snail/nudibranch hybrid).

For our second dive, we headed back up to Carmel to find some shelter at Outer Pinnacles. We dropped onto a spot that we've been to several times before, so we quickly headed over to my favourite hydrocoral spot for some pictures. Was happy to find that both the scooter and the camera housing stayed water-tight on this outting after some service to both. After that, Allison forced me to go zooming around the area in between tight canyons and cut-throughs :-)

Was great to get back in the local waters. Just a few pictures here.

11/22/2009 K2 aboard Escapade by Alberto Nava -- [View this report only]

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Bottom Team: Susan Bird, Alberto Nava

Visibility: 70' Time: 10:30 AM

Temp: 51F Surge: 8'

Max Depth: 178FSW Avg Depth:

Bottom Time: 0:40 Total Time: 1:40

Bottom Gases: 18/45 Deco Gases: EAN50,O2

Backgas Config: Deco Tanks:
Deco Profile:
Inspired by Gary's Epic swimming report we decided to leave the scooters at home and go for a swimming dive at K2. We dropped in at the East end of the wall. We swam for about 20min to the West end and then back to the shallow peak at 70ft :-).

We saw tons of fish at the base: Lingcods, Vermilions, a few tree fish, and a nice friendly Mola that was being cleaned by a cluster of small Sea Perches. This little mola kept swimming close to us to check out what we were doing.

Visibility was spectacular and I had to double check my depth gauge to remember I was in Cal and not in the tropics. The terrain was very nice as we swam along the shear wall during the deep portion of the dive and then to the flat-lands for the shallow portion. We all enjoyed looking at the drop-off near the end of the wall.

We saw several juvenile yellow-eyes hiding in cracks, a large school of rock-fish at the top of the pinnacle, and some good size sheep heads.

We had several Molas visit us during deco, one in particular who was visible for very long periods on 6 of our stops. :-)

It was a very relaxed trip, and while the swells were still quite large the duration was long-- so we had a smooth ride home. As a final treat, a pod of about 20 risso dolphins meandered past on our way back to the harbor.

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