Got seduced into an afternoon dive by dive buddy Dionna.... The surface conditions didn't look too good... the wind was blowing pretty hard and was blowing spray onto the wall.... vis didn't look too promising either... But for therapeutic purposes we pushed thru...
We got in the water and scootered out along the wall... hitting the landmark at 10 mins... did a quick S-drill (did I mention vis was bad when we entered?) then pushed to the barge... At the barge the usual characters were present a couple of Clown Nudibranch (Triopha catalinae) and a Diaulula sandiegensis (uhmmm white O's nudi)... a gang of rock fish also kept us company.
After kicking around a little bit I used my not so superior navigation skills to miss the Metridium fields and end up in no mans land between the Met fields and middle reef. The Large square moorings gave me a not too comforting feeling that we were a bit off... I knew we were close to the "Canon" and the geocache that we usually hit on the way back... pretty soon middle reef and then the upslopping sand into the student area.
We finish off the dive with Valve drills at 20 and at 15... (What good mentor doesn't set challenges)... I muddled thru mine okey... we then surfaced, debriefed and then scootered in.
I would have opted for a night dive also if didn't have to drive back. Oh plus I had a leak in the DS so I was sloshing around in the boots and starting to get cold.
With the loss of Kawika everybody is feeling pretty down...so it was good to get out and enjoy a nice relaxing dive with a good friend.
