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4/21/2007 Thumbs Up by Alberto Nava -- [View this report only]

Bottom Team: Anibal Mata-Sol, Alberto Nava

Visibility: 5' - 30' Time: 12:00 AM

Temp: 50F - 48F Surge: 3'

Scooter: Gavin Long Burn Time:

Max Depth: 90FSW Avg Depth:

Bottom Time: 1:20 Total Time: 2:00

Bottom Gases: 30/30 Deco Gases: O2

Backgas Config: Double LP80 Deco Tanks: AL40
Deco Profile:
It has being a long time since I was able to do a scooter dive at Lobos. A lot of teaching and a lot of travelling so I was finally free for fun diving this weekend :-)

Anibal was nice enough to offer to take me for a Lobos refresher. I was hoping the rocks and cayons were still in the same place but it was always good to have a experience diver with me.

The plan was to go to Thumbs Up. This is locate at the fartest North-East corner of the park. I have always gone there by scooter to the cross-road pinnacle at then up from there. The only problem with this route is that it gets to about 120ft so it's not good for people breathing 32%, 30/30.

For that reason we decided to try a shallower route no deeper than 80ft. We scooters to Granite Point pinnacles and from there we took a 60 degrees heading to the end of the rocks. From there we use the reel to cross the sand channel and make a easy mark for the return trip. We left the reef at about 70ft and headed 330 to Thumb Up. We got to the farest point after about 25min. We hang there while looking at the hydrocoral and rockfish. Really nice terrain :-)

Vis was about 5ft on the shallow and about 30 outside the cove.

Our plan was to call the dive at 40min but both Anibal and myself looked at each other at about 35 minutes and thumb the dive at thumbs Up ;-). The water was about 46-48 degrees so let's go home..

We saw some nice lincods and shipheads as well as some freindly seal lions on the way back.

Great way to get back diving at Lobos. Now can somebody heat the water a litte bit, please....

Back tomorrow for more fun :-)

P.D. I noticed an interesting changed on the scooter diving. The scooters now have those nice lobos mapS attach on the top. At the beggining I was not very excited about it, but once we go on the way it was nice to be able to share with your buddy your location on the maps. I kept asking Anibal for his scooter to see the map ;-) Maybe I'll tape one of those maps in my scooter after all ;-)

3/31/2007 Granite Pt Wall by Ben Villao -- [View this report only]

Bottom Team: Ben Villao, Robert Lee

Visibility: 30' - 40' Time: 9:00 AM

Temp: 40F - 51F Surge:

Max Depth: 68FSW Avg Depth: 60FSW

Bottom Time: Total Time:

Bottom Gases: EAN32 Deco Gases:

Backgas Config: Double HP100 Deco Tanks:
Deco Profile:
Dive Report 31 Mar 07

Drove down early and snagged breakfast and hung around the Breakwater for a little while. Found the wall full by 0730... I guess it's warmed up enough for the classes. Chatted with Chuck and Glenn for a little bit and admired the huge aluminum dive boat someone hauled out...

Pt Lobos

Dive 1 Granite Pt Wall: Rob Lee and I buddied up and decided on Granite Pt wall. http://pt-lobos.parks.state.ca.us/scuba/granitewall.html

Neither of us have every been there and we felt like exploring so off it was... made it out to the far side of the cove and then dropped to 60 fsw and followed the wall to the North... ducking in and out of canyons... Amazing vis with Hydro coral and sheer walls. The vis was about 40... vertically I could see the waves above... I could also see about 40 below to the sand... at 30 mins we turned and kicked back toward our start point... on our return we thumbed it at 50 mins... taking 10 mins to hit the surface... We were fooled by the "Sand Channel" on the other side thinking we were closer to the parking lot than we were... but what the heck it was a nice day out and the kick back thru the not so think kelp wasn't so bad.

Dive 2 was skills at 20 ft inside Whalers

Pictures from dive 1 here:
http://www.baue.org/images/galleries/album111

3/24/2007 Pt Lobos by Harry Wong -- [View this report only]

Bottom Team: Dionna House, Harry Wong

Visibility: 10' - 15' Time: 11:00 AM

Temp: 50F - 53F Surge: 10'

Scooter: Gavin Short Burn Time:

Max Depth: 92FSW Avg Depth:

Bottom Time: Total Time:

Bottom Gases: EAN32 Deco Gases:

Backgas Config: Double LP80 Deco Tanks:
Deco Profile:
1,3,3
Wonderful dive today at Point Lobos on the Gavin Short!

After printing out the various maps of Point Lobos and studying them whenever I could, I felt pretty comfortable leading this dive with Dionna. My agreement with Dionna was that if I started leading us someplace where she wasn't sure. I used Gary Banta's maps and they were perfect! Funny, during the dive I never referred to the map. The only time I referred the map taped to my scooter was to show Dionna where we were.

We got into Pt Lobos a little later than usual. This had something to do with me fanagling my way in. ;-). The conditions didn't look all that great, but as long as we could see far enough to change course before colliding with any hard objects I'd be happy!

So after doing our GUE EDGE, we surface scootered towards the end of Middle Reef where we descended and went North. We hit Granite Point Wall and continued and followed the 90 foot contour. The use of the underwater maps are great! Staying at 90 to 100 feet I knew I was at the Granite Point Pinnacles. I then led us a bit East and just started exploring the various small pinnacles. Very interesting and deserving of many more dives to explore the area! At one point Dionna stopped us to look at the map to get oriented. It was pretty clear where we were.

This was a particularly comfortable dive for me as I finally got happy with my last bit of tweeking of the battery location on the Gavin. I got the batteries set just right to counteract all the torque effect and the handle was perfectly neutral at 12 or 1 O'Clock! Quite effortless!

When it was time to turn the dive, we headed back to Granite Point Wall and came in the East side of Middle Reef. We took the long way back home playing around the South end of Middle Reef! What a fun dive! Viz was about 10-15 feet.

Thanks Dionna for being patient with me while I was learning to scooter. Now I'm off and running with lots more to learn!

3/23/2007 Breakwater by Ben Villao -- [View this report only]

Bottom Team: Ben Villao, Dionna House

Visibility: 5' - 15' Time: 3:00 PM

Temp: 51F - 53F Surge:

Max Depth: 65FSW Avg Depth:

Bottom Time: 1:10 Total Time:

Bottom Gases: EAN32 Deco Gases:

Backgas Config: Double LP80,LP95 Deco Tanks:
Deco Profile:
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.

Go call your buddies up and go diving!

3/17/2007 Pt Lobos by Harry Wong -- [View this report only]

Bottom Team: Susan Bird, Alberto Nava

Visibility: 10' - 15' Time: 2:00 PM

Temp: 52F - 57F Surge: 5'

Max Depth: Avg Depth:

Bottom Time: Total Time:

Bottom Gases: EAN32 Deco Gases:

Backgas Config: Double Deco Tanks:
Deco Profile:
Min Deco
What a wonderful recreational, slow motion, relaxing dive!!!

I was No. 1 with Susan and Beto. The plan was to swim a bit North East and just have a fun relaxing time. So off we went....nice and slowly. It was so relaxing. When I found some nice reef structure, we just slowly checked things out. We ran into some very nice minatue small caves. Peaking in we could see some good size fish! Beto spotted some very interesting Pipe Fish. They swam pretty slow, so we would hold them in our hands for a bit...cute!

Anyway, diving with Susan and Beto was such a cool experience. They are so relaxed that I felt no pressure to go fast, to make some distance. I actually didn't mind gently frog kicking my way around! And this was just after a wonderful scooter dive with Paul Lee.

What an incredible way to end the day with such a dive! Thanks Susan and Beto!

3/17/2007 Pt Lobos by Harry Wong -- [View this report only]

Bottom Team: Paul Lee, Harry Wong

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

Temp: 49F - 53F Surge: 5'

Scooter: Gavin Short Burn Time:

Max Depth: 105FSW Avg Depth:

Bottom Time: Total Time:

Bottom Gases: EAN32 Deco Gases: O2

Backgas Config: Double Deco Tanks: AL80
Deco Profile:
Awesome day of scooter diving.

Arriving at the Point Lobos parking lot seemed like a BAUE conference! Clinton was busy organizing the Nudi Project of Middle Reef.

Gary Banta was there with hus son. He had has scooters there but wasn't diving them so he offered one to me to tow along as an extra, which I did. This allowed us to modify our dive plan. Since Paul had his 26 AH scooter and I was towing a backup, we decided to get out past Granite Point Pinnacles and get out to Thumbs Up!

Our plan was to stay above 100' and travel along that depth to Thumbs Up. Leaving the North edge of Middle Reef, Paul went North and we were traveling across a good amount of sand. I kind of wanted to go a bit more east to hit the pinnacles faster and follow the pinnacles out to 100 feet and then East to Thumbs Up. But alas, he was No. 1 and I'll just follow! We got there and turned around. It's a pretty steep straight up wall!

Coming back, Paul's trigger wire malfunctioned and he had to manually ride the magnet. He finally got tired of it so I gave him Gary's scooter which I was towing and off we went again. I was free and no longer towing another scooter and was able to manuver easily in and out of crevices! Coming back we were at the West side of Middle Reef and got Paul to agree to go over the top of it and come in on the East side. It's so much more interesting! Somewhere along the way we switched to O2 at 20 feet and came in on that!

Man, I can get used to this scooter diving! I'm hopelessly addicted! ;-)

Thanks Paul for taking me out to Thumbs Up!

3/10/2007 Mount Chamberlin aboard Escapade by Harry Wong -- [View this report only]

Bottom Team: Paul Lee, Harry Wong

Visibility: 80' - 90' Time: 10:00 AM

Temp: 46F - 57F Surge: 5'

Scooter: Gavin Short Burn Time:

Max Depth: 158FSW Avg Depth:

Bottom Time: Total Time:

Bottom Gases: 18/45 Deco Gases: O2

Backgas Config: Double LP80 Deco Tanks: AL80
Deco Profile:
1,5,2,2,2,2,15
80-90 feet of viz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The diving was incredible!!!
Dive 1 was at a place south of Pt Lobos called Mt Chamberlain. Awesome wall with some very cool valleys and nooks and crannies to get into!!
Paul Lee and I buddied. It was a bit of an ordeal to get into the water with our doubles, then the deco bottle and then the scooter. But once we were on our way, diving was like a hot knife thru butter! No swimming down the anchor line against the current, we just motored down. Once at the anchor line, Jim from the Escapade asked us to check the anchor to make sure it could be easily pulled up, it was fine.
Then Paul and I motored West along the wall, very cool. The bottom was at around 180' (we stayed at 150'-160' and with the viz so incredible, you could see for quite a distance. One thing about scooters, you typically don't see the macro life, you're moving way too fast. Of course we'd stop and check out some things of interest, cracks, big fish, etc. There was this huge Lingcod that definitely looked like it was on the hunt. That was cool!
After a bit, we reversed direction along the wall and passed where the anchor line would be and continued on. Paul was leading and we were to find Team 2 with Dionna and Mark. We didn't find them along the wall and had passed some very cool small valleys. I knew they were in there as it looked pretty interesting. Anyway we get back to the anchor line and start our ascent where Paul shot his big SMB.
Doing our deco with the scooter was pretty straight forward. I ran the deco while Paul worked the spool with the SMB. We stayed pretty close to the anchor line until about 20 feet where we caught a bit of a current. We drifted about 3/4ths of a mile. Doing drift deco was quite luxury as most of my dives involve staying near the anchor line so this was quite a treat!
Getting back on the boat with some "fun" waves was interesting. First handing off the scooter, then the deco bottle, then climbing aboard in doubles. The hardest part of the dive though was schlepping all this gear from the van to the boat and back to the van! :-) Paul had this very cool hand truck with some big fat rubber air inflated balloon tires. I'm getting one as soon as I find one.

3/10/2007 Pt Lobos by Robert Lee -- [View this report only]

Bottom Team: Allison Lee, Robert Lee

Visibility: 20' - 40' Time: 10:00 AM

Temp: 49F Surge: 1'

Max Depth: 80FSW Avg Depth: 60FSW

Bottom Time: Total Time: 1:10

Bottom Gases: EAN32 Deco Gases:

Backgas Config: Single,Double HP100 Deco Tanks:
Deco Profile:
min deco
We rolled into Lobos around 10 and almost couldn't find parking. That's the mixed blessing of having nice topside weather I suppose :P
We met up with Suzanne, Gary and Kevin in the parking lot who were planning on doing some skills and then go play with the scooters. Our plan was to do a short dive working on some skills and then putter around the north end of middle reef.
For dive 2, we planned a longer run out to the end of Cannery Pt. Wall via hole in the wall and the lone metridium. The goal was to take some hydrocoral photography and perhaps another glamour shot of Allison for the company directory :P
It was surprisingly surgy along the wall even at 80' depth. Out near the end of the wall, near the edge of visibility, we saw a monster (terminal phase) sheephead. He was too far away for me to estimate his size, but he was big. We surfaced 100 yards from the ramp or so, and hailed the scooter-taxis :P I think I'm really beginning to see the virtues of scootering, though the towing position is, well, how should I put it... intimate.
All in all, a nice day of diving. Some pictures here

3/6/2007 Pt Lobos by Dionna House -- [View this report only]

Bottom Team: Harry Wong, Dionna House

Visibility: 50' - 60' Time: 10:30 AM

Temp: 51F - 53F Surge: 1'

Scooter: Gavin Short Burn Time:

Max Depth: 138FSW Avg Depth: 120FSW

Bottom Time: Total Time:

Bottom Gases: 21/35 Deco Gases: EAN50

Backgas Config: Double HP100 Deco Tanks: AL80
Deco Profile:
Decided to take advantage of the wonderful dive conditions and needed a mental health day. Doc Wong and I met down at Pt Lobos for some fun on the scooters. Pt Lobos looked like a lake when we arrived. The tides were perfect to haul gear in and out of the water. We discussed our dive plan, went over the GUE EDGE. We scootered on the surface for a bit than dropped down to about 30feet of water and off we went. The plan was to explore the area a little north west of the Sisters. The visibility was about 50-60feet. The terrain was wonderful. I was sooo stoked about this dive. Saw some of our local rockfish, vermilions, and a few elephant ear sponges as we cruised by the various reefs. I navigated back to Beto��s Reef at 30 minutes into our dive. We hung out there until it was time to ascend to 70ft for our gas switch. We did this near Sea Mount. Doc Wong wanted to practice a blue water ascent with the scooter, I thought okay, with all the Tech 2 practicing I have been doing, I should be okay. ;-) �K�K Sure enough on the 70ft deco stop Doc pulls out his wetnotes to play a little tic tac toe�K. I was keeping track of deco time, location and of course depth while playing tic tac toe�K.. I thought for sure he would win�K. It was a DRAW!!! We drifted very slightly east. At around 40-30feet there were birds diving down next to us. Other than that, deco was uneventful. We surfaced, and scootered to the ramp. Didn��t see our Monkey Face Eel friend for his feeding. ��. I hope no one scared him away. Got out quickly and had to go back to work�K. Back tomorrow for some practicing.

2/25/2007 Pt Lobos by Dionna House -- [View this report only]

Bottom Team: Kevin Dow, Dionna House, Mark Lloyd

Visibility: 20' - 30' Time: 3:59 PM

Temp: 52F - 55F Surge: 2'

Max Depth: 60FSW Avg Depth: 30FSW

Bottom Time: Total Time: 1:00

Bottom Gases: EAN32 Deco Gases:

Backgas Config: Double HP100 Deco Tanks:
Deco Profile:
As Sami said, you never know about the forecast until you actually show up. This is a combined dive report for two days.

Saturday: A big BAUE group was at Pt Lobos to either practice for an upcoming classes, hunt down and identify Nudibranchs, or just for fun scooter diving.

My dive report for Saturday was, lots of practice with Mark Lloyd. We found a small reef with some sandy area at 40ft. We did valve drills, S- drills, hold buoyancy and trim, deploying and stowing a stage or two at 40ft, 30ft, 20ft and Opps!!! Dropped my big SMB with attached spool and watched it slowly sink to the bottom of the 40ft reef. Down I went to go get it. I shoot the bag and we surfaced with some small laughs and Mark saying �you won�t give me heat again about my SMB�. :-p. Second dive: Just like the first dive, but, shorter and not many mistake� Ah� Getting the bugs out.

Sunday dive report. Kevin Dow and I planned on a scooter run. Kevin and I brought the Gavin scooter in and after a few minutes of trying to find the big orange ball buoy, we discovered that someone thought it was a dive instructor�s buoy and brought it in. DOH!! We brought the buoy back in the water and hooked the scooter up to it. Susan was in waiting for us in the surf zone to gear up, than Kevin taxied me out on his scooter to where Susan had kicked out. We first helped Susan set the float for Beto�s Fundamentals Class, than we clipped the scooters on and off we went. We did the Barge and then out to the Metridium Fields, then from the big pipe back to the wall. It was sure fun !!! We made it out to the Barge in 11 minutes. Played around on the Barge while looking for critters. We saw the usual Kelp Fish that like to hang vertical. I must talk to them about their trim!!! We also saw a rather large Triopha Catalinae and Doris Montereyensis. There was a small school of Blue Rockfish off to the side of the Barge. Kevin gave me the signal that it is time to move on to the Metridium Fields. We covered a lot of sand until we saw white Metridiums. There were several reefs that we scooter around. On the last Metridium Reef I spotted an Aldisa Sanguinea eating on a piece of algae. We scootered to the pipe and followed the 30ft contour back to the wall. We surfaced to ride over to Beto�s Class to be filmed for our Oscar Awards. ;-) LOL�. I will not tell you who won for the best unconscious diver pose. 8-)�.. You had to be there!!!!...

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