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3/17/2012 East Pinnacle aboard Escapade by Allison Lee -- [View this report only]

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Bottom Team: Allison Lee, Robert Lee, Clinton Bauder

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

Temp: 50F Surge: 8'

Scooter: X-scooter Burn Time:

Max Depth: 85FSW Avg Depth: 65FSW

Bottom Time: 0:45 Total Time: 0:50

Bottom Gases: EAN32 Deco Gases:

Backgas Config: Double Deco Tanks:
Deco Profile:
1,1,2,1
Saturday's recreational boat was a little bit questionable earlier in the week, with a really bad forecast. But as we approached the weekend, the forecast moderated to just kind of bad, and with good viz reports from the bay, the trip was a go. We decided to try to sneak one dive in Carmel and then head back to the bay, since conditions were supposed to build quickly in the afternoon. We made it to East Pinnacle without too many theatrics from Neptune, and were ordered to get things moving since conditions were supposed to deteriorate.

We were greeted with pretty good viz, maybe 30 to 40 feet, though there was definitely a decent amount of particulate stirred up in the water. Stirred up by the mighty surge, which would periodically kick in and drag us around for a tour of the various sides of the reef. Though there were periods of calm in between, which made it possible for Clinton to line me and Rob up for some photos. Rob didn't even bother trying to shoot macro. We didn't see anything particularly unusual, but it was just a nice dive with good viz, pretty hydrocoral and a small school of blue rockfish atop the pinnacle. And after a week in Florida, the water didn't even seem that cold (and the tanks sure seemed light).

For the second dive, we hurried back to Monterey Bay and ended up at Hopkins. The viz was stellar and blue in the top 30 feet, and then there was a distinct layer where it switched to green, but still quite good viz. Very good viz for the bay. I definitely saw more of Hopkins than I have ever seen (at once) before. Aside from the nice Metridium-dotted vistas, we found a couple of nice critters too: a small wolf eel, a not-so-small and not-too-shy red octopus, and a big friendly cabezon. We surfaced to wind and torrential downpours, which made unloading the boat the roughest part of the day.

Rob and Clinton posted pictures here and I posted a full report here.

3/17/2012 Pt Lobos by Alberto Nava -- [View this report only]

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Bottom Team: Alberto Nava, Jim MacDonald, Sandra Tullis

Visibility: 10' - 20' Time: 7:30 AM

Temp: Surge: 3'

Max Depth: 30FSW Avg Depth:

Bottom Time: 0:45 Total Time: 0:50

Bottom Gases: EAN32 Deco Gases:

Backgas Config: Double Deco Tanks:
Deco Profile:
Diving today with Sandra and Jim MacDonald to collect creatures for the Camel Mid-School kids. We had a great time collecting and playing with a nice harbor seals that wanted to take our catch. Not way ....

On the swim back we found a nice leopard shark on the sand, and we were able to hang around with it for a while. I could read Sandra and Jim minds... bag in front, push the tail, close the bag ;-)

It felt really good to shared with the kids!

3/9/2012 K2 aboard Escapade by Alberto Nava -- [View this report only]

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Bottom Team: Jim Capwell, Alberto Nava

Visibility: 20' - 30' Time: 10:30 AM

Temp: 46F - 48F Surge: 3'

Max Depth: 220FSW Avg Depth:

Bottom Time: 0:40 Total Time: 1:30

Bottom Gases: 18/55 Deco Gases: EAN50,O2

Backgas Config: Deco Tanks:
Deco Profile:
On the Escapade today with Capt Jim for a little fun dive. Water looked very green all the way to Lobos, and a little less green in the K2 area. We jumped in to find green water on the shallow and a night dive at depth. Where did last weekend water went??

We enjoyed the south end of K2 for little bit, while scooters in and out of a school of juv rockfish, then headed for the canyon and the arch. This is my favorite part of the dive. The canyon is covered with red gorgonias, and there is a fun arch to go under.

We had a crazy sea lion playing with us at about 150ft.

We headed to K2 peak and enjoyed a large school of blue rock-fish .

Water was 46F at the bottom, and 48 almost all the way to the surface. That felt like a cold water shower!!!

3/2/2012 K2 aboard Escapade by John Heimann -- [View this report only]

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Bottom Team: John Heimann, Nick Radov

Visibility: 20' - 50' Time: 10:00 AM

Temp: 45F - 48F Surge:

Scooter: Halcyon T16 Burn Time: 0:35

Max Depth: 230FSW Avg Depth: 185FSW

Bottom Time: 0:25 Total Time: 1:32

Bottom Gases: 15/55 Deco Gases: EAN50,O2

Backgas Config: Double HP120 Deco Tanks: AL40,AL80
Deco Profile:
1,1,1,2,2,2,2,2,7,5,5,4,4,25+6 up
Dionna, Mark, Nick and I had the boat to ourselves for a great dive on the west wall of K2. Weather was doubtful earlier in the week, and we weren't sure if we'd get out of the bay, and only decided Thursday to take a chance on getting in a deep dive. To our pleasant surprise, the swell settled down to the point where we had nearly flat conditions all the way to Yankee Point. Given the NW wind, K2 seemed like a good option, so we dropped into the chute on the SE side, scootered S to the sand, and W along the wall, spotting several boot sponges and many elephant ears and big ling on the way. After a few minutes, we turned back and started ascending the chute, where we remained until we hit the top of the pinnacle at 70', decoing along the pinnacle, with pretty sponges, anemone, rockfish, and big ling (and no barnacles!) to look at for our deep stops and 70'-60' nitrox stops. Mark's first words back on the boat summed up the experience for all of us: "That was a REALLY fun dive! It went by really fast as I was enjoying it so much!"

1/29/2012 Ed's Wall aboard Escapade by Alberto Nava -- [View this report only]

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Bottom Team: Susan Bird, Alberto Nava

Visibility: 40' - 60' Time: 10:00 AM

Temp: 48F - 50F Surge: 3'

Max Depth: 220FSW Avg Depth:

Bottom Time: 0:40 Total Time: 1:30

Bottom Gases: 18/55 Deco Gases: EAN50,O2

Backgas Config: Deco Tanks:
Deco Profile:
I was suppose to teach a Fundamental class Frid,Sat, and Sunday but due to a reduction in class size, I was able to get Sunday free :-). What a better way to spend that extra day than diving on the Escapade. Jim said he also had a last minute cancellation on his morning charter, so Jim, Joe, Sue and myself decided to do a quick dive before his afternoon trip.

Conditions were good for a BigSur trip marathon however, we had to be back by 1:30pm so we reduced our expectation and headed out to Ed Cooper's Wall. This is a great dive site with a very long wall running South East, and it has great terrain and marine life. We saw tons of lincods, and large school of blue rock fish, as well as some health hydrocorals on the cracks. We could not find the resident wolf eels, neither the shallowest peak, but everybody had a great time.

Visibility was about 50ft, but a little milky. There were some nice brown jellies during deco, and grey whales on the way back home.

Loved to put a free day to good use :-)

1/21/2012 Rock Garden by Gary Banta -- [View this report only]

Bottom Team: Gary Banta, mykle hoban

Visibility: 40' - 75' Time: 9:00 AM

Temp: 51F Surge: 3'

Scooter: Gavin Long Burn Time:

Max Depth: 78FSW Avg Depth: 41FSW

Bottom Time: 1:40 Total Time: 1:50

Bottom Gases: EAN32 Deco Gases:

Backgas Config: Double HP100 Deco Tanks:
Deco Profile:
…. Actually, not so much….

With the scary looking wave model and buoy data I decided to get up early and check out Monastery before 7AM. I drove through intermittent strong showers and gusts to find Monastery free from any swell. There was no wind the but there was surface chop of 2 feet with no organization. OK!

At 9AM Mykle and I scootered out to Worm Patch to find that from the surface 1” shells were clearly identifiable in the sand. OK!!

We dropped and headed out west past Rock Garden to the next “peninsula”. I have wanted check this area out since it faces the swell and should be beautifully decorated on the NW facing walls. But I needed a very calm day. We climbed to about 50' to find exactly the decorations I expected plus clouds of Blues, sea lions, and more Sheepshead than we have ever seen. At one time we had six directly in front of us. There lots of medium sized vertical walls all covered with red, pink, orange corynactus and red and orange sponges. The richest life is on one undercut wall rippling with red and orange life with six GIANT Metridium in the middle. The stalks are 10 to 13 inches! These must be very old or very well fed or both.

At the north end of the peninsula we hit 78 feet. We could see way north at the 100’+ bottom. We then rolled over to look up to the surface to see the sun ripples on the surface silhouetting a massive could of Blues, many of them very large. Nice tropical viz.

The barnacle debacle is over. Nearly all are dead and their shells are disappearing under new colorful life. A few swarms of Onchiadoris remain on cleanup duty, but soon they all will be headed off in search of the next crisis.

REMEMBER: Contestants MUST Be Present To Win

[Chuck, how did the dishwasher installation go?]

1/15/2012 Nixies aboard Escapade by Nick Radov -- [View this report only]

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Bottom Team: Jim Capwell, Susan Bird, Nick Radov

Visibility: Time: 9:45 AM

Temp: 52F - 54F Surge: 2'

Scooter: Halcyon T16 Burn Time:

Max Depth: 216FSW Avg Depth: 84FSW

Bottom Time: 0:40 Total Time: 1:43

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

Backgas Config: Double Deco Tanks: AL40,AL30
Deco Profile:
6,4,4,4,4,20,5
This was my first attempt at underwater photography using a Canon S100 compact camera in a Fisheye Fix housing with a Sea & Sea YS-01 strobe. The few pictures that came out better than a blur are posted here. Hopefully I'll get better results once I add the macro lens adapter.

http://baue.org/images/galleries/v/local/Nixies_20120115/

We saw a number of gray whales on the ride out and back.

1/1/2012 Midway Pinnacle aboard Escapade by Alberto Nava -- [View this report only]

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Bottom Team: Susan Bird, Alberto Nava

Visibility: 20' - 40' Time: 11:00 AM

Temp: 50F - 54F Surge: 6'

Max Depth: 195FSW Avg Depth:

Bottom Time: 0:30 Total Time: 1:20

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

Backgas Config: Deco Tanks:
Deco Profile:
After a long trip with the relatives and wild deers Jim Capwell finally came back home, and we decided what better way to start the year than a trip on the Escapade. Clinton, Dionna, Joakim, Jim, Susan and myself loaded at 9am on 1/1/12 and headed out to see what conditions were like.

We made it to Yankee Point w/o too many problems, and after a little bit of negotiation we decided to continue to Mid-Way. What better way to start the year than with a BigSur Banks dive.

Jared dropped the ball and it didn't look like much current, but after a while he came back and said it looked like some deep current at the pinnacle. We dropped down and found 30-40ft of vis with spotty current coming from the South. We headed out West looking for all the cute fish and we did find several large ones. Some displaying some territorial behaviour and other just posing for the divers.

We found some nice hydro-coral on the south end of the pinnacle and hung around near the top for the rest of the dive.

My suit developed a leak so we called the dive short, just after 30min.

The landscape was almost as good as the dive with great sunny sky and the amazing mountains in the background. You could clearly see Pico Blanco behind the light-house and most of Garrapata state park. What an amazing place we live on.

Great way too start the year!

Susan wanted me to mention that we saw about 20 whales on the way south, mostly grey whales migrating to the warmer waters of Baja. Lots of spouts and whales tails... making it a fantastic first day of the year.

Pictures here: http://www.baue.org/images/galleries/v/local/Midway_1-1-12/

12/20/2011 Mount Chamberlin aboard Phil Sammet's RIB by John Heimann -- [View this report only]

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Bottom Team: Nick Radov, John Heimann

Visibility: 30' - 60' Time: 5:05 PM

Temp: 54F - 54F Surge: 3'

Scooter: Halcyon T16 Burn Time: 0:20

Max Depth: 245FSW Avg Depth: 180FSW

Bottom Time: 0:30 Total Time: 1:41

Bottom Gases: 15/55 Deco Gases: EAN50,O2

Backgas Config: Double LP104 Deco Tanks: AL40,AL80
Deco Profile:
2s to 80
7,5,5,5,5,25,6 up
Nick and I both had full sets of 104s with 15/55 that we needed to use, and a vacation day set aside on which to use them, so we chartered Phil's RIB and set out for a day of midweek diving. Conditions weren't looking great when we left the launch ramp at Whaler's, but when we got around Yankee Pt. the east wind had subsided (blocked by the ridge?) so surface conditions were pretty nice. We dropped down on a pinnacle that I believe is the southwest side of Mt. Chamberlain, reaching the end of the anchor at about 160'. We dropped down the wall to about 220 and scootered downslope around some boulders to 245', turned, and headed back up a chute which led to the top of the pinnacle at 135'. Between 200' and 160' we saw several species of rockfish, a huge lingcod, lots of corynactus, elephant ear sponges, and gorgonia, and best of all, none of the barnacles that have been afflicting the shallower reefs in the past year. And best of all for me - my new Halcyon scooter performed flawlessly, without a single drop of water inside after the dive. ;^)

12/17/2011 Lunaticos Annex aboard Escapade by Mark Lloyd -- [View this report only]

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Bottom Team: Mark Lloyd, Dionna House

Visibility: 80' Time: 12:00 AM

Temp: 53F Surge:

Scooter: X-scooter Burn Time:

Max Depth: 190FSW Avg Depth:

Bottom Time: Total Time: 1:40

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

Backgas Config: Double Deco Tanks: AL40,AL80
Deco Profile:
The weather was perfect today, nice and sunny as we made our way out of the bay. Jim indicated we could do Lunaticos Annex which to be honest I can't recall doing. The ball was dropped in a canyon between two structures. The canyon ran North to South, the South end being the deeper area. The depth at the bottom of the canyon was about 170. Following the canyon South we descended to about 190 where we found a nice vase sponge with hundreds of Elephant Ear sponges all over the walls around us. We scootered East around a small pinnacle then headed West past a number of other pinnacles. There were at least 5 or 6 other large vase sponges in this area with hydrocoral and more elephant ear sponges. With the great vis we scootered to the end of the reef, turned around and followed our way back to the original canyon. Once back to there we headed North, dropped down on the other side and scootered East where we poked our heads into a small cave. I couldn't see the end of it so we turned around, headed West, again encountering lots of sponges, schools of young rockfish, and a few Ling Cod. We ascended to the 150' level, spent a bit of time checking out the structure, passing a few of other dive teams then shot the bag. The current was virtually non existent and the shot line was visible for much of the deco as were some of the others on deco. Tons of cool looking jellies in the water to keep our interest and after we surfaced we dove into the chicken and brownies. We opted not to do the second dive but the teams indicated the vis was slightly worse but still pretty good. On the way back in a humpback entertained us with about 5 or 6 huge breaches.. fantastic! What a great day.

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