Diving in Catalina

      I have been putting off the blog because I haven't finished the rough video edit yet. I will post it soon but just have to do picture for now.

      Tim and I went to the dive shop and I bought a wet suit. Its an AquaLung 8:7, 8mm on the body and 7mm on the legs and arms. We went to Tim's rental and picked up the ladders since we would not be there for a few days. As soon as we got tot the house we started packing our gear and checking regulators, BCDs, lights, tanks, etc... By eight in the evening the car was packed and Tim had all his work done, so we head off to LA.

Gear Check.

All the gear loaded in the car.

     We got to LA pretty late and crashed at Brian's house. We had to drive to long beach at like 4:45 in the morning to catch the boat to the island. After I made a navigational error in the crazy streets we had to rush to get to the boat in time. We made it and loaded all our gear onto hand carts, which we would pull all over for the next two days on the island. The trip across was nice as we left in the dark and got to watch the sun rise. At one point we were on the crest of a wave and could see the sun. And when we dipped into the trough it was gone below the horizon, giving us two sun rises.  

Queen Mary

     After we got our gear off the boat and trucked over to the hotel it was 8 am. We had to wait just a little while to get in our room but we dropped off our non diving gear and headed straight to the ocean. The room was pretty small; two beds a tiny bathroom, and a small kitchen with three chairs at a table. But we were there for the diving and the room was just a place to crash at when we weren't out.

At the Hermosa Hotel. Ready to dive!

Tim and I all geared up

     Since this was my first ocean, salt water, wet suit, clear visibility dive, and first dive with Tim, we did a check out dive before going anywhere. We swam out to a raft tethered to the bottom and descended to a small clear spot and sat on the bottom. Once there for a minute to adjust we flooded, took off, and cleared our masks as well as practiced sharing air. We explored the kelp forests and sea life for a while more.  We surfaced to start our surface interval as we planned to check out a ship wreck.  After an hour on the surface we went back down to look for the wreck.

     We went down to about 85' but only found a mast and lots of chain from the buoys on the surface. There were some other parts around but the hull of the ship wasn't to be found. The wreck is on a step underwater slope so it could have got washed out in a storm.

     After taking a five hour nap we explored the city of Avalon. Avalon's prime mode of transportation is golf cart. The steep hills and crowded buildings reminded me of cities I saw in Argentina. There were stairs and little alley ways and even ladders that connected the streets. After walking around we had pizza and went to bed. We had planned to go on a night dive but the cold temp, wet wet suit and warm pizza persuaded us not to go out at and freeze. 

     On day two we packed up and headed back down to the dive park. We geared up and did a long surface swam out to a buoy that was supposed to be above the wreck of the Valiant.  The Valiant was a 147' luxury yacht that sank in 1930 in about 90' of water. We descended and found it pretty quickly.  That was the deepest I have dove yet and I was quite nervous about it.

Despite being stressed from diving the wreck, I did well on air and we had a slow ascent and followed the bottom in to shore, exploring along the way. After a surface interval we did another dive with food for the fish. Also just played around and sat on the bottom for a while watching the bubbles...

   
After our fun dive we showered with our gear to get the salt water off and went back to the express boat terminal. The ride back went quickly and we waited in LA for a few hours to avoid the traffic before driving back to SLO.
Great Trip!