Quick Trip report on our Feb/08 Catalina Trip

[Dmitchell]

My buddy Larry got his rebreather cert in the same class as Nailer and Calvin and we wanted to get some hours in the water. Since Larry had worked as a DM on the island it was the logical place to go.

Larry being from the LA area originally, chose to drive down and visit relatives as a side to our trip. I flew out of Juneau at 0700 on Friday and arrived in Long Beach at about 4:30 that afternoon. Larry picked me up and we went to the San Pedro dock for the 7:30 ferry.

He managed to get down early and made an early trip over to the island to drop off his gear. So for baggage I had a carry-on that was about 100lbs and 2 - 50 lb gear bags. He had 2 buckets of Sodasorb. I was quite entertaining trying to drag these 3 bags onto the boat to say the least!

The boat ride is right at an hour and we were deposited on the Catalina dock. Weather was great about 50 degrees compared to the 20's that I had left at home. Now, we had to get to our hotel which was about a 1/2 mile away. Being the cheap skates that we are, we decided to walk. I traded him my rolling carry-on for a bucket of sorb and off we went. After about 3 stops to let our arms rest, we finally made it to the Hotel Hermosa.

The hotel was a dive but for 2 guys just looking to dive, it was fine all we needed was a place to dump our gear and sleep and at $60 a night, the price was right.

Saturday morning, we headed over to Scuba Luv to pickup a weight belt, our rented bailout bottles and a cart to haul our gear down to the scuba park in. Back at the hotel, we built our rebreathers and loaded them in the cart. Larry pushed the cart and I drug the dive bags with our drysuits and other gear the ½ mile down the dive park.

We did two dives in or around the park on Saturday, more or less a shakedown on our gear. One the first dive, we went down about 100’ and went toward the harbor. We found a really cool pinnacle that went from probably 110’ up to about 80’. After around 40 minutes at that depth we had racked up about 5 minutes of deco so we meandered back to the park and made our way back to the exit. The dive ran about 65 minutes.

During our Surface interval, we ran into DR. Bill a true Catalina Dive diving icon http://www.starthrower.org/home.htm . We chatted with Bill for about an hour and then decided to sneak off to dive the Valiant.

The Valiant was a Yacht that caught fire back in the 30’s and while being towed out of Catalina harbor, the anchor dropped thus anchoring it where it lays today. After burning to the waterline, it sank supposedly with $70,000 worth of jewelry still on board. Because it’s out of the park and in the harbor, you are supposed to get the harbormasters permission prior to diving it. But, doing that would have taken time and energy and since we were diving rebreathers (no bubbles), a compass heading and off we go! Great dive not very deep, 100’ish max and another hour or so dive time.

The rest of the week, we dove off the King Neptune with Scuba Luv http://www.scubaluv.biz/ The boat is good and the crew (Tony and Devin) are great!

The first day on the boat (Sunday) was our best dive day. There were about 7 divers (Dr. Bill included) on board a boat that holds 40 so we had lots of room. Devin was very conscious of or desire to have nice long dives and she would run down and give us the dive briefing privately and send us on our way while she worked with the rest of the group to brief them and gear them up. On this dive, we saw 8 sharks (horn and leopard) and 2 Pacific Torpedo Rays. Being on the rebreather was super cool with these animals; they could care less about us. One of the rays swam right over my head at a slow leisurely pace; I just sat there and watched it. This dive was max depth 130’ for an hour. 2nd dive was dandy as well, in the kelp and another couple sharks, and I laid in the sand at 130’ next to another ray would have been a great picture but neither of us had a camera of course!

The rest of the week went much the same, some great dives and some good dives but they were all warmer than here!

One night, we borrowed Scuba Luv’s skiff and motored out to the Valiant for a night dive (had permission this time) great dive!

All said and done, I think we knocked out about 15 dives averaging an hour or a little more each.

As far as Catalina goes, it’s a very nice place, I would do it again, the dive park is top notch and the dives around the island are great. I hear that in the summer, they are even better.

Animals – horn sharks, leopard sharks, torpedo rays, Calif Sea Lions, dolphins, garibaldi, spanish shaw nudi’s, lobster, shrimp, and a host of others!

I can’t say enough good things about Scuba Luv and staff; they did a great job of taking care of us!

I’ll try getting some surface shot’s on Flickr in the next few days!


Dave

[mancub]

Glad to hear about your trip. I will be heading down to Catalina in March, and have booked some dives with Scuba Luv. It is reassuring to know that you had a positive experience with them. I am excited to see some new things! I hear sites like Ship Rock are pretty awesome. I am sure they will get us out to some sweet dive spots, but any particular locations you really liked?

[Dmitchell]

We tried to do Ship but there were 4 boats already on it. The consolation was Bird reef?? something like that and it was great!

Little Farnsworth was dandy and of course being the wreck head I am, the Valiant. It's pretty beat up but I could dive it over and over.

Hen rock was one the boat used as a shallow dive 50 max. It's a good dive and in the sand out away from the rock you find Mantis Shrimp, they were really cool.

Dave

[mancub]

Thanks for the additional info!

I am getting excited to dive some new environments...not tropical but not the Puget Sound. More toward the latter, but there is going to be sweet new things to see I'm sure. One of my dive buddy's professors has said Catalina is home to his favorite dive site, period. I have only been to British Columbia, Maui, and all over the Sound, but it should be cool. If anything, it is pretty easy to jump down there for a quick trip.

[airsix]

Cool report. Thanks!
-Ben