San Diego Wreck Diving May 1 and 2

[JS1scuba]

San Diego Wreck Diving May 1 & 2 2010



Join wreck expedition leaders Joel Silverstein and Tyler Stalter for a weekend of shipwreck diving in Wreck Alley. We will dive the wreck of the P-38 and Yukon, the Hogan and the Navy tug. Navy workboat that was recently found. Saturday and Sunday we depart at 8 am and back no later than 5:30 PM

Wreck Diving In San Diego

• Saturday 8:00 am - 3:30 PM
• Saturday Evening Group Dinner (not incl)
• Sunday 8:00 am - 5:30 PM
• Includes:
• Breakfast, Lunch, Snacks, Bevs
• Air Tops ups and Fills
• Weights on Board
• Surface Supply Oxygen
• CCR and Scooters OK

Your dive times are limited to your own planning.
We hope you can join us for this fun exciting weekend.
Both Days $250.00

More Info Here

Saturday Only
P-38 and Yukon Join us for a single day of diving on the P-38 plane and then on the world class Yukon shipwrecks. This is a fun day of diving. You can dive singles or doubles or your rebreather.
May 1 - $125.00 per person

Reserve Here

Sunday Only
Hogan and Navy Workboat Join us for a single day of diving on the Hogan and then on the recently found US Navy workboat. This is a fun day of diving on some sites that are a little deeper and in blue water. Max depth 135 fsw. You can dive big singles with stage, doubles, or your rebreather.
May 2 $150.00 per person

Reserve Here


These are both outstanding days of wreck diving. And the people so far on the trip are really cool and you will have a lot of fun. We hope you can join us. Reserve your space today.

Cheers

[Mo2vation]

I am counting the moments to this trip.

Can't wait!


-Ken

[JS1scuba]

BUMP -- we have some spots for Saturday and Sunday -- the trip is light so you will have plenty of space.

Saturday -- 5 spaces available

Sunday -- 2 spaces available

PM me if you want to get on -- -or reserve on the website

this will be a very fun trip.

Cheers

JDS

[Mo2vation]

Yeah baby!!!!


Counting the moments!!!


-K

[JS1scuba]

UPDATE --- Sunday is Closed .........

Saturday still has a few spots .......

Cheers
JDS

[Mo2vation]

What a great trip!!!

So much fun! I learned so much, met some wonderful people, and had the best time on Saturday and Sunday.

To the owners and crew of the Marissa - much thanks for everything! Outstanding.

Joel - you are a treasure. Thanks so much for all you poured into this trip. I can't wait to do it again.

Yuck-on by Braille on Saturday. My first time on the Lazy Days. Then today on the magnificent Hogan and the wacky C3PO.... or whatever that pile of stuff that used to be a wreck was.

All excellent!

Report coming soon.


-Ken

[Mo2vation]

I love this trip every year.

It pushes me so far outside of my usual comfort zone. It introduces me to a whole new group of people, and lets me spend time with divers who's focus and objectives for the rest of the year are so completely different from mine.

Its both disorienting and glorious. Its a peek behind a curtain at a very close-knit, committed, capable, experienced group of divers who's paths I would only cross on a trip like this.



FRIDAY 4/30

I was unable to attend the classroom sessions this year. Claudette (who has Friday's off, the rat) went down early to get some kayaking done in SD. I wasn't leaving until about 5:00 PM or so - and the plan was to meet with Joel and crew at Croce's in Gaslamp at about 8:00.

I bolt out of the office Friday at about 4:55 and point it South. Traffic blows. After a solid THREE hour drive, I roll up onto the corner right across the street from Croce's. I look up, and there is Claudette's car (the one with the bright read Kayak on top!) - she and Joel are going straight to hit up the valet parking across the street.

I sneak into the right turn lane as the light turns and blast in across the street, park in front of them and snake their valet. Seriously - think about this: I spend three hours on the road, she's been in SD all day, has just picked up Joel and is heading across town to dinner - and we converge on the same street corner at the same moment.

OK - this is going to be some trip!

Dinner was excellent, as always. Great music, excellent food, fun wine and a walk about Gaslamp to confirm just how far outside of the young and beautiful demo I have become.


SATURDAY 5/1

I didn't do a single dive in April.

Not one.

I don't think I have taken an entire calendar month off in the modern era (post Fundies 2002). So sad. I've been paddling a lot, but not diving, so I'm very eager to get back into the water and get it going again!

We load on to the Marissa - the plan was originally to get to the Hogan and some other stuff, but as we're heading out of the harbor its snarly, nasty and just ugly. Contrary winds, big swell - yuck. So we head over to the Yukon for dive one.

DIVE #1 - YUKON


I've dived the Yukon probably 12 - 15 times - and I've heard about the braille dives (the 1 - 3 foot of viz) but never experienced it myself.

It was the Yuck-on. We drop into soup that stayed soup the entire dive. And this was COLD soup. 48 - 49 degrees. I wasn't dressed for that. I was a bit chilly most of the dive. I had the macro with me and never even fired it up. No pics for sure. We scooted around the thing a time and a half, laughed at how truly ugly it was, headed back to the upline and came home.


DIVE #2 - Lazy Days


We motor over to the Lazy Days. I'm pretty sad about the Yuck-on, but I'm now getting excited about diving a site I haven't been to for a long, long time. I remember this site being a nudi magnet.

We get there, and its just as ugly - the water looks like soup, its chopy, windy. We splash and drop though the soup and the wreck is right where they said it'd be... Big boulder #1 - check. Wreck - check. Big boulder #2 - check. Its much clearer than on the Yuck-on, and as expected, the place is covered with Nudis.

Of course I left the cam on the deck... What a dufus.

We're scooting around and around, and pieces of the wreck are making sense. There's the drive shaft. There's a chunk of the engine. This is pretty cool - I'm learning to spot stuff and recognize pieces from the dive briefing.

So we scoot around and scoot around. Nudis are everwhere.

• Fed Ex
• Hermissenda (tons!)
• 'Tata
• Sandy
• Flavah
• Limbaugh
• MacFarland's
• Cuthona (shocked!)
• Trilineata (TONS)
• Clown
• Tritonia Festiva
• Monterey Dorid (little baby one...)
• Sea Lemon
• Polycera Tricolor (great spot, Dette)
• Yellow Edged Cadlina
• Berthella

SIXTEEN SPECIES on that dive... SIX-Friggen TEEN!!!! And no camera. Just kill me now.

We absolutely drain the cans, come up cold (another 49 degree dive) but just bouncing off the deck. What a great dive.

We leave 90% of our stuff on the boat, and I head back for a face plant. A nice long nap - then a fun dinner in Old Town with the most of the Sunday Crew. Way too many chips, excellent Mohitos, super Fajitas (although who puts tomatoes on a Fajita platter?) and its off to bed.


SUNDAY 5/2

The morning came way too early.

I look at the clock - OMG... I'm running late. Joel wanted us on the boat for a 7:30 departure so we could make the long trek to the Hogan. I run to the elevator, we blast over to the dock, jog a load of stuff down to the boat and we're on at 7:18.

And we're the first ones on. Huh?? Joel is there. The crew is there. Me and Chica are there.

Oh well. 'sall good. The bad thing is my Chewable Dram (best stuff ever) was left on the boat in my dry box... so I'm only taking it now as I'm boarding. Not good.

The rest of the folks start assembling and loading on. Some I know, many I don't. Today's plan is to get out to the Hogan (its a long ride to essentially the Mexican border) and dive that first, then head in for something closer.

We're heading out of the harbor - and as you're doing this the swells coming in, when concentrated into the narrow harbor mouth, multiply into waves. Some 4 some 5 to 7 feet high. As we're going out, the captain throttles back and we crest over a very high wave - and just then a set of large doubles breaks from the rail and mercifully does a 180 off the bench, landing on the bottom of the cylinders (standing almost upright) sparing the regulators and hoses. The doubles fall against three scooters, and the scooters start to, well, scoot to the stern.

On the Marissa, the stern is open - there is no raised transom. So Kathy M instinctively dives across the deck and grabs the lead scooter of this parade - arresting the slide of the other scooters (and the doubles) in what surely would have been the most expensive stern gear slide of this century. For her cat-like reflexes and sacrificial slide across the newly re-surfaced deck, she has become my new hero.


Dive #1 - The Hogan


We get out of the harbor and are heading to the Hogan. Its rough. And this is a long haul (almost 2 hours, I believe) in this mess. The Dram is doing its thing, but for me, sea sickness is something I have to get in front of, and stay in front of - otherwise I'm toast.

We get to the site. Its funny. We're motoring along, the cap't sees it on the screen, they stop the engines and drop the anchor. If there was a way for a boat to make a screeching halt, it would have.

We gear up - the boat is bouncing all over the place. I get in the water and we scoot up to the bow line and drop. We descend through about 40 feet of snot and then things start to open up. We are right on top of the thing - a brilliant hook.

The water is a little warmer than yesterday, and a whole lot clearer at depth.

What a wonderful wreck. There's the two boilers. There's the shaft. I'm picking out features from the briefing and from what Joel had described. Its pretty cool. I find a Hopkins rose Nudi at 122 feet. Are you kidding me? I see them in Laguna at 20 feet, and at Marineland at 45 feet. I've never seen one this deep. Then I find a Tritonia at 124 feet. All these deep Nudis. Who knew?

We planned for about 30 minutes at the bottom. We're at about 19 minutes and I tell chica we need to start heading back to the upline. She motions to me to go South (towards the bow) just a bit more. I say OK. So we head towards to bow. I hear another scooter - I look over my shoulder and its Joel. He zooms by and I hear a loud "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!" So funny.

Chica and I continue to scoot South over a low pile of stuff. Up ahead I see something huge emerge out of the murk.

OMG!!

Its like a 3 story doll house you can look into. You can see rooms, you can see the decks, you can see the pointy end of the thing! It looked so huge compared to the rest of the wreck that had fallen in or was on its side. This was sitting upright, looking beautiful. Cubicles with fish in them. Huge schools of rock fish, the port side covered in corynactis anemones. HUGE ling cod and sand bass and sheep head. I didn't want to leave.

This is now my favorite wreck. Not that I've been on a lot - but this was spectacular.

We zoom back through a hatch that lead to daylight across a long room. That was kinda cool, threading the needle with a couple of bottles on. We get to the upline, and I hear another scooter from behind. Its Joel zooming by again... "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!"

We're at the end of our bottom mix, so we make the switch and start up the anchor line. The water is pretty clear - we're seeing sea angels, comb jellies, goosberry jellies and all manner of small pelagic stuff drift by on our stops. Pretty neat.

We get to 40 and its snot city again. Up to 20, make the switch and we finish our ascent.

What a great dive. What a great dive.


We get back on the boat, and its rocking and rolling. My stomach is not feeling good. I take a second dram. We stop for our second dive of the day, but I'm not feeling well, so I back out. Chica dives with Kathy K on the PC-LMNO - some twice exploded craft in the waterway. Apparently I didn't miss a whole lot as people coming back on board said there was 3 to 6 feet of viz, and everyone was making very short dives.

We're heading back in and my stomach has had enough, so I spray over the side. This is the first dive I've ever missed because of Sea Sickness. I'm pretty bummed. I finally bundle up and sleep a bit on the drive back in.

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What an excellent weekend.

Joel - you rock. Thanks again for putting this together. I love being around the SD A-list wreckers. I learned so much on this trip. As I try to figure out what I want to do with the next phase of my diving, you've opened up doors I had never considered before. I really, really had a great time.

Chica - as always, best buddy ever. So sorry I bailed on dive 2 - but its better than muscling into the gear and getting sick at 96 feet, for sure. Thanks for a super weekend of diving.


No Pics. Sad, but true.

Chamber day is in a couple of days. LOTS of pics from that will be coming by the weekend.


-Ken

[JS1scuba]

Yeah, it was a fun trip, great people, and even though the Southern California weather/ocean conditions were not perfect it provided opportunities for people to stretch their skills and abilities. Dives like these in crappy vis help you become better divers on the days when everything is perfect. Heck .... i was running lines on the outside of the Yukon so i could get back easily to the mooring line. ............ Hijacking a scooter on Sunday was great......... Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeee.......... it was fun buzzzing you guys ........

you and chica need to think...... Oriskany ........ scooters ........... live-aboard..... HUGE deck........

Always great to be with you guys.

Cheers
JDS