Jess and I headed out for a dive after far-too-long without one. It was overcast and drizzly; perfect diving weather. If it had been a nice sunny Easter day the beach would have been crowded. Today, though, we got to park right next to Vallecitos St. Awesome!
We geared up and swam out. On the way out to our drop point it started drizzling again. Believe it or not, this was our first dive in the rain. We swam out for a while and came across some swimmers before we dropped down. We managed to explore a couple bits of the canyon and really didn’t see much life out. Jess thinks it’s just a lifeless barren, I think it was just because of the storm.
I did see a lot of catalina gobies, a couple sheephead, some blackeye gobies, a bay goby or two, and a large halibut at the end. We also came across some squid egg sacs but they looked empty and floppy. I didn’t see any nudibranchs, which was disappointing.
Overall it was good to be out and be relaxed. On the way back to the car we noticed that it had rained pretty decently while we were diving. The swell had picked up too and the waves had gotten bigger. I think we got the last decent dive of the day. w00t!
Once we got home we got to use our new rack to hang up all our gear. We wheeled it over to the car, moved gear from the car directly on to the rack, then wheeled the rack on to the lawn to hose it down. This is a lot easier than dunking it in a rinse tank one item at a time. Hooray being lazy!
Sunday I got uppity with Jess and demanded we build a SCUBA rack. We haven’t been diving since we moved because hiding in the back of my mind was the problem of dealing with gear. It’s a minor thing; I’m sure we could have figured something out. My OCD kicks in at funny times though and I wanted a rack now.
So we knocked our heads together, sketched something out, and ran off to Home Depot.
Materials
Five 8′ long 2×4 (if you have half a 2×4 laying around you can get by with 4) — $1.99 * 5 = $9.95
Two pieces of 4′ long ¾ inch threaded metal pipes — $7.48 * 2 = $14.96
Four ¾ inch threaded pipe caps — $0.57 * 4 = $2.28
16 sets of bolts, nuts, and washers — $0.61 * 16 = $9.76
Four casters — $3.47 * 4 = $13.88
Twelve 3 inch deck screws (already had ‘em)
Sixteen 2 inch deck screws (already had ‘em)
One 3′ long piece of 3/16 inch wire — $2.18
So the total cost is about $57. I went for the kiln dried (KD) wood since I wanted to build this the same day I bought materials. If you’re not in such a rush buy the less expensive “green” wood and leave it out to dry for a week or two. I bought 125 lb load casters since they fit well on the bottom of a 2×4.
Tools
A miter (chop) saw (or you can have Home Depot cut the wood for you)
A drill
A 3/8 inch drill bit that can cut through metal
A bit the same size as the bolts you bought
A 1 inch (or 1+1/8 inch) hole saw
A Dremel or something else to cut through the 3/8 inch wire
A pair of tools (like wrenches, sockets, whatever) for dealing with the bolts and nuts
Optional: A sawhorse or two really come in handy. So does a square.
Process
Cut two of the boards 6′ long, retain the 2′ pieces.
Cut one board 4′ long (in half), retain the other half.
Cut two 2′ long pieces (that half board you had laying around would come in handy here).
Lay down flat one 6′ and one 4′ board. Put one 2′ board flat on top of them near the bottom. I left 6 inches of clearance between the bottom of the long boards and the bottom of 2′ board. Drill two holes all the way through both boards using the bit that matches the bolts. Insert bolts, washers, nuts and hand tighten.
Repeat on the other side.
Put the second 2′ board 6 inches from the top of the 4′ board and repeat.
Repeat that whole procedure to make the other side.
Mark about 3 inches down from the top of the 6′ and 4′ boards. Mark across the center and drill a hole in the middle using the hole saw. You really want these holes lined up, it makes putting the metal poles through a lot easier.
Set the two sides down on the ground on their backs. Grab one of the poles and put a cap on each end, hand tightened down. Lay it on top of each side with the cap pressed up against it. Measure the outside distance. It should be about 47 inches. You could figure this out with math, but I don’t trust numbers. Cut your last 2×4 into two pieces of this length.
Lay one of these short boards across the two pieces, near the bottom. You want it above the bolted on piece to make sure all the bolts and screws have clearance. Screw this on.
Flip the piece over and repeat on the back. You should now have a square of support at the bottom.
Stand it up and run the poles through the holes and put the caps on. Move everything apart so that it’s relatively tight. Mark a spot on the pole just on the inside, one on each side. Repeat this on each end of each pole. Take the poles back out and drill holes through them where you marked. Cut four pieces of wire an appropriate length. Longer is better. If it’s too short it’ll cut into the wood when you tighten it down.
Now run the poles back through, put the pins through and tighten the caps on. This should be difficult; if it’s not your tolerances are too big. Tension on the pins pushes the whole thing apart, while the caps will keep it from popping out. The supports on the bottom will keep tension pushing it back in on itself. The balance of forces makes it sturdy.
Now go back and tighten up all the bolts.
Flip it on its back and install the casters.
At this point you should have a nice new SCUBA hanging rack. I decided to make Jess paint ours day glow orange.
I’ve blogged in the past about a proposed ordinance that would prohibit human access to beaches where seals choose to haul out. Councilperson Donna Frye voted on sending this ordinance up to the City Council!
So I was a bit confused today when I read that Donna Frye will
fight to keep to keep La Jolla’s shores free and “open to everybody.”
That confuses me quite a bit. Does she want to close down the Children’s Pool and La Jolla Cove if seals haul out, or does she want to keep La Jolla’s beaches free and open to everybody? I don’t think she can have it both ways! Maybe somebody can clue me in to the logic here; I must be too dense to see it myself.
Here’s what Scott Anderson, President of the San Diego Council of Divers had to say about a proposed ordinance having to do with Harbor Seal protection within the city of San Diego. This email was recently sent to the Divebums email list (slightly modified for better web presentation, emphasis mine):
Fellow Divers,
There is presently legislation before the San Diego City Council to expand harbor seal protection beyond anything in the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). This new City Ordinance will cover all beaches in San Diego, not just the Children’s Pool. It is worded such that Children’s Pool will be shut down year round as well as any beach where a seal takes a fancy to haul out. Please follow this link to review the proposed ordinance.
Last year the Council of Divers invited the Seal Activists Groups to a board meeting to discuss how we could come to an agreement at Children’s Pool. They were adamant about their stance, they would only accept working with us if we could ensure that no one would ever again dive, swim, or fish at the Children’s Pool. This of course was unacceptable to the Dive Council. One odd thing mentioned during the meeting, was at that time they already had plans to close La Jolla Cove if the seals should come ashore. Harbor seals are known to haul out at La Jolla Cove, so that if this ordinance goes into effect, the fate of the Cove will be the same as the Children’s Pool.
The City’s Committee on Natural Resources and Culture, (NR&C)works closely with the Seal Activist Groups, and feels this ordinance is needed due to harassment of the seals. I would like to remind everyone that National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has two (2) web cams setup at Children’s Pool and monitors the beach 24 hours a day, seven days a week. NOAA has not seen a complaint worthy of a citation in four (4) years. If the seals were being harassed as the activists claim, they would simple [sic] leave and not return to the area. The NR&C committee has unanimously voted to approve this ordinance, without soliciting views from other state or federal agencies, such as California Costal Commission or NOAA. Generally anything approved by the NR&C committee easily passes at the City Council Meeting, even though people have spoken in opposition using facts and findings from authoritative sources.
Unless the Dive Community and citizens in general come together to counter this proposed ordinance, access to dive from beaches here San Diego will change drastically. Please take a few minutes of your time to review the attached proposed ordinance, pay particular attention to the definition of harassment and who will enforce it. You may also watch the NR&C meeting online.
Select February 21 and fast forward to 25:30 on the timer. You will see that the City Attorney’s Office floors two proposals. The first is an action toban barbeques at Children’s Pool, which is not a concern of the Council of Divers. Our concern is the second proposal about seals which will effect access to the beach for diving. The City has always claimed it supports shared use of the Children’s Pool, but every action the City proposes, demonstrates just the opposite.
In closing, it’s imperative that we stand united on this issue, because it jeopardizes future access to shore diving within city limits. Please keep in mind that time is a key factor, and the time is now to make our city officials aware of our position. The immediate objective is to compel the City Council to drop this proposal and allow NOAA to enforce the MMPA, or at least postpone hearing or voting on the ordinance, until after the Court decides on the City’s appeal of Judge Pate’s ruling to restore the Children’s Pool for its intended use.
Sincerely yours,
Scott Anderson
President, San Diego Council of Divers
If you care about beach access at all, please send an email to the appropriate City Council member. Sending a note to the Mayor and City Attorney would help to.
John from The Diving Locker called us earlier this week because he was chartering a boat to go out to Pt. Loma. Since we’d never been there before it sounded like a blast.
We showed up (without the camera) to a cloudy, drizzly sky with relatively calm water. Six divers, one captain, and one non-diver boarded the boat and we headed out. The trip out was fine until we hit the channel. There was some pretty monstrous swells and the channel really amplified them. After that it was pretty smooth sailing out to the spot. We puttered around for a little while and eventually dropped anchor.
I was excited because I had two new pieces of gear to try. The first were some thermal undies we got for an upcoming ski trip. But, thermals are thermals and you can never be too warm while you’re diving. The second item was an Apollo BioSeal. This little wonder feels like the stuff those hands you buy in gum ball machines are made of. It’s a collar you put around your neck that makes your neck thicker, and makes a better seal with the neck seal. Between these two features I expected to stay dry.
We were the middle group out and descended through 20 ft of beautiful water into about 70 ft of muck. After checking everything we wandered around trying to find something to look out. We came across some giant purple sea urchins and some really large bat stars.
The real action was in the nudibranchs! We found three Acanthodoris hudsoni (Hudson’s Dorid) within a few feet of each other. The really amazing part of these critters is the bright yellow racing stripe going around the edge! Here’s a pic of the same kind of critter taken by Garry McCarthy:
We also came across one little Acanthodoris lutea (Yello Dorid) on a rock. Here’s a photo of a similar critter taken by Paul Foretic:
On the swim back to what we hoped was the anchor line we came across a snail (four odd inches across) acting kind of funny. Turns out there was really an octopus eating it! Craziness. We ascended next to a very large stalk of kelp and got back on the boat uneventfully. Since the weather was heading south we decided to sit out the second dive and stay warm; I think that was a good call.
Now that the Diving Locker is doing fun dives on Saturdays again Jess and I should be going out much more frequently. We met up with everybody, said hello, and geared up.
Having learned our lesson from last weekend at the Cove we decided that I’d go down with the camera and Jess would go down with both lights. That way she could do the off-camera lighting for me (since we don’t have strobes and robo-arms).
We swam out a ways and could see the bottom all the way until we stopped. That’s quite a feat for any San Diego diving! We stopped at what should have been the edge of the canyon and dropped down. On the way down I couldn’t see the bottom any more (odd) but I did see a giant school of sardines swimming around me! I fumbled with the camera and tried getting a picture. All that came out was cyan with a few little shadows
As it turns out we’d picked a newly formed peninsula to drop into! At 45 feet even! We didn’t have to go swimming over the sand flats at all! So we cruised around looking for stuff to take pictures of for a while. We headed south until we ran into some divers having a hard time and kicking up a lot of silt. The vis was pretty good (closer to the 30 ft I marked above) when we were away from where people had been recently. One of the problems with the shore is that once you kick up some silt it stays in the water for a long time taking the vis back down to 5 ft or so.
We swapped camera/light duty midway so Jess could take some pictures. Since we were underwater I didn’t have a good chance to tell her how all the controls worked. Her pictures came out very well, but not zoomed in enough to make out any kind of detail on the critters. Anyway, she’s now addicted to the camera.
Below are the four pics that came out the best. Tell me what you think of them by leaving a comment!
After having trouble getting up after the last dive I decided I need to know how much my gear weighs. That way, as part of an ongoing project I have a target.
So tonight I weighed myself, geared up, and weighed myself again. I didn’t don my dry suit because I think my clothes weigh about as much as the suit + undies. If the weights are different the dry suit is heavier by maybe 5 lbs.
I really wasn’t sure how much the figure was going to come out to, but 89 lbs is where we stand. For the record that weight includes:
Having read on the DiveBums email list that conditions were fantastic at The Shores we decided to take a peek at The Cove and see if things would be OK there. The Shores are great, but right now they’re especially barren after all the under water land slides and such. The Cove on the other hand is always full of live, even it’s a little more challenging.
Since we’re not very bright, we didn’t look at a tide chart before we headed out. If we had, we’d have noticed that between 9:20 AM and 4:19 PM the tide was going to go from about +6.3 ft to -1.4 ft or about 7.7 ft of total movement. To put that in perspective, flipping through the calendar it’s one of the largest tide changes this month, in a month of large tide changes.
To understand why this is such a big deal you have to understand the effects a big tidal change can have. When we entered there were little ankle slapper waves that were petting you as you walked into the water. On the way out there were 3 – 4 ft waves which, given the shape and nature of the Cove, pounded you pretty well. All of that in less than half an hour.
In other words, had we looked at the charts and known what to look for, we’d have gone either earlier or to The Shores.
But, I had a camera that I was ready to try out and what better place than The Cove, literally crawling with life. We got in, headed out and descended pretty quickly. I turned on the camera and tried getting some shots in. Below are the results of my efforts:
And finally, a very short video of Jess flying through the water:
For Christmas my Mom bought me a Light Cannon 100, a nice HID (High Intensity Discharge) dive light.
I already had a light, the venerable C8. Labeled as such because it took 8 “C” batteries, it’s usefulness was… limited. It worked well enough at keeping me from running in to rocks, but not much more. On the other hand it didn’t cost very much money and got me in the water at night fast.
This new light blows it out of the water. To give you a sense of how much brighter the new one is I took two comparison photos. To keep things equal I used the same settings for both photos: 1/80th of a second @ f/5 on ISO 100 from “just behind the couch” at 31mm using my 18-55mm lens. I haven’t done anything with the images below except crop them down.
Since Santa must like me we went out to the shores to take the housing down. Since this housing is untested (by us anyway) we took it down with a 2 lb weight wrapped in a towel. If the housing leaked, the camera would be OK.
So we got our stuff together and headed out to La Jolla around noon. There was parking, and it wasn’t very crowded. I love diving in December.
After gearing up we headed into some MONSTROUS 5 inch surf. On the long walk out we saw a leopard shark that was about four feet long swimming by. Awesome, good omen. I wish the camera was actually in the housing.
We swam out for a while with no current and no swell pushing us back. Dropped in to about 18′ of water and headed for the canyon. There’s been a lot of talk on the Divebums email list about an avalanche or other large disruptive event in the area. It’s awesome. There’s clay debris everywhere. The clay feels exactly like the stuff I used in my ceramics class at UCSD. It looks exactly like rock, too. That’s probably why some people thought there were 10 – 15′ rock walls. Still, after all that must have happened there was virtually no life out. We saw some very juvenile señoritas, some catalina gobies, and a few other miscellaneous fish. Exploring all the carnage is very fun.
In the wreckage I found a big snail shell (which we took) and a D cell battery (which we also took).
I managed to get down to 88 feet. I think the housing made it down around 90 with the hand-strap and such.
On the swim back in, around 8 – 10 ft of water we came across a decent amount of life. I got to see a baby bat ray with a wingspan of about 9 – 10 inches. I also poked a few shovel nose guitarfish that were hiding in the sand.
Then we came across it. An enormous school of sardines making their way south. There were hundreds. They were eating. It was amazing. I swam in a little bit more until my computer decided my dive was over when I was in about 4 feet of water.
So, our last dive of the year was a pretty good one. I’ll be taking the camera down from now on and will post any decent pictures we manage to take.
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Jess and I headed out for a dive after far-too-long without one. It was overcast and drizzly; perfect diving weather. If it had been a nice sunny Easter day the beach would have been crowded. Today, though, we got to park right next to Vallecitos St. Awesome!
