10/16/2009 Pt Lobos by Harry Wong

10/16/2009 Pt Lobos by Harry Wong -- [View in Reports Page]

Bottom Team:	Alberto Nava, Todd Lasman
Visibility:	10' - 20'	Time:	12:00 AM
Temp:		Surge:
Scooter:	Gavin Long	Burn Time:
Max Depth:	105FSW	Avg Depth:
Bottom Time:		Total Time:	0:01
Bottom Gases:	30/30	Deco Gases:	EAN50
Backgas Config:	Double LP80	Deco Tanks:	AL80
Deco Profile:
Hi, well, it's definitely back in the water for me this last weekend! The day started out quite nicely, met Todd at 6 AM, transferred gear to my van and got to Point Lobos to a relatively calm seas. It was a west swell and our plan was to dive in that exposed area, so I didn't expect great viz. Beto arrived shortly and we all geared up. This is a very long scooter dive and the name "Magical Mystery Tour" came up when we dove this route some months ago. Magical because we'd cover so much terrain that was SO varied in it's topography and scenery. "Mystery" because you never know what will turn up traveling this far and it presents a somewhat challenging navigation exercise, especially in low viz. You have to keep your wits about on speed direction, topography and lack of land marks. "Tour" because we're just about constantly on the trigger to cover the long distances. The good thing about scooters is that you can do quite a bit of traveling underwater, the bad thing about scooters is that you can get lost for the same reason. Hm...ask me how I know. ;-) The plan was to navigate out to Granite Wall and head out to Mono Lobo Wall, over on the Monastery side, then go west past the outer part of Thumbs Up out to the tip of those pinnacles where Wall Street is and be just within range of Montana, then navigate back south into Whaler's cove. We expected the trigger time on our scooters to be upwards of 55 minutes, so we all had the longer body Gavins. Max depth planned was 100' so we had Tx 30/30 in our doubles. We scootered out on top and descended at the end of Middle Reef. At the bottom at 40', I found that my dive computer failed. Hm..well I'm leading the dive, so I motion to Todd to give me his computer (in guage mode) and I gave him my bad one. I love interchangeable gear, he'll just have to have faith in his buddies not leading him astray. ;-) Viz at Whaler's Cove was "wonderful" at least you can see your hands. ;-) When we got out to Granite Wall, it did not improve. Hm....OK, this dive is going to be a challenging navigation exercise. Just to be extra conservative, with Todd not having a working depth guage, at 70 feet we switched from our 50% oxygen deco bottles to our backgas of Tx 30/30. Getting around the corner in that part of Point Lobos is not a straight line affair. Go the wrong way and you end up in shallow water. It's no fun to be deposited on top of some sharp rocks as another diver on ba.diving found out, so the shallowest depths I'll allow myself to go is about 30 feet. So meandering back and forth we found ourselves in Moss Cove Sand Channel and at 75 feet, we hit the little wall and off we went at 30 degrees to Mono Lobo Wall. BTW, Moss Cove is the cove between Whaler's Cove and Monastery Beach. You can see the cove off of a boat passing by on the way to Point Lobos. When I showed Todd where we were on the map taped to my scooter, he gave me this "whatever" look. OK... I'll just make double sure none of us get separated. We then went west following the Monastery side contour and after a quick stop to see if we could rescue a large Mola Mola that got it's fins eaten off, got to the end of Thumbs Up. The feature was pretty distinctive and we looked around for a second or two (this was a tour after all) before continuint to the end of the reef structure. We got to Wall Street and Beto wanted to stop and sight-see, but I kept the team moving. Beto had spotted two large Vermillions locked mouth to mouth in mortal combat, or was it some kind of mating ritual? Come on Beto, the plan was to tour and not stop and look for little critters. We continued, got back into Moss Cove Sand Channel, over into Granite Point Pinnacles and then back into Whaler's Cove. What a fun dive. Kind of like riding a motorcycle thru the mountains touring! ;-)