Sucia Part Two

Lawson Bluff
Originally uploaded by Pixel Letch.

We returned to Sucia Island again the weekend of Sept 10-11th. (see first trip: Scallops and Tigers and Nudis - Oh My! Sucia is one of the northernmost San Juan islands. This time we came in force and loaded for "bear", or nudibranchs anyway. We were apprehensive about the weather, as it poured rain on the drive north, but cleared by Mt. Vernon and was beautiful, except for just a little rain at night.

Fellow Marker Buoy Club member Greg Wilson has a fantastic, bright red 16' Zodiac with a 25HP motor, just made for diving. He, Chip Petit and I loaded it with 9 tanks and all our dive gear, then towed it behind my 28' sailboat Maggie May. It was dubbed the Dive Barge and probably weighed over 1200 pounds loaded. The cool thing was that even loaded, it still towed well enough to sail and we had a good time going and coming! Greg and I feel like we've worked out a great solution for diving; I have the comfortable "bunk house" and he has the fast dive platform. The Zodiac easily got up on plane with 3 divers, gear and 6 tanks.

Steve Lodge and his boat along with his son, girlfriend and Carl Baird met us up at Sucia on Saturday morning. We dove at Little Patos Island across from Sucia and then back to Lawson Bluff on the north side of Sucia. I wasn't too impressed by Little Patos, but I think we dove too far away from the point. Visibility was excellent, really opening up nicely to 40-50'. We saw lots of Copper rockfish and small invertibrates. The only bummer was when Greg was pulling his rig off, he managed to snag and loose his Cochran wrist computer into 150' of water.

For the second dive, we did Lawson Bluff again. I'm getting this site wired and have found the perfect little cove to pull into, put our gear on, and do an easy shore dive from the rocks. We also found a treasure trove of scallops there and collected a bag of Pectins for an or'sderve! The depth is easy and we found lots of photo subjects. Lawson was a much richer site, lots of Dendronotus nudibranchs, Copper and Puget Sound rockfish, with a few large Ling Cods cruising by. I shot macro on both dives, yet with the visibility opening up nicely, I'm starting to yearn for a wide angle lens, it was much better than two weeks ago.

We were going to get up and do an early dive on Ewing Island, but were lazy and just decided to have a big breakfast and head home; spending the early afternoon sailing and enjoying the sunshine!

Scallops and Nudis and Tigers, Oh My!

Tiger Rockfish
Originally uploaded by Pixel Letch.

Club member Steve Lodge and I staged a boat dive in the San Juan Islands to Sucia Island, my home-away-from-home, over the weekend.

There were 5 divers from our club, 3 on my sailboat "Maggie May" (myself, Jim McGaughey and Carl Baird), and Paul Riggs and Steve on his powerboat "Makushla". We met up Friday, spent a bouncy night at anchor, and then moved around to the other side of the island to Fox Cove and found a mooring there. Steve and Paul tried doing a dive to find some crab to no avail. We transferred 10 tons of dive gear to Steve's boat and motored around to the north side of the island and dove Lawson Bluff and then Ewing Island. Weather was gorgeous - in upper 70's and sunny.

There are nice walls and ledges with large boulders that have fallen off the sandstone bluffs above on these sites. We tended to have fairly square dive profiles, but not overly deep at around 55-80 feet. I dove on 32% EAN, that gave me long bottom times on my steel 98. Lots and lots of schools of fish, from small Puget Sound Rockfish, Quillback Rockfish in every size, Kelp Greenlings, large Ling Cod and so forth. Unfortunately the viz was so-so, maybe 15', so they were hard to shoot. Currents were light.

Photography-wise it was up and down for me.

I shot a couple of rare nudis not found south of the islands, and shot a Tiger Rockfish, also a rare and timid species. BUT I made a major mistake when switching into RAW mode I forgot to change the ISO back to 80 from the default 200. This is one feature I've stumbled over before on my Fuji F810, it takes two places to change back and forth from RAW and you have to remember to change the ISO back. So the photos are pretty grainy. Dimwitted at 70'.

I also managed to create a fog inside my case when shooting hard towards the end of the second dive. I forgot to add in silica gel packs, maybe got a tiny bit of water when changing batteries.

Had a great dinner Sat. On Sunday Steve, Paul and Jim went out on Jim's RIB dingy to do another drift dive with Carl doing surface support. I stayed back on the boat and made a huge brunch for everyone. Although overcast, we had a calm passage back to Blaine, got back to the dock, and had most of the boat unloaded before the rain deluged us. Jim had had some car problems towing his boat up, so his wife met them to take the boat in tow, so Jim could limp home.

So win some, loose some, great weekend, we're going again in two weeks. Practice makes perfect!

Diving Miguel

Barncle amid Strawberry Anemones
Originally uploaded by Pixel Letch.

I snuck out for a day of diving off The Peace in Ventura while on a family visit to So Cal. Most Wednesdays they run a long trip that leaves on Tues night and goes to San Miguel or the oil platforms or someplace cool. A bargain at $90 for 4 dives, air and 3 very square meals, snacks, etc. The Peace diveshop can arrange to have whatever rental gear you need delivered to the boat, ready to go, as was the case with my HP100 tank.

We were lucky to have calm conditions. My friends had tried for three times to get out to this location and were turned around by bad conditions. The skipper Eric told me that with almost any wind it becomes very rough. The boat left Tuesday night at midnight for the long run out, which was uneventful and allowed for most to get some sleep.

Topside temps were cool for us drysuit divers, as it was overcast most of the day. Didn't even see San Miguel until the third dive. The viz wasn't much better below, due to huge clouds of krill, but it was patchy. Bunch of hunters on the boat, gear and some of their attitudes are left over from Sea Hunt I think...

Fellow photographers Matt and John are definitely gear heads, oh ok, I'm jealous of their DSLR systems. But I'm gonna start wearing garlic around my neck when I'm around John, I don't want to pick up his gear failure karma. He blew up another ($700) DS-125 strobe and had his seals fail on his drysuit (they repaired 'em with duct tape and PVC cement for the day!). Arrgh, too late, I've had a screw to my latch strip on my camera housing. Lucky it didn't interfere with my dives.

We did 3 dives at San Miguel and one at Santa Rosa; Boomerang Pinnacle (which looked exactly like Vancouver Island; strawberry anemones everywhere), The Canyons, my favorite, small valleys leading off for miles; but nudibranch heaven right under the anchor! Pt Bennett, about as far west as you can go in the Channel Islands, my least favorite dive, not much little stuff. Then one dive on the way home at Santa Rosa; Little Wilson’s, not a bad site. The last two were in kelp forests with lots of fish, but no Garabaldis, as it is too cold. Weird to see cowries along with strawberry anemones. The Humbolt current comes south and just reaches these islands, not unusual to find a 10-15 degree or more temp
difference between San Miguel and Santa Cruz. Very similar water temps (56F) to Seattle. But it's definitely California, as I had several inquisitive sea lions check me out, I think they were intrigued with the HID light.

I should of gone with Nitrox, as on the last dive I went into deco and had a 6 min obligation, even though I stayed at 50' (oh ok, it was for 55 mins). I forgot that a lot of the dives are a pretty square profile here, not much shallows to end your dive on.

The Peace is a great boat, wonderful crew, lots of food, very comfortable - even with a crowd of 23 divers. There's bunks down below for the 7 hour boat ride each way. Even has a small hot tub! Sure could use a dedicated camera table.

I had a lot of fun with my Fuji F810/Ike housing/Ike DS50 system. I just shot macro. After 6 dives I'm finally starting to get more consistent with my focusing with the Inon macro lens. Hard for an old fart like me to focus with only 1/2" depth of field and surge, even with the viewfinder magnifier.

Road Trip! Diving Cape Flattery

Well, it was a long road trip, but we went out to Neah Bay on Saturday night (8/16-17/03) and went out on The Puffin Adventures charter to try to dive Duncan Rock.

We (Randy, myself, Rhoda, Greg, Dan & Craig) got on the boat after a somewhat less than restful night in a cheap hotel (boy, I like drunks at 4 am). We got out to the rock right at predicted slack in fairly heavy fog and glassy seas, but found a 2-3 knot current that made it less than dive able. This is one of those very advanced dives, basically a spec of a rock out at the entrance of the straits, that you look at a lot and are able to dive infrequently. We thumbed it and went over to Tatoosh Island, which has lots of nooks and crannies that are out of the current.

There was a fair amount of surge, and not very good viz, sort of milky water (?), but cool rocks, kelp, passageways, swim-thoughs and tunnels. Lots of rockfish, invertebrates and color. Not very deep - 60-70' max. I did shoot some photos of some of the huge beautiful dahlia anenomes, etc.

We went over to a little nook called Hole-in-the-Wall (above) for our surface interval. After changing tanks and resting a bit out of the swell, we went back over to another corner of Tatoosh Island and dove there.

The viz was better, but not great. There was a couple of long, somewhat deep cuts that we followed and enjoyed swimming about and taking pictures. There was a whole school of black rockfish that we don't see often and one rather large ling cod that was acting territorial, wished I'd had a speargun to make lunch out of him.) At the end of the dive I had some problems with my inflator leaking and had to make a somewhat quick, but not emergency assent.

The boat was on the other side of the rock, that was covered in rather large fun seals and huge Stellar sea lions. They were looking at us as intruders and as they are easily 400 pounds or more, I blasted them with my DiveAlert horn to scare them away. About then the boat came around the corner with Steve (the captain, and a bit of a hothead) yelling at us to get on quickly. All was well, and we motored back to Neah Bay in patchy fog and bright sun. Near Wahah Island, on the outside of Neah Bay, we saw a fairly large grey whale feeding on the krill that had been part of our visibility problem.

Randy and I later hiked up to Cape Flattery and enjoyed the view of the rocks and then very heavy fog. Then another long, but scenic, drive home.

Photos: Cape Flattery