Old dives

Catalina: A Swell Place to Dive
Susan Carter

Well, actually, the swell wasn't that bad when 13 intrepid Alacostans made their way via Ms. Christie and the ferry to Emerald Bay for the annual Catalina trip. Still, weather was definitely a topic of conversation this trip, and made the trip memorable, if not heavy on diving activity. It started with a heat wave and highs over 100, hot enough to actually discourage diving among the drysuit divers, who found it to be too hot to comfortably ride to dive sites in the inflatables....even the nights were hot enough to make sleeping uncomfortable for some, (especially for Carolyn Oltman, who picked the totally wrong week to get a bad cold. She managed to get it only one dive, but we all were glad to see her back at Catalina, nonetheless.

However, getting back to the heat, there was the compensation of drinking cold martinis on the porch on very warm evenings, and stargazing with Bernie Cappelli's new telescope. Did those of you who weren't there know that Peter Lasell was President of the Astronomy Club at UC Davis? Seems a little geeky for our Peter, but people do change....and he certainly did a good job finding those craters on the moon for us...

On Tuesday the afternoon ferry brought Susan Carter to Two Harbors, since she had to miss the first two days to get her kids settled in their new High School (Jessica Dachner surrounded by Junior and Senior boys: Now THERE is a scary thought!). LibAnn Cappelli was also on the ferry, having had to detour back to the Southland overnight for the sad occasion of a friend's funeral. Unfortunately, the two brought back the tears in the form of bad weather: wind and rain!!! subtropical rain!!! Yes, for one of the first times in recent Catalina memory it actually thunderstormed and rained heavily, both during the day and at night. The ambiance was much more like Hawaii than one would expect in the Southern Channels...

The rain, and particularly the wind, which did pick up those swells, put a little bit of a damper on the diving, making dive sites like Ship Rock a little less accessible than usual. Still, there were some very good dives. Highlights included the large bat ray that Susan saw while diving off Ken Woznak's boat Around the Bend, the discovery of a very cool wall at Blue Caverns (100 feet or so, going all the way from the sand to the surface!), spottings of yellow tail schools, lots of lobster, kelp making a post El Niño comeback, many sheephead, one possible Sythe Butterfly fish (!), octopus, horn sharks, and the rest of the usual Catalina suspects. The water temp was also quite warm: $72^\circ$F 72 F at the surface; 58 to 60 at depth.

There weren't too many screw-ups either, dive wise, other than Steve Smith forgetting his gear at the dock and realizing the extent of his error once anchored at Ship Rock, and the type of normal adjustments one would expect from Nancy Stryble doing her first ``cold water'' dives..(ahh, yes, the author remembers those days...Nancy almost lost her weight belt once, and should forever thank her lucky stars that Steve Smith saved it, avoiding a life time of grief from the unforgiving Alacostans..). By the end of the trip, despite having been heard to mumble on numerous occasions that ``This sure isn't Fiji'', we think that Nancy may have been converted...we heard talk of a new drysuit.

Other than the martinis, or perhaps fueled by them, evening entertainment highlights included John Kelly, Fran Brubeck and Mike McCullough trying to outdo each other in the tasteless joke category (I haven't laughed that hard in months!) Of course, almost as funny as the jokes was the sight of Fran actually talking John K into paddling a kayak around the bay.....another dinner conversation was highlighted by Roy Benedict's stories of the ``olden days'' of diving with Great Whites at the Farrallones....

Speaking of Roy, he and Gary Schleimer got the ``Real Diver'' awards of the trip: they both managed to do just about every dive, which, particularly given the fact that Roy was our most ``senior'' member present, and Gary our most ``disabled'' (recovering on crutches from a foot injury), only served to put the rest of us ``I think I'll just wimp out and take a little nap'' divers to shame....

As for Emerald Bay, improvements, including grass in front of the porch, and lots of painting and general spiffing up, made it almost unrecognizable. Cook Eric took very good care of us in the kitchen, even frying up a rattlesnake killed on the premises to expand our culinary horizons, but fortunately also providing lots of other good stuff. The compressor worked like a charm, we never needed the $O^2$ kits, and none of the boats leaked....so the logistics worked almost perfectly.

In short, Emerald Bay 1998 was a reminder that you can't do anything about the weather (except talk about it!) but that the right company, good attitudes and a little planning can make the trip memorable anyway...if you missed it, come next year for the same format and hopefully a little more sun and a little less heat. And then there is always that new dive site we found, just awaiting further exploration...We will see you there!

Sodwana Bay, South Africa

After destroying one rental car in South Africa, Kevin Dalley took his replacement car down an unmarked dirt road. He weaved around goats and cattle on the road. Finally, an hour later, he found a road sign. Three hours after that, he found a short stretch of paved road which led to Sodwana Bay, KwaZulu-Natal in the northeastern part of South Africa.

Sodwana Bay is the Ft. Lauderdale of South Africa, and Kevin arrived at the beginning of the student's winter break. The checkin counter of the campground had a two foot high box of condoms.

To reduce his luggage, he left his prescription mask at home. Nevertheless, Kevin dove five-mile and two-mile reef with a rented metric pressure gauge. He rode a hard hull inflatable through the heavy surf to reach the dive sites. The anemone fish in the Indian Ocean are much darker than those further east. A large yellow and black moray with teeth left its hole to follow Kevin during the first dive.

Amazingly, even after apartheid, the divers in South Africa show the same ethnic diversity which is so common in the rest of the dive world.