We fly to Sydney, spend a week, then fly to Cairns, jump on a liveaboard for a week of diving, then fly back down to Melbourne for a few days, then off back home again.

Harry W, Harry B, Dionna, and Mark met at Lobos today to do the grand tour. The tour consisted of heading out to Granite Pt Pinnacles, winding our way to Mono Lobo Wall then turning to Thumbs Up, back in the direction of Mono Lobo wall then back to Granite Pt Pinnacles again, and back into the cove. I was the only one with an X-scooter, while the rest had long body Gavins. Since we estimated my X would not last the whole journey I towed a Gavin. Once in the water, and never had the experience of towing a scooter, I found that I was going through the water like I was pulling a piano. At Granite Pt Harry W. took the scooter and after a bit of trial an error we finally got things streamlined. Vis was at best about 30 ft so acceptable but not ideal. We had been around the Granite Pt. pinnacle area quite a bit but I don’t think Dionna, Harry B, and I had been as far as Mono Lobo. We crossed over the sand channel and arrived at what I think was Mono Lobo but to be honest didn’t see much there. Once we turned and headed to Thumbs Up the scenery improved quite a lot with the sheer walls, corals, big schools of rockfish and two or three Mola Molas. These Molas were not fish food yet, like many that were fin-less scattered about. Coming back from Thumbs up was a nice straight line back into the sand channel then into the Granite Pt pinnacles. Just before we turned toward Granite Pt wall the kelp monster grabbed Dionna. She put up a heroic battle and I was cheering her on as she defeated the enemy. As we turned neared Granite Pt wall I grabbed the Gavin from Harry W. as my X was getting close to the max time. A few minutes later the X died and I switched to the Mac Truck. We made it back into the cove, switched to O2 and completed a bit of deco. Very cool dive, almost 2 hrs in the water, and luckily for us a nice 57 degrees.

The living mouse pad.

Friday I took off work to dive with Beta, Joakim, and Dionna off of the Escapade. Arrived in Monterey and loaded all the gear onto the boat. Since there were only 4 of us there was lots of room for our scooters and deco bottles. We were planning on diving Mt Chamberlain to a depth of 220′, perfect Tech 2 dive. Joakim had just completed his Tech 2 class so this was his first post class T2 dive. As we left the Bay we could see thousands of Jellyfish everywhere. The wake of the boat was chewing them up by the hundreds. I was glad not to be diving in there. Still, the Bay was very flat but once we rounded the corner the swells picked up a bit. As we continued on the swells did get a bit larger but nothing that would make us call the dive and pick another spot. We arrived at the dive spot about an hour after we left the dock. The water looked blue and clear but that can be deceiving. We geared up with our doubles and clipped on one deco bottle. Once in the water the crew handed us another bottle and our scooters. Beta and Joakim had jumped in first and were waiting at the bouy. We have drifted back a bit so needed to scooter a few minutes to get back to the down line. Pointing our scooter down we took off. The vis was a bit cloudy to start, the reef came into focus at about 150′ or so. Slowing down at 180′ I signaled the other divers as I had just spotted a Ratfish swimming close to us. We continued down to 220′ and the vis opened up to about 50′ which was great. There were thousands of small fish which flashed out of the way when you shone your light towards them. The reef was full of hard and soft coral, purples, reds, oranges, whites. A large school of Rockfish was hiding in a small inlet of the reef. Just about that time we scootered over the reef, turned the corner and were met with a strong current that the scooters had a hard time overcoming. We decided to turn slowly out of the current and back round the corner. Beta led us along a straight canyon turned left and under an arch… fantastic. After about 30 minutes of depth we came up a bit and wandered around some checking out the tops of the reef. At the predetermined time we ascended to 70′ and settled in for 50 minutes of deco. The Jellyfish were not too bad so there was no stings on the way up. Overall a great dive, a dive were you can say, “That’s what my Tech 2 class was for”.