So, I have suddenly remembered that I was going to post an update after my trip to the Southern Channel Islands with Truth Aquatics. To summarize, 1) it was awesome, 2) I need a larger tank next time, 3) I should rather not rent a tank at their rental facility on the peer, 4) loved the boat, the crew, the nature, and will do it again.
In more details, the sites ranged from shallow-ish to 100+, and my LP tank wasn't a match for them - and of course, the deepest site happened to be very, very beautiful one with unique landscape and purple corals that I have not seen anywhere else on the trip! On that dive I got lucky to join the instructor with the AOW student for his checkout deep dive. It was short - "Hi, fishes! Bye, fishes!" but just right for my setup, although watching the needle on my pressure gauge moving fast to the left was sad. I wish I would come back with a different gear.
This time I found myself with limited buddies options: the other buddy pairs had HPs and sometimes larger sized tanks. If I went with them I would have shortened their dives or would have to surface solo which would not be comfortable doing at the unknown sites often with swells and currents. I ended up diving with two beginning divers and became the lead doing most of planning, navigation, monitoring their air, even teaching how to do a controlled ascent "anywhere" as opposed to returning to the anchor line and climbing. I can't always bring you back to the same spot in a kelp forest, sorry! All doable, just not something I wanted but had no choice to ensure the safety of
my dive. There were a few solo divers on a boat whom I bombarded with questions on how they do it and why - now this skill is in my future plans list. And nope, they did not want buddies
As for not renting at the peer place. One of my buddies got a tank from them, same as mine but looking very rusty on the outside. It was trickling air bubbles underwater sometimes, the o-ring was fine, so go figure. On the third day of the trip the whole thing had to be reassembled by the boat crew and the captain himself because IIRC some inside plastic gasket or a washer worn out. The tank started leaking air all of the sudden right before my buddy put her gear on, luckily it happened on a boat, not in the water. My tank was okay except for crumbly o-ring, same as last year so I planned to replace it anyway.
The weather and vis were not so great, and we did not make it to the ultimate destination i.e. Cortes Banks, not a chance. However, the captain kept finding different dive sites for us that did not disappoint. Sometimes we could only do a single dive because of conditions and had to leave beautiful spot where I could have easily spend a day. I took some videos, they did not turn out well, I'll just put a few vide stills here for some visual interest
Well, that's pretty much it! If anyone wants to go on this trip next summer with me - let's do it together