GONE DIVING or Steak and Crab

[sparky]

Well the holiday weekend is apon us:

After a litle fin twisteing and line pinching I was abule to talk one of my favorite dive buddies Diver Doug ( who was planning to go in the first place

in to meeting me at Neatarts Boat Ramp for a day of realy grate diving we
are going to be haveing some realy grate tides for diving this site all day
we plan to make 3 or 4 dives and see if we cant meet some nice Dungens Crab to have over to Dougs place for dinner seeing as he and his wife keep a vaction home with in walking distance from the dive site

so we decided today would be a good day to have some steak and crab
I see some of you are planning to dive a few places today as well.

I will post a report when I get home tonight and let you know how we made out . from what I have been hearing from others that have been crabbing in the area last few wekends crabbing has been good so we are hope full that we can nab a few crab to go with the steaks Doug will be cooking on the grill

every one have a good and safe weekend see you guys soon thinking of heading north in a week or two

Sparky

[sparky]

Well here goes.

Diver Doug and I had a grate time at Netarts yesterday. We made two dives and then retired to Doug's vacation home just a short walk from the dive site for a crab and steak cook out


first dive was so grate we dropped down and headed east along the East Wall and started hunting for crab we found some really huge ones but they were all female ( figures I know ) but we did manage to find a few males big enough to keep

So on we went along the East Wall. viz was not grate but not too bad that we could not see each other if we moved of a little ways we seen a few Lemon Nudiebranch and a bunch of painted Greenling, found a couple nice ling cod hanging around in the 2 to 3 foot range just little guys.

so after heading east for a while along the East Wall we came upon the rock we call Roy's Garden, ( back in the days when we were still exploring this site a Diver I know Roy White found this Rock it is huge and was covered with Strawberries enmities and in the last few months we have noticed it is slowly getting smaller and smaller what was once a huge garden of enmities is now just a little band of them about 8 inches wide at the base of the rock only a grayish plume of something I can not identify left kind of sad to see it go from the beautiful Roy's' Garden as well called it to what it is today.

shortly after this point Doug and I decided to head back along the East Wall we swam west along the East wall for a little ways till we came up to Doug's Reef this is a cinder block Half that Diver Doug placed there to see how long it would take to attract some sort of sea life and what types of critters would like to live in a fine diver provided condo like this one. And I must tell you Doug just may be on to something here.

So after reaching Doug's Reef we headed southwest a bit across the sand flats to the Point and the Black Rock fish were every place. None of them was very big but they sure were hanging out on the Point.
Total dive time was just over 50 some minutes and water temperature was 54 degrees

You see this is why I love this site we never get real deep max depth is only about 35 to 40 feet but that leaves you with more bottom time then you can carry air for .

Dive Two was almost the repeat of dive one right up to and including the part when I screwed it up
You se we made the first dive on my Steal 119s and then second dive we were diving Al 80s as you all know there is a huge difference on the amount of air these two tanks hold (My BAD) well I led us further up the East Wall then we should have gone before turning us around to make a long story short we did not have enough air to swim all the way back to our egress point under water and had to surface and swim back on the surface now those of you that know me know this is not really that big a deal but I hate long surface swims and we wound up having to surface swim back about 100 yards or so ( Sparky kicks self real hard ) you see I surfaced with right around 500 psi in my tank and to me this is a empty tank I will not breath it down below 500 psi ever. Even though at such a shallow depth I know, I could have made it back but a empty tank is a empty tank yes?


The only thing that went in our favor on this dive was while doing our safety stop on the way up the East Wall we happened across a rare find for some time there had been a pair of Monkey Faced Eels living over at the Point
But they had disappeared some time ago and well we spotted one in a hole among the rocks along the East Wall
That was cool and the long surface swim gave Doug and I a chance to catch up on our Gossip, But all in all it was a grate day

Thanks Doug we really should do this more often

Sparky

[Diver Doug]

All right Sparky, you can't take all the blame for the surface swim. If we hadn't gotten so sidetracked chasing women---------( crab that is ) we wouldn't have ended so far down the wall. And if the tide had changed when it was supposed too. Oh well.
I dove sunday as well and found one more crab. It was pretty silted from some newbees in front of me, so I turned around prematurly and went a little shallower back down the wall. Good dive. Burned much less air when not trying to keep you out of trouble ( yeh right ).
Monday I rteentered the water to retrieve that crab trap. The neighbor wanted it so I tried out my new lift bag. Worked great.
Thanks for the excellent dive Sparky.
Doug

[sparky]

Doug: you pulled the crab pot out cool

hope you made the neibor pay for the air LOL

had a grate time my self thanks for haveing us over
I ordered my wing should be in some time this week or first part of next week

Sparky

[thelawgoddess]

nice! but ... where did you get the steak?