The scuba curse has lifted! I finally got to go diving again yesterday.

We (a group of people from my local dive shop) went out on the Magician dive boat. The original plan was to dive some wrecks in San Pedro Harbor but the harbormaster nixed that idea so we went to Catalina Island instead for a 3-dive day.

Dive #1 was at Italian Gardens. I was buddied up with two strangers, Mike and Kevin. Kevin has about 20 dives under his belt, while Mike claims to have lost count. Our dive plan was to drop down to 50 or 60 feet (as an Open Water rated diver my max depth is supposed to be 60 feet) and then head toward the shallower water toward the shoreline and look for the group of Giant Black Sea Bass that have been seen hanging out there recently. We ended up going to the bottom at 70 feet before I realized I was too deep, so I went up to 60 and followed Kevin and Mike from up there. We never did see the Sea Bass, but for entertainment Mike cut up some sea urchins to feed the Garibaldis. I went through my air pretty quickly and we had to surface after 22 minutes.

Dive #2 was also at Italian Gardens. Mike was seasick so he didn’t dive. Kevin and I went down to about 45 feet and just swam around for about 40 minutes (your air lasts longer when you don’t go so deep!). We saw a hint of movement way out at the edge of visibility and as we watched one of the Giant Black Sea Basses slowly swam into view. He was about 4 1/2 to 5 feet long (it’s hard to judge size underwater) and was totally unconcerned with us. We followed him for about five minutes, and then it seemed as if he finally noticed us behind him. He paused, turned his head back to look at us, then angled back around and swam over to check us out. He came within about 15 feet of us, we gave each other a good long look, and then he slowly swam away again. That was pretty cool. When we surfaced we found we were about 50 yards from the boat and had to swim against the current to get to it. That was pretty not cool but we made it.

For Dive #3 we moved the boat a mile or two up the coast to Red Lava Point West. There, the captain pointed out a cave at the waterline in the cliff face at the shore and said it was horseshoe shaped and safe to swim through. Mike was still sick and didn’t dive again, so Kevin and I decided to start by swimming through the cave and then just explore along the coast at about 40 feet. The cave turned out to be a dead end — we went in about 30 yards as it got narrower and narrower with the surge bashing us up against the rock floor and sides of the cave. Kevin was leading and went so far in that he was practically crawling before I called him back because I wasn’t wearing gloves and my hands were getting torn up on the rocks as I tried to hold my position back in deeper water. After the cave we loafed around for about 40 minutes, varying between 40 and 15 feet before we surfaced literally right next to the boat. After the dive the captain announced that, oops, he had anchored at the wrong spot and the horesehoe cave was actually about 100 yards away. He drove the boat past it so we could “at least say you’ve seen it.” Ha.

All in all, it was a good day of diving. I got to go deep, got to see a Giant Black Sea Bass, and got to bleed. But the main thing is that I got to dive. Finally.

Aaahhhh….