***Guest Blogger-Bryan Simpson
Well, as some of you may already know, I have a FANTASTIC wife. Why, you might ask? Well, she sent me, again, on this fabulous trip to the Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. There was a chance that we could go to the "Cortes Banks". This is an underwater mountain and now coral reef 100 miles out at sea, right at the US, Mexico border. As it turned out the weather was good enough to go out there. Why would we need to wait for good weather, you might ask. Well, this is also the place where the largest surfable wave on record was formed. Yes, larger than Hawaii. I saw the video.
So we loaded up and headed out at about 9:30 pm from Santa Barbara. Excitement and anticipation created energy that made it difficult to sleep. "This is the place where you have to push the small Lobster out of the way so you can pick up the big ones." OMG, OMG! Yeah, that's what they said. I wanna kick "they" right in the ding-a-ling.
Morning arrived and we were there. The promised land! Ok, the promised sea! Whatever. It's the middle of nowhere! And I mean NOWHERE! But we were excited. So we suited up and jumped in. The water was even warmer than where we were supposed to go so, even better! My first dive lasted about 4.5 minutes. I got to the bottom, after a nice controlled decent. Knelt on the bottom and hit the button to give a couple "burps" of air to my BC (that's the funny looking vest that holds all of our crap and makes us look cool). This is a simple maneuver and helps maintain what we call "neutral" buoyancy, or not floating, no sinking. Just 2 squirts. Hmmm, I'm floating up. Ok, no prob. Push the release valve, and back down I go. C'mon, back down. BACK DOWN DAMMIT! CRACK! My head hits the boat. DAMMIT (again. More cussing, but this is a family blog)! Ok, uh, WTF! Crack! (More colorful words) I've just hit the rescue skiff now too. Ok, I'm out from under and I feel like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. Yeah, the valve is still stuck on and my BC (vest) is FULL of air. Huh. Yep, a malfunction on the first damn dive. Sweet. And I'm in the Promised Sea, missing out on scads of Lobster.
So I get out and wait for Charlie, my surrogate dive expert/shop owner, dive extraordinaire to give me some words of wisdom. Ok, just get me back in the damn water. Dive #2. Much more normal. I now have to control the valve manually. It no longer pops back out by itself. Oh, well. I'm in the Promised Sea. It'll make everything better. Huh, this is hard. I'm fighting the surge (currents that push us around) and I'm breathing REALLY hard (I'm an air hog. This will come into play on dive #3). Ok, #2 ends. No Lobster. Didn't even see one. Huh, promised sea (yeah, no longer capped). The boat moves for each dive. So we move. Dive #3. Again, working hard and I'm an air hog. I'm with one of the guys that I met and I'm at 500 lbs, heading back. Breath. B r e a t h . Huh, that one seemed a little tough. B r e a t h . Uhm, check my gauge. HOLY SHIT, I MEAN CRAP, I MEAN AAAHH WORDS! I'M OUT OF AIR AT 40 FEET!!! Emergency accent. Try to remain calm. Swim fast, but not too fast. Don't hold your breath, but I feel like I've run 3 miles. B r e a t h . Uhm, that one was REALLY tough. SwimSwimSwim! B r e a t h . Oh, boy. I really want to be at the surface. There it is. Don't hold your breath. OUT ON TOP!!! WOOOOOO! Go to snorkel. DUMBASS!!! Paddle, paddle back to the boat.
Ok, survived problem #2 and I've only been in the water three freakin' times! Ok, so we move again aaaannnnddd, no Lobster. Now either I suck, or this aint the promised sea. I really do believe it's a combination of the two at this point. Charlie has Lobster, but that guy has literally thousands of dives and lots more experience than me. It's the same in my job. I've got lots of years as a Paramedic. We get newbs who come and ride and almost always ask the same questions: "What's the worst call you've been on? Do you like to drive the ambulance? Do you get sick on bad calls? Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, in diving, I'm that guy. Like that stupid cartoon from Tom and Jerry years with the big bull dog and the little one that keeps bugging him. I'm like "hey Charlie, hey Charlie, hey Charlie". "EEEHHHHH SHET UUUUPPP!" Smack with his snorkel. Whatever. I'll do it on my own dammit.
I think we ended Day 1 with 6 dives total. Lobster for Bryan: 0. Wow. Now we came all this way, why? The night was uneventful, but the wind came up and it was beginning to get a bit rough. No night dive.
On Day 2, I believe we had 2 morning dives and then left the "promised sea" for calmer waters. Promised Sea Lobster for Bryan: 0. And I was not the only one. Screw Charlie with his 11 Lobster. Ass munch.
We cruised in some rough seas, probably 10 foot swells, over to St. Nicholas. Ah, land. It just felt better to be near it, even if it is a military-only island and if we need something, well, we can piss right off. Any way, WOOO HOOO MY FIRST EVER LOBSTER! As you can see I have a happy smile. In the bag, baby. I think 9 of 10 that went into the water came up with Lobster. During the time we were there, the guys who'd been doing this trip for years said, we caught more "LARGE" Lobster on this trip than any other year. And we did catch some Monsters! Ok, I didn't, but I've never been one to complain about size. Don't laugh. That wasn't funny.
"Well, the weather started getting rough. The 85 ft boat was tossed. . ." Ok, so we anchored at St. Nic and woke up on day 3 to another fabulous breakfast, and more wind. So on our second dive that day, we knew we'd be leaving soon so I was first at the gate. When they opened it, I jumped in. So I'm down there, doing my thing (calmer now and using the surge instead of fighting it like I should have been) when I hear this beeping, like a digital watch. WTF is that? So I hold my breath and listen. Oh, that's the emergency recall. Ok, time to surface and the boat should be right thereHOLYCRAP. Yeah, I surfaced some 500 yds from the boat. Apparently after I got in the captain said "don't let'em in. We're dragging the anchor." So I hold up my "OK" arms and they come and get me. I guess that could be a survivor story, sort-of, but the others over-shadow it quite a bit. Everyone gave me crap and then they topped off my air and I got back in. At this point we had been told this will be it, and because of the wind we're heading out again to another island about 6 hrs away and closer to Santa Barbara. Groan, groan, ok. Then the generator fails. Huh. Well, we eat our snack and commence card playing. And then more card playing. And then we go and get our flash lights, for MORE card playing. This is bad. They finally fixed the wires and did dinner. So the wind, as you might have guessed, has really picked up, and some of us are humming "A 3 hour tour. A 3 hour tooouuuurrrr." We started out across the wide open sea, and WOW were we getting our asses POUNDED. That boat seemed like little more than one of those fun little popsicle-stick boats from Boy Scouts that you float down a rain gutter. UUUUPPP! SLAM! UUUUPPP! SLAM! roll roll roll. Repeat. The captain told us later that was the worst he'd ever been in, in that boat and we were lucky for the moon because he might not have seen some of the monster waves otherwise. Huh, I'm not so sure you needed to tell me that, but hey, whatever makes you feel better. He called us "tough" because the other 2 boats in the company went back on the morning of day 4 and we were diving. I think we were just too stupid to realize that we'd flirted with death and walked with just a kiss. That night one of the deck-hands got knocked down in the wheel-house and split the back of his head open. It just so happened that we had a Doctor, 2 Dentists and 2 Paramedics on board. Between the 3 of us we had surture material and bandaging. The Doc sewed him up and we got him bandaged and then everyone continued barfing. It was the stuff of legends.
Well, day 4 brought sun and calm water. We were also able to see, and collect a few more Lobster. The problem was that the island we were at was hunted more often and there were LOTS of Lobster that were too small. Fun to look at and chase, but couldn't take them home. Oh well. We put in 3 or 4 more dives and then packed it in and headed for the docks, thoroughly exhausted, but full of stories for everyone at home. The trip across the channel was pretty rough, but nothing compared to the other night. Several people commented that it was good that it happened at night so we couldn't actually see how close to death we were. I think I would have to agree.
Thank you honey, for loving me enough to put me through a near-death experience. I will have to come up with a really good way to repay you.
