We took the "Yellow Boat", out of (somewhere close to?) San Diego harbor.
It's a small aluminum boat with room for up to 6 divers in single if you're all really good friends. In our case, there were just the three of us, and we had planned on two dives.
On the way out, we passed by the "Mushroom" house, which my buddies (and the boat captain) tried to convince me was the home of Dr Seuse's Widow. Still not sure if they were pulling my leg or not!
Dive1: Scripps Canyon
Max Depth: 106 feet (sorry Metric people)
Avg Depth: 80 feet
Dive Time: 36 mins
Water Temp: 56F at depth
This is mostly a boat dive, unless you scooter along the shore from a pier that's (mostly) too far away to easily surface swim.
Here's a ling to some info on Scripps Canyon:
http://scilib.ucsd.edu/sio/ocean/canyon/
Scripps is just within DIR recreational range on 32% (you can see stuff starting at 100 feet), and from what I understand it's pretty good down to 150 depending on the conditions.
Unfortunately, conditions are usually not so good at this site, and we had about 15 feet of green visibility, so none of my photos really came out.
Som hilarity ensued as we dropped down the line. One of the team had a scooter, and was going to (slowly) lead the dive. As we hit about 70 feet, she turned to me and handed me the propellor of her scooter (so much for the vaunted Gavin relibatilith
. At first I thought she was joking, but nope, it had become detached.
We made a (vain) attempt to fix it before clipping it off to the line (motor still spinning -- we couldn't shut the engine off).
We proceeded throught the (so wonderfully named) "Rotting Detritus" which is basically a big compost heap at the entrance to the canyon full of rotting old kelp (luckily I didn't get any pics of that bit), then proceeded along the canyon.
This is an awesome dive, even in poor conditions as the walls just drop off into nowhere below you, and seem to close in on all sides. Apparently there is a swim-through (or some such) that you can enter at 130 feet and come out at 150 (but we're only good for 100 feet, so that's for another day).
Amazingly, despite the conditions, I could see light from the surface at 70 feet on the way back. Did a nice slow ascent through the detritus and after a rather worrying moment when we couldn't locate the scooter, ascended up the line back to the boat.
Back on the boat, Danny had hot tea and carrot cake waiting for us, and as the sun had started to come out, we soaked a little of it up while waiting for our next dive: The Yukon at night
Dive 2: The Yukon
Max Depth: 97
Average Depth: 72
Dive Time: 36 mins
Temp: 59F
I've never dived the Yukon before, so I was put in the middle with the camera.
The Yukon is a 366 foot Destroyer that was sunk as an artificial reef just outside the harbor.
http://www.cawreckdivers.org/Wrecks/Yukon.htm
Unfortunately, before the explosives that were supposed to sink the ship went off, she sank on her own due to the holes that had been drilled in her
So now the wreck is sitting on its side instead of upright.
The max depth possible (without a shovel) is 100 feet, and stuff can still be seen at 70, so a perfect second dive on 32%
We descended the line into a gentle current, and spent 25 mins or so having a look under the bow and going up one side and back.
I got some OK pictures, but there was a lot of particulate in the water, and the vis was not so great, so the wreck itself is hard to make out.
This is definitely a dive I want to come back and do under more optimal conditions.
if you're trained for it, I hear the Yukon is a cool penetration dive -- but that day is very far off for me!