This morning Steph drove to Monterey so that we could go diving on the Escapade. It was a good 2 dives, but all sorts of things went on. We went out to stillwater cove in Carmel. The boat tried to get us to Cathedrals, but the kelp and wind made it too difficult. We ended up getting tangled in the kelp anyway, but the dive was nice. I was buddied with Mai, and she was overweighted. When we tried to surface she was too overweighted to make it up, so I had to drop her weights and help her to the surface. Steph buddied with Jason, who had the exact opposite problem. He had just enough weight to make it down, but when he was surfacing on both dives he popped right to the surface. He also didn’t know how to position himself correctly to empty the BCD, so he was having issues from that as well.
We ended up diving Erik’s Pinnacle as the second dive and it was really nice. I would really like to go back there and dive it again. Mai sat out the second dive after the weight issue and the kelp monster issue. We got to see tons of fish, sea slugs, nudibranchs, and an octopus. The octopus was sitting on a yellow sea star and trying to blend in by being yellow as well; it wasn’t working. He was really cute, and we looked up the species afterwards as the red octopus.
After the dives we went and picked up Steph’s new hood at otter bay. The cat ears look better, but not great still. I drove back and took the fast way, going back over 17. Along the way we stopped at one of the fresh produce stands and got all sorts of snack foods and fresh fruits. I got 23 avocados, 20 tiny ones, and 3 massive ones of a different type. I think we should take 17 back every time we go to Monterey, but we will just have to see whatever Waze says will be the fastest way when we are ready to head out. It was pretty accurate on this trip.
