It had been a while since I had not tried my luck in our local waters. It had been always too cold, or too wet, or too windy, or too dark. Every weekend I planned on going diving, that inner voice would go, eh, not today.  

But this week had been really  good from the reports I was reading online. Someone even had a great white shark bumping into their camera. The footage was impressive but after many had given their opinion, it turned out it had probably been a soup fin. Oh well. Nevertheless, conditions were looking good and it was time to get wet! 

So came Saturday morning, put the alarm clock even earlier than for work and drove to Laguna Beach to meet up with the SOCDC gang  for their weekly shore dive. We had half a dozen divers including a brand new one. 

We selected  Crescent because it's always good there, but since we had a new divers decided not to push to Dead Man's Reef. I was a bit disappointed   because I had hoped to finally learn the way there... Oh well. 

I managed to put my gear together OK, including my camera. Or so I thought.    

The ocean was choppy due to the high Santa Ana winds that we'd been having for a while. Surface surf was quite high but wave energy was very low which made entry and exit quite easy. Past the surf zone, donning my fins took a toll on me for some reason and I was out of breath for the next 10 minutes.  

Since the new diver had hard time with her gear and our fearless leader was helping her, I had some time to recuperate.  

Once I was ready to go down, I realized I could not find my dump valve string. Then it donned on me that I was looking for it on the wrong side. Doh. Still, I couldn't find it and asked for help. Our leader found the valve but not the string at first and started dumping the air from my BCD. I started to sink and since I did not have my reg in my mouth nor in my hand, I got a little scare for a few seconds, sinking down... Anyway, put more air in the BCD, got back breathing and finally found my string... I was exhausted... And nauseated because I then realized I had forgotten to take my Zantac. Nice to be back, they say! 

Finally, after what seemed like an hour, I got down and everything     was where it was supposed to be.   

Viz was pretty good for the location at about 25ft I'd say. Some areas were murkier than others. Couldn't find the great white, nor the soupfin for that matter. There was a shiton of lobsters everywhere as well as sea cucumbers. I had never seen that many cucumbers in a dive. It's like they're reproducing like rabbits. Found a bug abalone and a couple of eels with their cleaning shrimps but couldn't get a good shot of the eels. Kelp was great but my camera decided to get stuck in 1/125s so I couldn't get good sunbursts. Speaking of sun, it was on and off, so the kelp forest was pretty dark and spooky. Did not see the local harbor seals and the sea lions were nowhere to be seen. 

All in all a good first dive of the year after more than two years out of cold water. I need to refresh my skills a bit before I go solo I guess.