A Return To Cold Water Diving At Crescent Bay

I think I've been starting to go into diving withdrawals.


I spent November and December diving my butt off in warm clear water while working on the SDI Divemaster certification. And then once Christmas hit it was a hard stop as I flew back to the states to visit my family. I did get in a quick freshwater drift dive in San Marcos (the best drift dive in Texas!) but come on!

So once I was back from Santa Cruz I pinged Jack seeing if he was up for another two tank morning dive like we'd been doing before I left. He grumbled that he hadn't had to set an alarm since I'd left town and then cheerfully agreed to meet me at Crescent Wednesday morning.


And so just like that we were back!


It was a chilly overcast morning and when I picked up tanks at the dive shop they mentioned that the water had been 59 degrees F lately. Brr!

I will admit that after two months of wearing 3mm shorty wetsuits and just having to fall off boats to start the dive wrapping myself in a full 7mm wetsuit and dragging a steel tank down to the beach did maybe feel like a bit of work.


The waves were small though the forecast had them building around 10 am as the next storm system came in. Our entry was uneventful and we swam out to turn rock and dropped down aiming for the kelp forest down at around 30 ft.


If felt great diving through the kelp again but bloody crap it felt cold!


Vis was decent (for Laguna) and the kelp had grown quite a bit in the last few months.


I quickly started to regret not wearing a hood despite the fact I really dislike hoods. Either my wetsuit has compressed (almost certainly) or my cold tolerance has taken a bad hit in Thailand (quite possible).



We saw quite a few sizable groups of fish including a few I hadn't recalled seeing before here.


We did a second dive where I elected to leave the camera behind since it seemed like the waves were coming in and the vis was likely to drop.


I also ended up throwing on my 5mm hooded vest underneath my 7mm which did help a bit with the whole freezing thing though my hands and feet were quite cold by the end of the dive.

Have I mentioned I really need to get a drysuit?