This was our second liveaboard trip and our second Fin Life trip… and we had a blast! Getting there was easy. PDX to Santa Barbara and then to the marina to hop on the Conception, one of Truth Aquatics’ Dive boats. The biggest challenge was keeping all three of our bags under 50 pounds each, which was not easy with cold water gear. 49.5 pounds per bag. I was proud.
Our Dear Leaders of Fin Life, Jason and Jeanette, had capped the group at 21 on a boat with a 40 person capacity, giving us ample room to stow our gear and make living together a much less congested experience. Not your typical liveaboard yacht experience, the layout was basically downstairs bunkrooms in the style of a deep sea fishing charter boat. Thanks to Jeanette, we all peacefully cohabitated for the duration.
Truth Aquatics has an excellent reputation with divers, but most of us found our crew, with a few exceptions, to be pretty stand-offish. It may have been that we were all so self-sufficient, they could provide us little assistance. Except when we had to try and get back on the boat via the absolute worst boarding platform arrangement anyone ever dreamed of. “Throw yourself on the platform like you’re an Orca at Sea World getting your herring treat” was not my favorite way to get out of the water. I’m pretty sure all of us went home with bruised and scraped knees from our efforts to get back on the boat. The tanks provided were steel 85’s. For an air-sucking pig like me, it made for short dives. I think my longest dive topped out at around 40 minutes with most hovering around 30 minutes. On the other hand, the food was excellent and we never had a single bad meal.
We left the docks in the evening of May 25th and arrived at the southern-most Channel Island, San Clemente, the next morning. As usual, Shelli and I were the last ones to get in the water. Once in, however, we got our first taste of diving in the kelp forest. Admittedly, it can be a little unnerving as you swim through the denser stands because you can easily become entangled if you’re not very cognizant of your surroundings.
The next morning we were off to Catalina. It took us awhile to find some suitable dive sites. Visibility and current were not in our favor in several spots. Eventually we did find some really cool spots to explore and some of our shipmates got in a night dive as well. We departed Catalina later that night as we headed off to the Northern Channel Islands, arriving at Anacapa Island the next morning on Wednesday the 29th.
Anacapa is a narrow string of three islands that have cliffs and extremely steep hillsides going right into the water. With almost no landing sites, the place reminded me of Skull Island from Peter Jackson’s version of King Kong. Beautiful and forbidding, it was my favorite island on the trip because, aside from the lighthouse on the eastern end, the islands were all uninhabited and untouched – at least from our view. Once again currents and visibility stopped us from diving anywhere around the island, so we continued on to Santa Cruz Island, about an hour away. We dove two sites off Santa Cruz and then started back to Santa Barbara, a few hours away.
Sea Life. We saw lots of Garibaldi on every dive, along with a wide variety of rockfish and perch and kelp crab. Some of the standouts for us were the huge Bat Ray we stumbled upon, Horned Sharks, Spanish Shawl nudibranchs and a giant sheep (spider) crab. Sadly, we missed the giant Black Sea Bass that almost everyone else saw on two separate dives. On one dive I had off of Catalina with another shipmate, Orla, I found a dark green spiral-edged cylinder wedged in a rock. Later research showed it to be a Horned Shark’s egg case. On our last dive off of Santa Cruz, we found about 10 juvenile Horned Sharks all in an area maybe 20 feet square just laying among the rocks. Also, very cool. The kelp forest is definitely something to be seen and experienced. There really was nothing quite like it.
We all spent our last day in Santa Barbara, shedding nitrogen and exploring the restaurants and watering holes. Shelli and I rented some beach cruisers and spent a couple of hours pedaling along the waterfront until it was time to checkout and catch our flight home.
A great trip with friends, some of them made along the way. It was a unique experience that I would not mind trying again some day. Another item off the bucket list and a great reminder of why we like being Fin Lifers.
UPDATE: Labor Day morning, our What’s App group for the Channel Islands dive lit up when Diver Bruce told us of the burning of the Conception off Santa Cruz earlier that morning. They had overnighted at the same spot we did our last dives just 3 months prior. All of our hearts collectively broke as we continued to process the news. It could have been us so easily. As divers, we understand ours is a high-risk sport, but you never think of something like this happening.
As the actual cause of the fire will be under investigation for a long time. There will be finger-pointing, countless theories and the inevitable lawsuits. Perhaps they’ll find the cause. Now matter what, the repercussions will be far reaching.