La Jolla Shores, Sat July 5, 2008
We had an interesting dive this morning at La Jolla Shores. I wasn’t expecting much since this was my second dive without my strobe (should be back Monday, the battery had a loose wire). I decided to take along my 18-70mm lens to see what I could do with it with ambient light (not by choice). When we arrived at LJS at 6:30 am, you couldn’t see the surf from the parking lot, partly because it was such a low tide and partly because of the fog. Rob warned me that the waves were rather large, but I was jonesing to dive, so we went out regardless. Getting out was exciting, with overhead waves, surfers and fog. We had to duck under a few (waves) and it was a wide surf zone.
We made it out and started the long surface swim out. Soon, we realized that you couldn’t see the shore, let along Scripps pier. No lineups today. After seeing a couple of other divers stop and drop down, we decided we had gone far enough. Soon after reaching the bottom, I found that my flashlight wasn’t working. Hmm, first time for everything. We kept going out and down until we hit the first shallow wall around 50 feet. I noticed that the dive wasn’t as quiet as it normall is when I’m not exhaling. As it turns out, I had air leaks coming out of both my regulator and octo. The octo was leaking pretty bad, but with a little purging and jiggling, it slowed down to a steady trickle. Since I was focused on two leaking regs and wide angle shots, I have no idea what Rob saw during the dive. 
A little less than halfway through my air, I let Rob know that my regs were leaking so we could head in early.
Our swim in was pretty uneventful, other than ending up really far south (past the boat ramp). The waves were still there, but with patience and timing, we got in ok. With 3 pieces of degraded equipment, I was really concerned about my next trip to my local dive shop. Fortunately, the flashlight works now (no idea what fixed it) and neither reg was leaking after soaking for a bit. My guess is that a few of those waves on the way out were pretty rough on the gear.
Scott
Map to Dive Site at SeaStarAdventures.com
Max depth: 62 ft
Min temp: 56 F (Aeris), it’s usually a few deg colder than it reports
Vis: ~20+ at 50 ft, 5 ft above that.
Surf: overhead
Tags: la jolla, La Jolla canyon, san diego, scuba diving, seastar adventures, shore dives
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