I’ve heard of Homestead Crater and the warm (96F+) waters making it one of the more popular dive spots in all of Utah so I just HAD to dive it. After flying into Salt Lake City, the crater is less than an hour away by car and 20 minutes away from Park City, UT. The [...]
After diving Sunday the 15th in Palos Verdes aboard DiverCity, Captain Jim says “pack her up, we’re heading to the Island first light in the morning!” We did! And in the morning Monday the 16th, fog thick enough to risk collision with tankers made the trip a bit on edge until the visibility opened more [...]
HardcoreDiveTeam’s Tracy (Teapot) added to her recovery time and decided to pass this trip to another Hardcore diver! Teamwork! Coming from the California Ships to Reefs booth at Fred Hall Boat and Tackle Show to the DiveBuddy.com Rich Forster’s chartered Great Escape Dive Boat on Friday night was a breeze. Roomy bunks and a lively group of divers up [...]
DiverCity is on it’s usual rounds, captain Jim goes out for the 4th day in a weeks time!! This trip to mid kelp around SS Avalon wreck area to check on late season lobster populations=healthy numbers and size are found everywhere! Divers Jim, Chris, Ying, Brian scout out in different directions. Towards the shore again [...]
I’ve heard of Homestead Crater and the warm (96F+) waters making it one of the more popular dive spots in all of Utah so I just HAD to dive it.
After flying into Salt Lake City, the crater is less than an hour away by car and 20 minutes away from Park City, UT. The crater is at the Homestead Resort which is a pretty nice get-away in itself.
Pulling in, you see car loads of divers unpacking gear. These folks are mostly students getting OW certification. Before you can even go in, you need to go to the Activities Center to sign up. They absolutely adhere to the buddy system and even tho’ you’re bumping into other divers in this tight location, you can’t go solo, even with a solo c-card. To dive, you pay $27 and an additional $25 for full gear rental. Not TOO bad.
So I scheduled a dive and was assigned a buddy. Going in you see how small the area is. It’s about 50′ diameter and 60′ deep. And it’s REALLY warm! 96 degrees on my computer. Into the water I go. My buddy and I started to submerge to the first platform at 20′. You can just make out the platform so the viz was a good 20′ in the crater. From there we paused to check out all the other divers around us. We made out the next platform which was a large PVC square that you can hang onto, at an additional 20′. So down we went.
I forgot to mention 6000′ altitude, this was my first altitude dive and programmed my computer with that dive. Down we went to the 40′ platform and then we could see the bottom. At another 10 feet there’s a marker that warns not to go further. They don’t want anyone down on the bottom stirring up the soot. So stopped and looked around. Nothing but divers and a few platforms. Even the sides look like standard cave sides that you can observe up close on the surface.
After about 5 minutes of descending, we really didn’t know what to do. Nothing to explore. No fish or crustaceans or anything living in there but us divers. We swam the outer parameter which took 3 minutes and decided we had enough.
We ascended up to the 20′ platform for a safety and just sat there for a bit looking at the scuba classes. That got a little boring after awhile and decided to end the dive.
The crater dive is just a novelty dive that really doesn’t have much to offer except as a great open water training spot. Nice to try once, but don’t know why anyone would want to do repeat dives.
The biggest scuba event of the year “The Scuba Show” held on the west coast in Southern California was option #1 for the day, option #2 was dive! Option #2 for 6 divers was the choice. Original founding HCDT Tracy is back in business! 
We went out to Avalon wreck to get clear cold water, 15′ vis, down on the structure. The surface to 50′ was 4′ vis thick spring green. Dive number 2 went to Flat Rock, just before getting in a bull california sea lion was slapping a near legal sized white seabass. Getting in the vis was a good 5 ft, and we did some urchin collecting. 
Both dives were nice!
Rock Crab Hunting (and eating)
Wednesday nights at Veterans Park in Redondo Beach is always lively with the scuba crowd. But there’s excellent hunting in those waters for rock crab and shrimp!
Packed the turkey fryer with a full tank of propane and headed to the pier. Got suited up and into the water we go!
After swimming out about 100 yards, a drop down placed us right on the edge of the canyon. Headed out to see a bit to about 60 feet and we started hitting the legal size crabs. Made a sharp left to follow the canyon at that same level and the bag stuffing began.
After about 20 minutes, I hit my limit. But there’s a 20 pound limit for shrimp and there were plenty of them! Unfortunately, those suckers are hard to catch! I didn’t catch a single one but my dive buddy Tim caught 2.
Then we brought back our booty and got the pot boiling. Cooked the crabs and the 2 shrimp along with corn and potatoes… and had a wonderful feast right there at the park.
It was so much fun, we may have this a regular Weds night thing. Be sure to check the calendar here to keep an eye out of this event happening.
A wonderful trip to Santa Barbara Island on the Sand Dollar. Since it was an early departure (1AM), everyone started checking in around 7pm. The Sand Dollar is located right at Port o’ Call so there was plenty of food and drink and entertainment.
After getting to the first dive spot, the Rookery, and after eating a pretty nice breakfast, the sea lions were already at the boat greeting us.
It was pretty shallow with all the dives. Never got below 30 feet. But there were lots to see and do. The sea lions were unlimited fun. Like playing with puppies. The viz at the Rookery wasn’t the best. Maybe 10 feet. But we moved on to Arch Point and things got better. At arch point there were lots of high walls and canyons to drift around in.
A very good Sunday. Can’t wait to get back to SB Island.
After diving Sunday the 15th in Palos Verdes aboard DiverCity, Captain Jim says “pack her up, we’re heading to the Island first light in the morning!” We did!
And in the morning Monday the 16th, fog thick enough to risk collision with tankers made the trip a bit on edge until the visibility opened more than 1/8 mile!
We showed up Monday around 1 PM just outside of the empty Isthmus Cove Harbor 
to at least 80 degree sunny skies. We jumped into the water in over 50ft vis and raging current-OH YEAH!! Got a mooring, and went ashore! Came back and sacked out!
The next morning, Tues at 7 AM coffee was ready and so were the warmed wet suits hanging in the sunshine, water looked like glass with no trace of wind!!
First 2 dives around 8 AM on the Isthmus Cove Harbor Reef, vis 50+ft!!! The third that day went back to the point just west of the harbor!! We had fish for dinner!! Department of Fish and Game boarded the boat just as dinner was served!
We offerd them freshly fried garabaldi fish chips and baby back black sea bass ribs!! haha!! Went to shore!! Came back and sacked out!
The next morning, Weds after coffee we went to look at Crane Point and the surrounding underwater topography was like 180 ft within 200 ft of shore–nice!!
First morning dives
We went to shore. Came back and sacked out!
The next morning, Thurs some coffee and we headed to the west end of this island around Parsons Landing! Water looked good, the point steep, kelp thick and rich. Everything looked good enough to anchor.
Got in the vis was spectacular, kelp was beautiful, only fish were slightly on the side of vacant. 
So after an long dive we weighed anchor, and set the Auto Pilot to North! Cut our way back through the monster freighters missing them only by 1/4 mile. Hit Palos Verdes and the green water welcomed us home!!
The next morning, Friday 4-21-2012!! Headed back out to Rocky Point PV and then the Avalon wreck! Vis was about 3ft on the surface and staying that until 40-50ft depth. Then it was a good 20ish but cold water. The Avalon same thing except a horrid surface current! Going down the anchor rode was a breeze, not finding the line on the way up, made for a hellacious surface swim back to the boat!! DiverCity will always come get a diver swept away by current or just wandering off too far. Plus it has couple hundred feet of current line if that makes your swim easier. HardcoreDiveTeam divers are used to diving so much that those swims are nothing even going against a strong current. So the whole week was nick named “The End of April Blues” as we sure hated to see it go!