Sole Searchers Newsletters

We had our first outing of the year with Ken Kollwitz and Channel Islands Dive Adventures (CIDA) on the Raptor out of Ventura Harbor. The trip was to the wreck of the Peacock off Santa Cruz Island. The Peacock is a WWII minesweeper and sits upright on a sandy bottom at about 65′ deep.

Our first attempt to get on the wreck had to be aborted as the anchor was dragging along the bottom and only two divers managed to find it. We all managed the second attempt without any problems. The hull structure was fairly intact with some superstructure left as well. Visibility was around 40′. There was plenty of life on and around the the wreck with the most numerous, and largest, Spanish Shawls that I have seen in one place.

The second dive was at ‘No Name Reef’ with some pretty big sheephead and lobsters here. The last dive was at ‘Let’s See 2′. The urchins had been out in strength here so it was fairly barren.

Thanks to Jim Babor, Gary, Shawn, Jack and Anastasia for a great day out. You can see the photographs from the trip on the club web site.

For anyone who is interested we are looking at another trip with CIDA on July 17th again on the Raptor but this time to to Anacapa for the TBM Avenger Plane Wreck. The Avenger is a WWII Navy torpedo bomber that crashed on a training mission in the early 50’. It sits in about 115’-120’ close to a shallower reef.

Bromley

Hi all,

If anyone is receiving calendar feeds, I have switched calendars to the google calendar and no longer updating the localendar version. The google calendar is very easy to update and (currently) has no ads. If you use google calendar personally and would like to have the dive club calendar overlaid on your own calendar (shared) just let me know and I will add you.

The calendar is also embedded on the club’s site here http://www.solesearchersdiveclub.com/calendar/index.html

The new calendar will also allow mapping locations of events. The Scuba Show event has been updated with location, Discount coupon and link to the show site.

Lars

With water temperatures 12 degrees below normal it was perfect dry suit weather in the Florida Keys. Some really brave divers were wearing 3 mm suits.

The trip started with most of us meeting up in Miami airport where we demonstrated that a Lincoln Town car was the perfect dive vehicle. It holds 4 people and 12 bags, has room for tanks in the trunk recess and a wide bumper for putting on gear. That must be one testimonial they have not had before!

Most of our dives were with Conch Republic Divers who did an excellent job of looking after us and providing replacement equipment to anyone who needed it. The dives on the Spiegel Grove, a 510’ Navy supply ship, were the highlight of the trip for many of us with plenty of wreck penetration opportunities which were laid out with guidelines where an exit was not clearly visible.

The other wrecks we dove near Key Largo were the Eagle, a 287’ freighter lying on its side and broken in two, and the Duane, a 327’ Coast Guard cutter. All of the wrecks were accessible and well within recreational limits.

The other highlight of the trip was the Vandenberg, a 524’ missile tracking ship near Key West with the signature tracking dishes. We saw large barracuda at many of the safety stops but on the Vandenburg there were more than I had seen before patrolling the deck.

My thanks to Gary & Gary, Heather, Kathleen, Melani, Sheree, Carolyn and Kurt for making this trip. I would definitely like to do this again but preferably without the dry suit.

Bromley

Hey, there’s a write up about our club in the fall 2009 issue of Pasadena’s Rose Magazine!

Here’s what the article says.

SEARCHING FOR SOLE

YOU DON’T HAVE TO TRAVERSE the Pacific to get a glimpse of the creatures of the underwater world.  There’s plenty to see right off the beautiful, sunny coast of Southern California. Every month, members of the Sole Searchers Dive Club, www.solesearchersdiveclub.com, explore the waters of Laguna, Malibu and even Santa Barbara — observing creatures like Bat Rays, orange Garibaldi fish, sea fans, large crab and more.  The club is made up of beginners, dive instructors and dive masters from all over the San Gabriel Valley and Pasadena who meet the second Monday of every month. But before you make your first dive, make sure you obtain your required SCUBA diving certification. To find local dive shops that offer certification courses, visit www.ladiver.com

Rose Magazine is a publication of the Inland Custom Publishing Group, a division of the Inland Newspaper Group, and the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group, which publishes the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune and Whittier Daily News.

The two photos pictured are from the club 2008 Philippines trip.  The photos were taken at Verde Island, and the diver in the photo is none other than Jimmy Quan.

At our July meeting, we had a fantastic presentation from Kurt Lieber founder & president of Ocean Defenders Alliance.  We all learned a lot on the topic of what we as recreational divers can do to help get rid of lost lobster traps and fishing nets along our coastline.  These abandoned traps and nets (hundreds, perhaps thousands of them?) continue to kill animals years after they’ve become lost to the fisherman.  Please go check out their website for more information. They’re doing a great service to our marine environment.

Also, since many of the members were very interested in this cause, we’re in the process of possibly arranging a dive out on their boat to help out with one of their cleanup missions. Stay tuned, and we’ll announce more information.

Oh yes, and don’t forget to check out the video on their website. It’s a segment originally aired on KCET on 6/4/09.

Meanwhile, check out the club calendar for upcoming dives. Members expressed they want more beach dives, so we’ll schedule some more soon.

Congrats to the raffle winners. We also would like to thank Hollywood Divers for their generous donations to our monthly club raffle. Go check out Hollywood Divers if you haven’t. They have have lots of dive gears to choose from, and tech gears not easy to find.

Scuba Pro women’s rash guard: Melani
Nitrox fill card: Melani
Signal mirror: Kaz Aizawa
Trident instrument retractor: Kaz Aizawa
Mesh backpack pack bag: Barbara
Nitrox Manual: Barbara
Atomic mouth piece: Shawn Broes
Beach bag: Shawn Broes
Signal rattle stick: Greg
Max wax: John
Wet notes underwater writing tablet: John
Silicone grease: Bromley
Nitrox fill card: Bromley
Hollywood Divers t-shirt: Jimmy Quan
Ocean Defenders Alliance t-shirt: Richardo Kalfayan
Ocean Defenders Alliance t-shirt: Andrea Casanova
Underwater notebook: Jon House

A few of us ventured out to the local islands for, dare I say, a day of non-diving on Saturday. It was truly a great experience! We boarded the Island Packer’s boat “Islander”, chartered by the Catalina Conservancy, and left at the non-diving time of 8am! We spotted grey whales off Santa Cruz island on the way. A boat like this goes out of its way to see whales and give everyone the great Channel Islands experience that keeps folks coming back. We had a yummy pre-made lunch on the beautiful lush beach at Becher’s Bay (1st photo) Santa Rosa, then hiked Cherry Canyon. We passed the old Vail & Vicker’s ranch on the way, dating back to the 1800’s (2nd photo).

The hike was moderate one lead by a National Park Service (NPS) volunteer. The NPS runs four of our eight local islands, and shares responsibility for a fifth one, Santa Cruz, the largest local island. Great endemic wild flowers were in bloom, and the local Torrey Pines were plentiful. Weather was really quite good for this area, known for its perpetual winds. It was calm, cool, and sunny at times. The trail winds through various terrain, and loops back towards the beach after reaching a nice elevation (3rd photo).

Heading home we saw (and followed) blue whales, and had a detailed tour of Santa Cruz’s amazing North coast. We even took the Islander deep into the largest sea cave on the planet, known as Painted Cave (4th photo). Pretty wild to see a large boat cruise effortlessly into a cave. I could see they’ve done that a few times! One of the most beautiful anchorages along the coast was Pelican Bay (5th photo). I hope to do this one again.

Shawn

http://www.islandpackers.com/

Staying with the Sole, from our previous logo.  We dropped the diver, and the Sole now is breathing from a scuba tank.  No mask since it would hide the funny set of eyes that gives character to this special flat fish.  We’re planning to make  stickers and patches first.  Then move onto banner.  I’m hoping to find an inexpensive T-shirt printer, but we may have to go the route of Zazzle since we won’t have to pay upfront to print hundreds of T-shirts.   Just think how good this logo will look on the upper left hand side of either white or black T-shirt.  Also, add the proposed slogan on the back saying…

At our March meeting the room was packed. People were eager for the special presentation by Lisa Queen to begin. Lisa had generously agreed to present the PADI equipment specialty presentation to the club, giving the opportunity for those who were interested a PADI equipment specialty certification (with the course fee). 25 of the members took advantage of this offer. The presentation covered aspect of today’s dive equipment available, from masks to fins, regulators to dry suits, it was all covered. Along with a powerpoint presentation, Lisa brought in several equipment for demonstration purposes. Great thanks goes out to Lisa for agreeing to do this special presentation, and for bringing many new divers to join the club.

At the meeting we added 7 new members.

Please welcome these new divers to the Sole Searchers Dive Club.

Daniel Irvin Hurst
Ricardo A. Kalfayan
Robert M. Krinke
Andrew Y. Lee
William M. Nelson
Cecilia Cruz Reardon
Matthew Shenouda

First and foremost, I would like to thank the following dive shops, and persons for contributing to our February raffle.

Sport Chalet
Hollywood Divers
Jeff Laity
Anastasia Laity

Also thank you Jack Leeflang for being our raffle chair.

We had some great prizes to give away at our February meeting, and great thanks goes out to those who contributed to our raffle. Your support of our club helps keep it a “fun club.” My personal take on diving is “Life can be hard, diving should be fun.” And if we keep the activity of diving fun, we dive more, the more you dive, the more experienced you become, so hopefully you’ll become a safer diver at the same time. Well you get the idea.

Our guest speaker for February meeting was Nikki Pieper. She gave us some pointers on underwater photography, and a way to organize and present those images using a service called Creative Memories. You can check out the service, and I’m sure if you have any questions, Nikki will gladly answer them for you. You can contact her through Hollywood Divers, or check out her website at divinin.com.  In fact, she has a trip to Borneo in May if you’re interested. They’re diving Sipadan, Kapalai, and Mabul.

As you can see below under “March Speaker Info.” Lisa Queen has generously volunteered to give our club a PADI Equipment Specialty presentation next month. The presentation is free to anyone, but if you would like a PADI Equipment Specialty certification along with it, then there is a nominal fee of $20 for club members. Oh yes, you also need to have your C-card, or a photocopy. It’s such a great deal that I’m bringing my $20, and my C-card. Thank you Lisa!

For those of you going to the Avalon Harbor Cleanup (see more info below), please utilize the club group e-mail to request carpooling. You do need to be a member in order to be on the group e-mail list, so if you haven’t joined yet, more reason to join the club.

We also have some new boat dives added thanks to Shawn and Bromley. Thanks guys, you’re awesome! Also Shawn sent a link to a very interesting website called Vintage scuba supply. I really want one of those oval dive masks now.

The Philippines trip is sold out now (23 members are going), but there’s already talk about Cozumel for next year. It looks like the trend is to dive the Pacific side one year, and then the Caribbean side the next. Of course there’s always the Sea of Cortez too

In a bid to improve the website and other online features available to the club I have upgraded to a different hosting service. The existing site has been moved over and to date I have activated this blogger. I hope to make more changes and revisions as time goes, including updating the whole look of the site. Believe it or not, I have very little experience with Blogs so we’ll see how my first crack at it goes.

I invite comments, suggestions and help from any and all club members. If you have a great idea for the look of the site or you have skills in web design or similar, I would love your input. As with all the members and officers of the club who donate their very valuable time, I also understand how busy our lives are. Nevertheless, I find the contributions and time I give back to the club as a theraputic release from my normal job. I hope you can find a bit of spare time to contribute.

Thanks

Lars Dennert, Secretary for Sole Searchers Dive Club, Inc.