Get Bent Scuba Diving Blog

This is my combination Scuba Diving Log and Blog. I'll post dive reports, underwater pictures and video here. I'll discuss scuba diving related articles and diving, ocean & marine related news and throw in my 2 psi. I may even announce new designs and promotions in our store. Feel free to comment on any post.

Monday, July 31, 2006

Dive #67-69

Dive #67
Time In: 10:52
Viz: 5-15'
Bottom Temp: 81F
Bottom Time: 00:49
Max Depth: 34'
Buddie(s): Jay, Bob

Dive #68
Time In: 13:35
Viz: 5-20'
Bottom Temp: 83F
Bottom Time: 01:31 [a new personal long]
Max Depth: 34'
Buddie(s): Art / SOLO

Dive #69
Time In: 17:10
Viz: 10-15'
Bottom Temp: 83F
Bottom Time: 01:02
Max Depth: 32'
Buddie(s): Jay

Sunday was the 1st Scubaboard Desert Dive at Lake Pleasant. Met Jay a new dive buddy at Scorpion Bay before the masses arrived. The lake level was down another 15' or so from my last scuba dive there. We actually had to giant stride into the lake from about about a 4' rock ledge, it was fun, never thought I'd be doing that. Water was warm, weather was great, company was Pleasant [pun intended]. Moonie the Scubaboard traveling gnome made an appearance and we got some pics. I shot some great video on my solo dive but unfortunately forgot in my haste to shoot Moonie to set the white balance and the video turned out green, I may piece it together anyway some time. Saw the usual fish, Bass, Carp, Bluegill, Catfish, etc. There was probably 20+ scuba divers there during the peak of the day and many more shore support and kids. A fun time was had by all [I think] and looking forward to the next Desert Dive. Thanks for the Moonie pics Art!

posted by Garrett # 11:22 PM 3 comments

Thursday, July 27, 2006

2 New Designs and Coupons

Well this design pretty much says it all doesn't it? Give the finger to whomever you'd like with this classic gesture, complete with scuba dive flag logo on the finger nail. Get bent scuba diver logo featured on the front or back of certain products.

Click here to shop now!

Pirate at heart? With this Get Bent logo with scuba dive flag and jolly roger emblem you can feel like a pirate with Old World Font. Remeber Logo Apparel always benefits charity.

Click here to shop now!

Coupons:
Code: NBK129 $3 off when you spend $10 or more expires 7/30/06
Code: SRV129 $5 off when you spend $35 or more expires 8/01/06
Code: AUG640 $6 off when you spend $40 or more expires 8/31/06

posted by Garrett # 12:52 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Newsflash: Navy diver from 'Men of Honor' dies at 75

by Michael Felberbaum, Associated Press

RICHMOND, Va. - Carl M. Brashear, the first black U.S. Navy diver who was portrayed by Cuba Gooding Jr. in the 2000 film "Men of Honor," died Tuesday. He was 75.

Brashear died at the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth of respiratory and heart failure, the medical center said.

Brashear retired from the Navy in 1979 after more than 30 years of service. He was the first Navy diver to be restored to full active duty as an amputee, the result of a leg injury he sustained during a salvage operation.

To read the complete story click here .

posted by Garrett # 9:08 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Book Review: Deep Descent

I just finished reading Deep Descent, Adventure and Death Diving the Andrea Doria by Kevin F. McMurray. This book is a biography of sorts from the sinking of the Andrea Doria in 1956 through 1999 scuba diving expeditions using the latest in mixed gases, including "The Dying Season" the summer of 1998.

The book centers around the infamous dive boats Seeker and Wahoo, their captains and crew, the pioneers of Wreck Diving and the deaths that occurred while diving what most consider the Mt. Everest of diving.

This non-fiction account of the first 40 plus years after the sinking is a good read, it has some good accident analysis of the diving fatalities that occurred and what may have happened. It also includes the background story of the Andrea Doria and what lead to her collision with the Stockholm and untimely death in the frigid north Atlantic waters on that foggy evening in July 1956.

If your into facts and biography type books, I'd highly recommend this book, it does not read like a story but rather a factual account of what happened during various scuba diving expeditions to the wreck.

Other Scuba related recommendations:
Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson
The Last Dive by Bernie Chowdhury

posted by Garrett # 12:05 PM 0 comments

Saturday, July 22, 2006

California Steamin'

Talk about bad luck, I leave the extreme heat of Arizona for the weekend to only find myself in a similar heatwave in Orange County, CA. The temp is creeping past 100 degrees and the humidity is making going outside unbearable. Being sidelined from scuba diving with swimmer's ear is just icing on the cake. I was going to take the kids to see "Pirates of the Carribean" today but they saw it with their grandmother a couple days ago; she tells me it was extremely long and boring, this coming from a Johnny Depp fan. The kids seem content to sit inside out of the heat and relax and do their packing to come home tomorrow, sounds OK to me, wouldn't mind going swimming, but if I'm not scuba diving I'm certainly not swimming and will stay high-n-dry. My mom's got the Eureka pilot, a new series on Sci-Fi channel, on her DVR, so I'll kill a couple hours watching that.

Update on my ear: Went to the Doc yesterday got some meds I need to take for a week, hopefully I'll be back in the water on the 30th.

Sent from my phone.
Please excuse the brevity, bluntness and typos...

posted by Garrett # 1:45 PM 0 comments

Friday, July 21, 2006

My first Swimmer's Ear experience

After participating in all sorts of water sports my entire life I have never had any issues with my ears, I wouldn't know an earache if it slapped me in the face. Tuesday night however I was noticing a discomfort in one of my ears, I thought it may be allergies, we were having a dust storm that night, so I popped a Tylenol Sinus to no avail. I then bought some OTC ear drops and gave my ears a thorough cleaning, the ear felt better. When I woke up Wednesday morning however the discomfort was still there, after working out of the house all the day, my ear was not any better. After some research I diagnosed myself with Swimmer's Ear, after all it has been 3 1/2 days since my last dive, if it was anything more serious I certainly would have know sooner or had other symptoms, i.e. vertigo or dizziness.

With a much anticipated Catalina boat trip on the Sundiver coming in a couple days with my son, I was/am more than disappointed. Not only do I not get to dive in Catalina but I still have to make the 12 hour round-trip drive to pick up the kids in California. What a bummer!

I called Empire Scuba, who I booked the boat through, and was not happy when they said it was too late to cancel our spots and I wouldn't get a refund. I have a medical reason to not dive and gave them 48 hours notice, the best I could do under the circumstances, I would have loved to wait another day and see how my ear was doing but thought it only prudent to let them know so they could attempt to book the spots. I told the young lady on the phone this and to check with the decision maker and afte a few moments half of my fees where refunded. I'm still not happy about losing the other half, but they already had my money, half is better than nothing.

I was under the assumption, based on my "open boat" experience that cancelling, especially for a medical reason is grounds for a refund if you've already paid. Needless to say I will not be booking through this shop, nor pre-paying for any other day boats unless in the case of medical situation my money will be refunded.

I got a Doc's appointment tomorrow to get some Antibiotics and see how long I have to stay dry!! Will catch you up then.

posted by Garrett # 1:22 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Giant Sea Bass Encounter

On July 5, 2006 [Dive #60] at Wood's Cove in Laguna Beach, CA. my dive buddy, Peter, and I got an early start, we met up at 5:30 am for a quick dive before he had to go to work and I had to head back to the desert.

This was to be my first dive at Wood's Cove and although I was looking forward to it, it was really early and I was frigging tired. So tired I decided to thumb getting my camera ready, after all what was I going to see that I hadn't already while diving San Clemente Island and other areas of Laguna Beach for the past several days.

The dive started out great the large waves that had been pounding the beach only days before had subsided and it was a nice easy entry. I was WOWED by Wood's Cove and was thinking I had to get here more often. Just as I was thinking that Peter and I spotted a 2.5' Horn Shark; the largest I've had the pleasure of seeing. As we explored the reef making our way seaward, Peter spotted something BIG in the murk of the open ocean, we cautiously went to investigate.

Out of the deep blue it appeared a Giant Sea bass, my first encounter and I was not disappointed, it seemed as curious as we were, it just circled keeping it's eye fixed on us, we estimated it at 3.5' and over 100lbs. It came within inches of Peter and about a foot away from me, after slowly circling us a few times it just headed back out into the open ocean.

Well the drive home after that didn't seem so bad and I had a big shit eating grin on my face the whole way home, I can only imaging what the other drivers who saw me were thinking. I have no regrets it was truly a wonderful underwater encounter and one I shall not soon forget, but I sure would have liked a picture.

A couple days later while browsing my favorite scuba forum I came across a thread by some southern California scuba divers, Ken, Claudette and Josh, who had a fantastic encounter of their own with a Giant Sea bass at the Avalon dive park in Catalina. Ken captured the moment with some awe inspiring photos as I never would have been able to. Their friend appears a little larger than ours but I wanted to share the photos that Ken has so graciously shown the world, they can be found here: http://www.pbase.com/firelogg/seabass .

posted by Garrett # 8:50 PM 0 comments

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Dive #65 & #66

Dive #65
Time In: 10:03
Viz: 2-15'
Bottom Temp: 75F
Dive Time: 00:58
Max Depth: 37'

Dive #66
Time In: 12:04
Viz: 2-20' and clearing
Bottom Temp: 78F
Dive Time: 00:57
Max Depth: 41'

Dove at Scorpion Bay, Lake Pleasant, AZ. with Mike, Riley, Weldon and a new guy can't remember his name. Surface temps were in the 90's and it was wicked HOT outside. I went with the purpose of shooting some video with my Olympus SP-350 digital camera, I had the resolution too high and FPS too low also ISO setting may have been an issue, but I got some decent footage of a male bass protecting his kids and a couple catfish.

posted by Garrett # 1:21 PM 1 comments

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Dive #63 & #64

Dive #63
Time In: 19:06
Viz: 10-15'
Bottom Temp: 77F
Dive Time: 00:41
Max Depth: 36'

Dive #64
Time In: 20:48
Viz: 10-15'
Bottom Temp: 77F
Dive Time: 00:48
Max Depth: 37'

Burned a couple tanks at Scorpion Bay, Lake Pleasant, AZ during a twilight and night dive with Mike, Andres and Anne, Weldon and a couple of his friends were there too. No pictures; my xD card freaked out and my camera locked up on the first dive. A couple nice relaxing dives with good company.

The weather cooled off at sunset and it was a nice night to be out. We all caravaned to dinner afterwards and I didn't get home till about 1 am.

posted by Garrett # 7:09 PM 0 comments

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Finally printed Hawaii pictures!

View from condo in Maui

I finally got around to printing out the pictures from our Hawaii trip last November! It was great to see all the beauty of Maui again and relive the vacation. Of course the underwater photos that I took with a cheap-o 35mm camera were processed before I even left the island. Our family has a condo in Kaanapali at the Whaler where we stayed for the better part of the vacation, but we spent a couple days in Hana before reaching the condo. My son and I did plenty of shore diving including a night dive at Black Rock and capped it off with a boat trip to the Lanai Cathedrals. Can't wait to go back in about 15 months.

You can view the underwater photos here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/shark.byte.usa/MauiLanaiHawaiiUS

posted by Garrett # 3:49 PM 0 comments

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Dive #61 & #62

Dive #61
Time In: 08:07
Viz: 2-20'
Bottom Temp: 69F
Dive Time: 00:42
Max Depth: 47'

Dive #62
Time In: 10:17
Viz: 10-20'
Bottom Temp: 72F
Dive Time: 00:51
Max Depth: 37'

You can view the underwater photos here:
Picasa Web Album

Headed out to the lake early on Saturday morning, met up with Mike and 'Buddy X' at Scorpion Bay which has quickly become my favorite local scuba diving site. Once we worked out 'Buddy X's underweight issues, which I don't really think there was but he/she couldn't descend, probably because his/her legs were kicking like a duck and he/she wouldn't relax, after I chased the uncontrollably sinking buddy down to 47' only to find him/her sitting on a tree in 2' of viz gazing at his/her gauges. We ascended to 30'; I was ready to call the dive, but he/she seemed to get a little control and we had a decent dive. Second dive was uneventful.

Now a little of a rant; I'm kind of blasé in the buddy interview process and Mike is even worse than I, mainly because it's tough finding buddies willing to dive in the lake. Buddies however have a duty to be honest about their dive experience with potential new buddies like us, no machismo should come into play, be straight up. If you've been certified for 20 years, great. If you've been certified for 20 years have 20 logged dives and haven't dove in 18 years, that's something a new buddy needs to know. I didn't really care about experience level, I still consider myself a new diver, but I'm having to rethink this philosophy because I've had at least 3 BAD buddies in the last 2 weeks and another couple who's diving style just doesn't mesh with mine; I don't like diving with Mark Spitz/Gary Hall Jr. types. Bad buddies just make me want to get a redundant breathing system and say forget it, I'll dive by myself. Just be honest about your diving background and we'll be fine.

posted by Garrett # 8:11 PM 0 comments

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