We all wake up really excited today to be taking the smaller, faster boat out to Catalina Islands, where word has it that the last divers out here the day before saw huge manta rays and humpback whales.
Again, it's just the three of us and the divemaster Rafa, with Louis captaining the boat and helping to set up the gear (hopefully this time securing the tanks a little better and checking the o-rings before he puts the regulator first stage on!).
This is what I've been nervous about, a deeper dive with an unreferenced ascent at The Point, but I'm fine. The visibility is much clearer today, although the strong currents and surge make swimming quite difficult. And suddenly there it is! Everyone is rattling anything they can to get everyone's attention.... manta rays. Not just one but three or four of them. Amazing. Despite this I can't help but get over excited at a little school of Moorish Idols..... well he is Nemo's best buddy!!
The second dive takes us to The Wall, where we descend quickly to 10 metres and get caught in fairly strong surge, another diving first for me!
Visibility is good and we are delighted to see between five and six massive manta rays, smaller stingrays and a pod of devil rays above us, swimming in formation just like birds in the sky!
Of course, my diving experiences are becoming nothing if not eventful, and I surface after this dive to discover that the rubber inflator hose to my BCD has split wide open and I can't get any air into my BCD! Not that this would be an issue, but Mi Reina Grace, the dive boat, can just be seen disappearing around the back of the islands, clearly assuming the currents would bring us up on the other side.... oh bugger!
Treading water with my regulator in, as the surface is too choppy for my snorkel, works for about five minutes and then I admit to feeling ever so slightly panicky. My brother suddenly suggests losing some weight (now's not the time to tell me I'm fat I think indignantly... LOL) but Rafa happily takes my weight pockets. Still no boat.
We use our whistles and I wave at a distant boat, and soon enough another dive boat is plucking me and my SIL out of the water... where we come face to face with six people who'd been on our plane and are in our hotel! How embarrassing. As soon as they see what's happened to my BCD and that we aren't in any real trouble it's all laughs and encouragement, and one of the guys even offers to send me a new one when I get home. Nice one.
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