The weekend before Christmas found six of us crazy divers spending three days diving off Casino Point on Catalina Island.
Connie, Phil, Sylvia, Don, Edie and for the first time, my youngest son Ron. Ron is a newbie who almost doubled the number of dives he's done this weekend. We did 9 dives, with Connie, Ron and Phil doing all nine. I didn't do the night dive. I was tired and cold and it seemed like a good idea to provide shore support.
Ron does a great job and is a natural at this sport. He was very thankful to Phil for the use of his 120 cubic ft tank because it meant he was not the weak link - oh I forgot, it was renamed the benchmark. He had to give it up for Don on Sat so he used Phil's 100 and Phil used a rented 77. (Phil still beat most of us on air, even with a 77)
The water was cold and Ron wasn't dressed for it but hung in there and did all of the dives. He didn't say a word at the time, but later told us it took him three days to warm up.
This weekend Ron had a number of firsts: first night dive,(very impressed), first time at 100 ft, (not impressed).
On the last dive of the weekend Phil decided we were going to look for this Electric Ray that hangs out around 100 ft. The current was strong and we were doing a lot of swimming at depth and Phil was running out of bottom time and was booking it back when Ron found, not one, but two Rays. Phil had to come back to see them, and gave Ron two thumbs up for finding them. None of us went down where they were since we were all about in deco. We were all stoked that Ron found them. Other than the fact that Ron was cold, it was a perfect weekend.
