GS5 - Sunday, May 15th - REGISTRATION IS OPEN ON PAGE 21 and closes 4/15/11

Who's officially in:

9erFan
Abking
AbMan
AlsHobieOutback
Auburn trout dude
baitNbeer
BanjoTad
BennettDanville
BigDog
Bigfoot
Big Gabe
BigJim
BillS
Bink
Bird
BlueNative
boogieman
Brandi
Brdopry
Brdopry’s Better Half
BrianG
Cajun
Califbill
Chadrock
Crash
Danglin
Darius
daviator
Domenic
dpshim
Dr Fektavious
Dr Habanero
El Dorado
EWB
fisheducator
FishFarmer
FishinMike
Fish Master1 [Welcome Back!!!]
Ghost
Great Bass 2
Guitarzan
G-Whiz
Harputmanuki
HOLY TOLEDO
Jacks
Jedmo
JeffR
Jimgosc
Jimmy
JonD
Jonesz
JWR
Kayakjack
Lapulapu
LingKing
Matanaska
MattS
MBYakker
MJN
MontanaN8V
novofish
Old#7
Otobepelagic
PacMan
PigPen
Piski
pond poacher
Prophet
RavensBlack
redwoodfox
Rockfish
Rock Hopper
RonS
rshu
sackyack
Sailfish
Saltydog
ScottO
sctrace
Shellback
Sin Coast
Sledge
SRJ
Tiny
Topher2
Vjo.Hobie-Dave
vwool
Yakhopper
Zack
Zilla
Zisco

That's 91 of us.  We’ve passed last year’s number of participants.
Registration is closed.  Late registration is not available.  Thanks for your understanding. 

These guys are in - just need a few final pieces of info:

Dave
Graham

93 is a good number.

Maybe you should allow 8 more to make it 101 (perfect number) 

Maybe you should allow 8 more to make it 101 (perfect number) 

Quality over quantity, Sonny!   

Stories from the Cove

The Ab Diving Tradition - how I came up in the sport.

It was the late 80's, I was in school down at Davis, and I was about to discover a lifelong passion. 

Growing up in Humboldt I was exposed to a fair amount of outdoors activities.  My Dad had commercial salmon fished out of a dory a few summers to supplant his professorship at College of the Redwoods, and he went on to become a well known fly tosser along the Eel and Klamath.  He taught me about fishing - mostly the salmon resource, its lifeway, the problems we'd caused for it as a society, and the beauty of both the species and the dedication to pursuing and caring about it.  Another activity Dad partook in was abalone diving.  He had some wild stories - blowing his eardrums and barely making it to the top with two bigs abs as he was disoriented; breaking his finger hitting the bottom on a zero viz day; a virtual 'vault' of abs papering the rock walls of a 20' wide hole just offshore at the Cove...  I liked my Dad's stories, but I wasn't in to ab diving as a kid.  A good parent, I think, uses repetition to drive home important points.  I'll never forget how, in the story where he blew his eardrums, he would always explain how, disoriented in 20' of water, he recalled an old timer on the CR campus telling him years before:  "If you blow your eardrums you can't tell up from down, so it's important to launch yourself off the bottom and count on the fact that you're going up!"  He'd done just that, and that made for a happy ending to the story!

As a young man at Davis my friends actually began educating me about how cool Humboldt is!  I'd get all the usual diatribe:  "where you from?"  "Humboldt."  "Wow!  Do you grow pot?!!"...  The educational part though was regarding the natural wonders of this area.  My buddies encouraged me to discover much of what I took for granted as a kid - the rivers, the Lost Coast, the redwoods...  My brother Kevin was up at HSU in Arcata, and he got into scuba and free diving pretty heavy.  He was spearing lings, eating scallops at 40’ next to the jetties, and ab diving down at Fort Bragg and Shelter Cove.  It was around that time that Kevin invited me and any of my buddies who were interested to come to Shelter Cove and learn to dive.  Mark, Delano and I packed up in my '87 Nissan Sentra on a Friday afternoon and hit the road for Humboldt.  We met Kevin and his friends at Abalone Point, the north end of the accessible reef along Lower Pacific Drive at the Cove.  I now know that Abalone Point is deep, surgy, and would be rated as 'difficult' in terms of ab diving, but at the time I was a naive younger brother, trusting my older sibling to put me in a safe and fun situation.  Duh!  Kevin got me all suited up in a hodgepodge of second hand gear and a tattered wetsuit, and we jumped in to 20' of water right off the rocks at Ab Point.  I was in pretty good shape, so diving down wasn't too difficult, but, as many of you know, your first time diving in the ocean brings out an instinctive reaction:  fear for your life!  As I dove down and swam around boulders and rock formations, the surge would manipulate my body and kelp seemed to be grabbing me.  I was scared shitless!  My brother employed a tough love type of tactic, "Quit crying!"     and I sucked it up and kept trying.  I calmed down and got more focused, and I found an abalone.  Who knows how big it was - probably 8" or so.  I put my iron to it as Kevin had instructed me, and I was surprised at how strong it was - I couldn't get it off, and I needed air!  I hit the surface and exclaimed that I'd located an ab and tried to pry it off!  Kevin's answer:  "Well you probably killed it then!"  Tough love sure doesn't feel loving sometimes, but I took his point to heart, as he'd instructed us on shore that abalone are hemophiliacs, so a cut from our irons would likely doom the animal to bleeding out.  I kept trying, found another ab, and that day I became an ab diver.

Knowing Abalone Point very well now, 20+ years later, it was probably quite a calm day with good viz!  What's amazing about Abalone Point is that it's right there along the road with easy access, but it's a tough enough spot to dive and conditions are so seldom good there that it's still the case that there are huge abs and lots of fish - I hope it stays that way so maybe I can teach my son to dive there one day. 

If conditions allow, I'll cherish the opportunity to see Big Jim, Fish Master1, baitNbeer and all you other diver-types give Abalone Point a try.  You can expect some Tough Love, but it comes with many years of experience and many dives at that spot.   

Awesome write up Eric!!

I'm 100% down for checking the spot out if conditions make it doable.

Thanks for sharing bro and look forward to seeing you soon!!
 
Sincerely,
Jim

 

Nice write-up...I hit ab point with Jack, Joe and Jim last year, it was tough diving that day....would love to hit it with good conditions.

I hope I don't ever put that ear drum bottom push maneuver to good use.

Thanks for sharing!

They taught us in SCUBA class...if you get dis-oriented, follow your bubbles 

  I was scared shitless!

Thanks Eric! Just returned all the dive gear I just bought and will probably stay on land during the GS5 event...... 

Eric you are the best story teller around.  Love your tales and the way you paint the picture. 

I was scuba diving in 60' of water off Mission Beach (San Diego) many years ago and not on the bottom when I became completely disoriented.  I had been taught (Navy certified dive school for contractors) if that happened it was due to cold water entering your inner ear probably from a ruptured ear drum.  Fortunately I remembered the lesson.  I could see my air bubbles but for the life of me could not head in any desired direction.  I couldn't push off the bottom as I was several feet above it.

The thing to remember is the cold water in your inner ear will warm up quickly and you will be "normal" again - SOON.  Just stop swimming (save your breath) hug yourself and wait.  In a few long seconds you will recover.  It worked for me and I will never forget the helpless feeling I experienced that day and the relief when I could orient myself again.

This seems like Soooo long ago! My first Ab dive was A gimme shelter three!

Thanks Eric! Just returned all the dive gear I just bought and will probably stay on land during the GS5 event...... 

Glen - I say Phooey to that!!     Another chapter to the tale that I could've shared is that diving is MUCH easier in MUCH shallower and less surgy water out in front of the hotels (near the campground), and there are tons of abs there!  (just not many big ones!   )

Dan - thx for the kudos and for telling your own tale - good stuff!  (since you survived!!   )

Andy - Gaining experience in diving is relative to the time and energy you put in to it.  I'd say you're farther along than most guys who just started ab diving a couple years back.   

This seems like Soooo long ago! My first Ab dive was A gimme shelter three!

My first abing was a 10 year old carrying the bag for my dads buddy Andy Andregg.  Who was in a yellow immersion suit.  He had each foot on an ab and was picking abs off the wall of this hole by Pt. Reyes.  I think the limit was 6 then and he popped at least 10 limits and you could not tell we touched the ab population.  Had to be about 1955, so the statute of limitations is done on the overlimits, as well as Dad, Andy and the others have long since passed.  I remember diving at Red Barn when there was a barn, and I did not have kids.  Oldest daughter was born in 1973, to put that in perspective.
That was a long time ago.

My first abing was a 10 year old carrying the bag for my dads buddy Andy Andregg.  Who was in a yellow immersion suit.  He had each foot on an ab and was picking abs off the wall of this hole by Pt. Reyes.  I think the limit was 6 then and he popped at least 10 limits and you could not tell we touched the ab population.  Had to be about 1955, so the statute of limitations is done on the overlimits, as well as Dad, Andy and the others have long since passed.  I remember diving at Red Barn when there was a barn, and I did not have kids.  Oldest daughter was born in 1973, to put that in perspective.
That was a long time ago.

Thanks for sharing that, Bill.   

Another chapter to the tale that I could've shared is that diving is MUCH easier in MUCH shallower and less surgy water out in front of the hotels (near the campground), and there are tons of abs there! 

I wanna hear that chapter; maybe then, I'll go back I buy that gear all over again....