VanDamme Report Sun 5/27

Left San Leandro around 5:00am with Antonio (Cabeza de Martillo) after his early tour of San Leandro and Oakland. We arrived at VanDamme around 8:15am and was treated with a beautiful weather and flat ocean.  We suited and made our way to our entry point.  As we were getting ready to get in the water.  A group of diver that were next to us were swearing at each other so one of the diver trurned to us and apologized for his buddies language and said they were a little hungover from the night before.  I told Antonio that those guys should not be in the water. We got in the water about 9:15am. I dove just north of the south island in 25'-30' of h2o. Picked some nice size abs and could not find any rockies to shoot so I shot about 5 fat pirch for the wife. Overall great dive with a great NCKA friend Antonio.

We stopped by Big Jim's campsite at Schooners and we hung out and have a few beers/abalone salad/smoke salmon with cream cheese and crackers with Big Jim and DaveW. It was nice meeting you both. Got to meet Jim's wife and kids. Very nice family you got there Big Jim. 

Freddie
IslandYak

Freddie,

It was a pleasure to finally meet you after going back and forth on PMs the past couple of months. It was also nice to meet your wife and Ono.

Couldn’t have asked for better weather and vis was at least 15ft.
Just finished cleaning my abs and going to make the spicy ab dish that I told you about for my 6 year old this afternoon. Also going to make some ab cheviche for me as well.

Never tried it with ab since I usually use ahi in my recipe. I will let you know how it turns out.

It was also great to chill with DaveW and Big Jim afterwards at Albion.

Jim thanks for the hospitality and was a pleasure meeting your family. I need to get my two boys out there camping soon.

I couldn’t have asked for a better carpooling buddy for the round trip day dive. Sharing fishing stories made the drive go by quickly.

Hope to hook up again soon.

Antonio

It was great to see you guys!! Thanks for stopping by and chilling for a bit!!

Looking forward to seeing you both again soon!

 

Sincerely,

Jim