June 14 -Departing Cabo San Lucas for our 24 hour crossing to San Benedicto at 0945 under clear skies and light winds. The first day at sea for our guests is spent readying dive gear and checking everything is ready for that first dive tomorrow morning. The crew does a great job getting everyone settled in, with weights, safety sausages, and dive alerts distributed to each diver. They also conduct critter and dive safety briefing while we steam out. Turning in tonight each divers thoughts are in what adventures and sights await tomorrow. As dawn breaks the next morning we are well within site of San Benedicto as it rises from the ocean depths to greet us. As happens quite often we are also welcomed by our dolphin friends who escort us to our first anchorage and dive site at the Canyon.
June 15 – Diving today was fantastic with giant manta’s interacting with our divers during all our dives here today. They made pass after pass, with many “best dive of my life” comments, only to be repeated after the next dive. We expect we will here more of that in the next few days. The water here today was a little cooler than we expected, probably due to the turnover caused by Tropical storm Adrian to the south of us, which although never reached Socorro did creat large seas. The Canyon today gave us excellent shelter and calm seas to start our trip.
June 16 Last evening after our last dive we made the short trip another 40nm south to Socorro where, as we must each trip, we check in at the Naval Station in Socorro. after our formalities we are off to Punta Tosca for our days diving. Today we had more Manta’s playing with the divers, also some silkies and a great day for our divers. Tonight after dinner several of our guest joined Joel, one of our divemasters, for a night snorkel with the Silkies that are attracted by the boat lights. After everyone had enough fun and excitement with the sharks we pulled anchor for an overnight run out to Roca Partida.
June 17 & 18 -Roca Partida has a mystique about it, although listed on the Mexican charts as an Isla or Island, it is in reality a small rockpile that sticks up out of the ocean, the only visible remnants of an old extinct volcano that influences the ocean for many miles around. The water temperature is much warmer here than Socorro, our divers are happy, we have more manta encounters, start to check off the shark species sited, whitetiips, silkies, hammerheads, galapagos. Plus all the usual host of smaller stuff, green moray’s, lobster, schools of fish off either end and one huge tuna, seemingly the size of a small car. We had two great days out here with sea conditions about as good as it gets.
June 19 Last night after finishing up for the day at Roca Partida we got underway for the east side of Socorro Island and our stop at Cabo Pearse. We arrived about 230 in the morning in preparation for todays diving. Indeed today has been a special day of diving in the brilliant sunshine. We had great interaction with dolphins, mantas, turtles and tons of fish life. The dolphins even came over to visit the boat between dives waiting for us as we had our surface intervals. Many more of those, “Best dive of my life” comments, dive after dive.
June 20 Arrive last night at the Canyon, San Benedicto for our last day of diving today. things were a little quiet today at the Canyon so we have opted to head up for some extra diving at “The Boiler”on the NW side of San benedicto.Check in later and I will tell what our divers encountered.
For now , safe diving and happy travels,
Captain Al
