The dive class I went to several weekends ago had one more meeting in the ocean. Originally the class was supposed to meet at Stillwater Cove but Jon Valez, the instructor, called me up the night before and left a message to meet at Fort Ross Cove instead. I wondered if Jon knew that the cove was closed due to winter road damage, general lack of State Park funds, and an archeological dig. When Pat Bera (the other student) and I showed up early we found the road not only closed, but blocked of by a new gate. I hate this sort of thing: The State Park System spent hundreds of dollars putting up a gate to keep us out of the road down to the cove, when they could have spent the money to repair the road. And the road is not in very bad shape. I drove half way down it in Roger Lamb’s two door sedan recently and had no qualms about avoiding the gullies in my VW bus. If pressed about it The State will say that they had to put up the gate for public safety. When in actuality, they are doing it for fear that someone in a 25 foot camper van is going to try to drive down the road, smash their vehicle, and sue the state for millions. No one believes me when I say I’m willing to take responsibility for my own actions. I don’t want to live in the same country any more with all these idiots who can’t take responsibility for themselves. When can I immigrate to the asteroid belt? Perhaps that isn’t far enough away. Perhaps I should hold out for the Ort Cloud.
When Jon arrived we re-located to the nearby Fort Ross Reef Campground. The walk to the water there is slightly longer and quite a bit steeper. The beach is rocky, but the waves were mild and launching a kayak would not be a problem. One of the goals of the class was to lean SCUBA hunting techniques. Jon had us paddle out past the end of the Fort Ross Reef to where he expected to find some large ling cod. Jon dropped his anchor down to sound the bottom and found it too deep, around 80 feet. Then when he tried to pull the anchor back up, it jammed on the bottom and could not be pulled loose. So we had to dive in 80 feet instead of the 60 feet we were looking for. This meant we could only spend around 30 minutes on the bottom instead of the 40 we had expected.
When we followed the anchor line down, we found it jammed between two large rocks. Jon got it loose and spent five minutes moving it around looking for a place it would not get caught again. The topology of the bottom was interesting, made up out of huge four meter boulders jumbled on top of each other. We should have found lots of ling cod hiding in all the nooks and crannies, but saw only one. Pat took a shot at that one and missed. I got to shoot at one small rock cod but also missed. Earlier on the beach, I asked Jon if we would flunk the class if we didn’t catch a fish. He replied that we were both doing well and the only way to flunk was by not surviving the next two dives. At depths of up to 90 feet, we soon ran out of air, found the anchor again, and returned to our kayaks at the surface.
The main reason Jon wanted to dive from Fort Ross Cove was to paddle out to a wreck he knows about in the water north of the cove. Launching from the reef he thought we were too far away to paddle a kayak to the wreck, especially into the rising afternoon wind. I pointed out that the distance out to the end of the reef looked just as far, if not farther, than the distance to the wreck. Jon and I both own kayaks and were comfortable doing the “trip”. Pat was a novice in a kayak and tired easily, but said he was game to try and paddle to the wreck. After switching to fresh tanks we started up the coast, hugging the shore to stay out of the wind. This gave me an opportunity to do some rock gardening and play in the waves while waiting for Pat to catch up.
Jon showed us a map of the location of the wreck and it became a class assignment to navigate out into the middle of the cove and find the right spot to dive. We dove over a shallow spot, a submerged rock that may be the reason the boat sank. Navigating with a compass we soon found an area of the bottom littered with chunks of iron. We circled around until we found the drive shaft, and followed it back up to the boiler. This was a steam-powered iron ship propelled by paddle wheels. Between the drive shaft and the boiler, the only remains of the engine were a few huge piston rods and part of the crank shaft. We followed the drive shaft to the other end, where Jon had me navigate a course to where one of the paddle wheels ended up.
We didn’t spend much time looking at the paddle wheel because Pat and Jon found a large ling cod about then. Pat speared this one and we had to return to the surface for a minute to put that fish in a goody bag and get a gill line for more fish. Jon soon speared a huge cabezon, a black and yellow spotted fish with a big head. The size limit on ling cod keeps going up every year but Pat’s cod was almost 30 inches long. There is no size limit on cabezon, but Jon’s was over 20 inches. Jon and Pat started pointing at the bottom and Jon handed me the spear gun. I saw a small fish and thought it was a ling cod that looked undersized to my eye. I was reluctant to shoot at it, but Jon pointed at it again and I figured I might not get another chance to try this sport, so I shot it. It turned out to be a 16 inch cabezon. Pat was still pointing at the bottom, and I saw that he had found an even larger cabezon, almost 20 inches. Jon and I flailed around with the small fish, removing the spear, putting the fish on the gill line, cocking the spear gun again, kicking up mud off the bottom. Through all this the larger fish just sat there 4 meters away from us, then let me swim up to within a meter of it and shoot it as well. It doesn’t seem very sporting to me but I’m not much of a “sportsman”. I think of it as protein. If I can eat it then I’m willing to kill it and then I make sure it does get eaten and not wasted.
I took my cabezon home and had fish in everything for almost a week. I invited my brother Ralph and his whole family over that evening for cabezon fillets poached in white wine, butter, and pepper. (Plus rice on the side, sautéed Japanese vegetables, asparagus, and a salad that Renee brought). I had fish omelets for breakfast, fish burritos for lunch, and more fish for dinner for days afterwards. I never got tired of it