With my wife off to La Paz, Mexico playing with whale sharks and no buddy to dive with in the middle of the week, I've decided to dive Shaw's Cove solo. It's the first time I actually spend the whole dive by myself, the times were I lost my buddies and ended up finishing the dive alone don't really count. Anyway, that must have been my 100th dive at Shaw's, the surf was way down, Lake Laguna like and the viz was reported to 10-15ft, enough to not get lost in the reef, and perfect conditions for a solo dive.

I met a fellow diver at the top of the stairs and told him that if he didn't see me back in an hour, well, at least the scuba police would know where to look...

I started the dive close to the crevice, carry on past the archway but the surge was rather intense and I decided to double back and follow the reef South. I found tons of Hopkins Roses in the archway, as well as a few   Mexichromis Porterae (Porter's Chromodorid) that I had never really seen here before. One of them was having the time of its life on a little pebble in the middle of the crevice. Optimal for a head shot, but gee, these are small and the automatic Macro had hard times focusing...

I turned right at turn-around rock, past moning tunnel (not sure of the name) and ended at the end of the reef where I was amazed to find kelp growing in abundance. It didn't look to healthy with all these white patches, but it's growing! Thanks Ms Nancy for the hard work of underwater kelp farming! Details on her website.

I was not even half-tank, when I realize that this time I had to find the beach back by myself. I'm terrible at navigation. But I know that reef. I started looking for a crevice on the right to head back towards the Crescent entrance. The first one is too small for a diver to go through, but the second one lead you to the "window", a hole in the rock that you can go through (see black & white pix). As soon as I saw the window, I knew I could come back. What I hadn't anticipated is how Poseidon was pissed off... The little tunnel, left of the window that leads to the Crescent entrance of the Archway was really surgy. I mean really surgy. Surgy like your mask is going to be ripped off your face. Surgy like you have to hold to the rocks when the surge is pushing back and  you fly like a missile when it's pulling you... Even the Garibaldis were swimming backwards, that's never a good sign... I got whited-out a couple of times. I even wondered if I was going to be able to get back, then I saw the giant sponge that marks the entry to the crevice on the Cresent side and I ended the dive were I started it, in the Archway shooting a few dorids in the process.

Fun dive. 60°F, 10-12ft of viz and my drysuit leaked. I got small holes in my aging wrist seals... I ended the the dive pretty soaked on my right side and rather moist anywhere else... I patched my seals at home with electric tape, I'll see if it holds tomorrow, because I'm going back! This time however, if everything is going according to plan, I'll have a buddy!