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And now let's chat about diving.
STILL GREAT CONDITIONS AT CATALINA -
I got two reports today. The Cee
Ray spent
the day at Lulu (near Emerald Bay), and Susy
Horowitz reports that the viz was 30-40 feet,
water temps in the mid-70s (YIKES!!), kelp
looking a little haggard but no Sargassum in
sight, green abalone everywhere (YAY!!!), not as
many Sheephead as usual, but lots of lobsters.
This was a Barnacle Busters trip celebrating
Buck's 82nd b-day (and just the other day Buck's
husband Chris hit 65) and it sounds like a good
time was had by all.
AT CASINO POINT -
It sounds like the conditions were better there
as the weekend "Mark at the Park" reports are
indicating the stellar viz (60-80') is back and
the water temps are matching those at Lulu with
surface temps of 75º. But I think the bottom
line is that no matter where you go diving,
certainly around Catalina these days, you're
going to get some primo conditions. (Redondo -
Vets Park - also looks pretty goo with very
flat, non-existent "waves" this afternoon.)
THE PHILIPPINES BECKONS -
We are now just a little over a month away from
our two-week trip to Dumaguete in the
Philippines. We'll spend the first week at the
Atlantis Dumaguete Resort, and then the second
week on their liveaboard boat Infiniti.
the anticipation builds.
2027 ECLIPSE TRIP UPDATE -
The good news is that I may have found us a Nile
cruise that goes from Aswan to Luxor, arriving
the day before the eclipse and we stay on the
boat for the big event, and then get off the
next morning. It's not cheap, but it seems like
a nice boat, not too crowded (136 passengers), a
number of tours included, and best of all, we'll
be in Luxor for the actual eclipse. The bad news
- not really "bad" but it's a re-thinking - is
that it's getting very hard (and expensive) to
make all of this work with diving on the front
end as well. The hard part is getting the end of
diving to somewhat match up with the start of
the eclipse portion. So, and this is still a
work-in-progress, I may make this an
eclipse-only trip where we'll start in Cairo and
visit a number of pyramids as well as the new
Grand Egyptian Museum, then fly down to Aswan
and board the cruise ship, spend five days on
the water ending up in Luxor, enjoy the eclipse,
and then fly home (through Cairo) the next day.
The way I think this will set up is that you
could choose to extend or even only do the boat
portion of the trip. But I also looked at some
of the hotels in Luxor for eclipse time and the
going rate seems to be close to $1,000/night for
the nicer hotels (I saw one where the rate was
$3K/night) so from that standpoint, the cruise
is a bargain. For those of you on our
"interested" list, I will send a more detailed
e-mail once I get some more info and pricing.
A SMALL ECLIPSE THIS WEDNESDAY -
To get a preview of what we might experience
next year, pay attention this Wednesday when a
total eclipse dances through Greenland and then
Spain. If I've done the time shift correctly,
totality should occur around 11:30AM Pacific
time, but will only last around 2 minutes. (By
contrast, totality in Luxor in 2027 should be
around 6.5 minutes, which is about a song as it
can get.) I'm sure there will be television
coverage on places like CNN, but you can also
find live-streams as well, such as this one: AUGUST
12 ECLIPSE COVERAGE.
And that'll do it for now. Have a great week and
let's go diving soon!!!
- Ken |
