Mr. Protocol, having recently become a certified scuba diver (and there are those among us who believe he’s been certifiable for years), recently signed aboard the Good Ship Cee Ray for a diving trip to Santa Catalina Island. Perforce, his amanuensis (my own long-suffering self) went along. Mr. Protocol’s natural sunny good cheer got him off to a good start for a 7AM boat departure; I very nearly underwent adrenocortical burnout when the alarm went off at 4:30.
The trip to San Pedro was uneventful, and directions to the boat landing were, for a wonder, adequate. Naturally, I did the driving. Mr. Protocol does not drive as Los Angeles driving protocol is incompletely specified. For similar reasons, Mr. Protocol refuses even to go out on the street in New York City.
After noting that the parking lot was full, I parked the car by the curb right near the sign saying “NO STOPPING ANY TIME” (ignoring Mr. P’s anguished cries), together with the other twenty people who were unloading tanks, buoyancy compensators, gear bags, etc. onto the sidewalk. This, I suppose, comes of going to a boat landing on Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, when all the boat owners have been out and away since Saturday. After carting the gear to the boat, I moved the car to a lot down the street Carting the gear took several trips. While Mr. Protocol is in substantial equipoise at any depth, Mikey wears a 43 (forty-three) pound weight belt, which makes gear-lugging a substantial proposition. We signed in and hung out after claiming bunk space. Except for Mr. Protocol, of course. He never sleeps.
The boat left the dock right around 7AM. It left the breakwater around 7:25, and then things got interesting. There is a saying, “If you can see Catalina from the mainland, don’t go. It’s too rough." Well, we couldn’t see Catalina, but it was still pretty rough. Mr. Protocol, of course, spent most of the 2-hour trip standing in the bow of the boat, rolling with the swells and whistling “Blow the Man Down.” I spent the trip in the stem of the boat, eyes fixed on the horizon line and hoping that the Dramamine would kick in before the adrenochrome wore off. It was a hazy trip.
We anchored in Starlight Cove, at the rear (landward) side of the island, which was the lee side that day. The cove blocked the swells. Unfortunately the only dive partner I could find for the first dive was a student in a class, so I spent the first dive watching people do pathological things to their equipment at forty feet. I refused to consider Mr. Protocol as a dive buddy for several reasons. 1) Mr. Protocol is uncomfortable with a term as familiar as “buddy.” 2) It is very difficult to actually get any sightseeing done when diving with Mr. Protocol, as all he ever does is go through safety protocol. After awhile you get tired of continually clearing your mask and changing to your second regulator, etc. And I flat-out refuse to practice an emergency buoyant ascent It’s sort of like hyperspace: sometimes you don’t come out 3) Many people are uncomfortable letting me dive with a buddy that no one else can see.
By this time I was thinking that this trip was a bust Mr. Protocol, ever the indefatigable optomist, counselled waiting for the second dive location. Lo and behold, for that dive an honest-to-goodness certified-but-novice diver, just like myself, was looking for a partner. The second location, Stony Point, was a cove like the first, but with more kelp. Now, a genuine kelp forest is a riot of life. We saw garibaldi. Hard to miss them. They’re bright orange fish about 6” long and highly territorial They come right up to your mask and say “Who dat?” They refuse to leave you alone. You swim around in a veritable cloud of garibaldi. No, they don’t bite. We saw starfish. We saw urchins. We saw garibaldi eating an abalone. We saw sea fans and sponges and cucumbers. Hard to miss the cucumbers. The whole bottom looks like someone emptied a vat of dill pickles. You pick them up and they turn into dill footballs. All the while we were swimming through a forest of giant kelp, which resemble nothing so much as the giant redwoods of Sequoia, in effect if not in actual appearance.
After returning to the boat, Mr. Protocol and his amanuensis got into a shocking argument about the feasibility of doing a second dive solo. The argument was interrupted by a commotion at
the stem. A diver who'd gone down solo had had weight belt trouble, followed by mask flooding, followed by panic, followed by a failed attempt to breathe sea water. They were (bragging her onto the exit platform, a steel grating just below the surface that divers can exit onto, in order to stand up and remove their fins before climbing the ladder onto the boat. She was fine but not happy. That was it for diving that day. Mr. Protocol was unbearably smug, in that solemn-faced way that so endears him to us all.
Another dose of Dram amine and. I spent the return journey in my bunk. Mr. Protocol was up in the galley reading dive magazines to find ever more exciting places to go practice safety drills.
We returned to the slip around 5PM. After debating the best way to get the gear back to the car, the nearby lot still being full, I declared for the macho solution and wore my weight belt, tank and buoyancy compensator, while carrying my dive bag containing wetsuit, mask, fins, gloves, hood, etc. back to the car. It compared favorably with taking a walk on the surface of Jupiter, but not by much. I drove home alone. I had thrown Mr. Protocol off the boat in the deepest part of the passage. He’s used to that by now.
Mike O’Brien May 26, 1987