Just back from a three-day weekend in sunny SoCal diving the Channel Islands . We drove down Friday afternoon from the San Francisco Bay area and, even with traffic and dinner, got to Ventura in around six hours. Up early Saturday morning and onto the Raptor dive boat for three dives off Anacapa island.
The Raptor is a newer boat designed just for SCUBA divers and is manned by an efficient, friendly crew that has everything down to a system that runs like clockwork. The boat is sleek, clean and fast, able to reach Anacapa from Ventura Harbor in a mere 45 minutes. But we took a little longer as we slowed to watch a large pod of Common Dolphins play in the boat wake. We started off again, only to come to a complete stop as two humpback whales surfaced to show us their tale flukes and swim alongside.
After the excitement of the dolphins and whales, we reached the Brickyard dive site in a sheltered cove off Anacapa. Clear turquoise water, forests of kelp, tons of fish and even the sea lions turned up to play. Fabulous dive. Even the three-minute safety stop was entertaining as we watched a sea lion mimmick the divers below us. Two more dives off Anacapa and we headed back to Ventura Harbor while enjoying a hot lunch and brownies for dessert. The Raptor dive boat is operated by Ventura Dive and Sport, a full service dive shop at the top of the gangway from the Raptor's berth, which offers rental gear, a training facility with pool, and most important at this moment in time - rinse tanks. We rinsed our gear and hung it on racks to dry overnight until our dives the next day. It was very nice not to haul all that gear up to the hotel room and rinse in the bathtub. Hidden benefit? - able to get in the hotel hot tub sooner!
Sunday morning took us to Santa Cruz island and the current was kind of rough, decreasing visibility a little. But it was also where we saw dense populations of huge sunflower starfish. They were mounded everywhere on, under and around the rocks.
For our last dive we went around to the other side of Santa Cruz and immediately the visibility increased and so did the fish population. We descended into schools of sardines and the rocky areas were a girabaldi playground. Nice indeed. 
We slept in the next day, Memorial Day, and then took our time driving home with almost NO traffic all the way. Amazing but true. A mini dive vacation can be a lot of fun. If you'd like to know how you can enjoy a trip like this, email me for details. Next 3D - Drive-Dive-Drive trip will be Aug 29th thru Sept 1st, 2008. Sign up early - the boat was sold out for Memorial Day and I expect the same for Labor Day weekend.
Sea ya.
