Everything ocean related, with a special focus on scuba diving the rich coastal waters of Cape Town, South Africa.
Potentially inflammatory musings on the state of the dive industry…
Check out this little bit of driving from Grant of BlueFlash, as he ferries a team of Butlers pizza delivery men out to the Smit Amandla tug that pulled the Eihatsu Maru off Clifton 1st Beach. I think it’s for moments like this that he owns a boat:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyzAN-gAJIY&w=540]
This whole jaunt was priceless publicity for Butlers – good work!
Hi divers
I would love to have a newsletter filled with amazing diving stories to send out every week, but for the last while each and every newsletter has been a challenge to write due to the lack of diving. When asked about diving in the Cape during winter I would usually claim that winter is often better than summer as we have north westerly winds that clean the bay and deliver stunning visibility. Last winter we had a dives with 15 metre visibility almost every weekend yet this year I doubt we have seen anything better than 6 metres so far.
It does appear that this is set to change over the next few days and by next week we will have the first real winter storm on Tuesday so when that’s over we should have good conditions. We are midway through winter so its long over due.
It is difficult to say for sure what the conditions will be on Saturday. The wind blew from the north last night and that will move the dirty water in the top of the bay south towards the dive sites we most often frequent. Hopefully the sites around Smitswinkel Bay will be unaffected so we will plan for two or possibly three launches on Saturday and give Sunday a miss as the wind will be too strong. I think its most likely we will do Batsata Maze, Atlantis and Outer Castle as I think the water will be cleaner on the southern end of the coastline. If you want to be on the boat on Saturday text me.
We launched on Saturday, doing one dive only as we had more wind than predicted and around 5 metre visibility. After the dive we came across a pod of dolphins, I would guess there were a few hundred at least and we followed them for a while and watched the sea birds and dolphins having lunch.
Sunday we did navigation dives at Long Beach in 4-5 metre visibility and a fair amount of surge. Not the greatest.
I have removed all the seats and built a dive rack giving much more space on deck. The bow rail has also been shortened so there is now more than enough space for kitting up. I have come to grips with the GPS and sonar and found and entered a lot more waypoints. We have also joined False Bay Yacht Club in Simon’s Town which means we no longer need to do battle at Miller’s Point with some of the other rude and obnoxious boaters or the baboons, not to mention the lack of proper toilet facilities and decent cell phone reception. The real attraction for me with the club is the fantastic facilities and the option of a hot shower after a cold dive as well as a very good restaurant for a coffee and lunch at very good prices.
regards
Tony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog/
Diving is addictive!
Hi divers
Weather, always a difficult topic and sometimes difficult to understand. Last weekend we took the boat out on Saturday unsure of the conditions, and had quite respectable diving at Atlantis and Outer Castle with mist, a bit of rain and about 6 metre visibility. Sunday we were expecting a fair amount of wind and instead had really good conditions at Long Beach. We were out on the boat again on Monday and had heavy mist to start but it cleared and we had good diving in sunny conditions.
This weekend seems set to be a stay at home weekend for Open Water students as there is a 5 metre swell coming into the bay tomorrow and the direction is southerly which means Cape Point won’t diffuse it for us. It rolls straight into the bay and will most likely trash the inshore sites. The shallower sites close to shore will be very surgy and this doesn’t bode well for good diving.
For the more experienced divers the offshore sites could yield good conditions as greater depths reduce the surge and the swell does start to drop off on Saturday, but a southerly wind will make the surface conditions a little choppy. I think Saturday will be touch and go but Sunday may be good as the swell is down to 2 metres and there is little or no wind.
The plan is therefore two launches on Sunday, sites to be decided closer to the time based on Saturday’s conditions. Unfortunately we won’t be getting in the water on Saturday. If you want to be on the list for Sunday, text me and I’ll keep you informed.
Lastly, don’t forget about the Cape Town Dive Festival. The dives for the Saturday are now 70% full, with Friday not far behind. You can find out what’s available and how to book by going to the CTDF website. Íf you want to know what dives we’ll be doing, you can find that list here.
regards
Tony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog/
Hi divers
The wind required for cleaning the bay is just not really happening yet. From the data below (from MagicSeaweed) you can see that we should have had a lot more wind from a northerly direction yet we have had way more southeasterly days this month than the norm.
The result, well False Bay is not very clean and the visibility has been around 5 metres all week. With the southeaster tomorrow as well as both days of the weekend I am not expecting very good conditions for training dives. The sites further off shore may be better but I will take the boat out tomorrow and then make the call for the weekend.
Last weekend’s conditions were pretty much the same although Saturday was wind-free in the morning, and we dived Atlantis and Photographer’s Reef. The visibility was around 6 metres on the inshore side of the reefs but once you rounded the seaward side it dropped to around 3 metres.
On Sunday we went to take a look but called off the planned dives as the wind and surface conditions were unpleasant. Instead we went to the cement wreck just off the yellow buoy that can be seen from Long Beach, and explored there a little bit.
I have Open Water, Advanced, and Divemaster courses on the go at the moment. Those of you who need to do training dives will get a message from me as soon as conditions are suitable. If you’d like to be informed of weekend plans once they’re clearer, let me know.
Please don’t forget your dive festival bookings. The boats are filling up fast.
regards
Tony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog/
Diving is addictive!
Hi divers
The trip to Mozambique seemed to arrive very quickly and ended just as fast. Somehow a week goes by a lot faster when on vacation. We had really good weather and some really good dives – no in fact every one of the nine dives we did was spectacular. We had fun with huge, friendly potato bass and for me the huge schools of fish and bait balls, rays, as well as a leopard shark that buzzed us at Doodles were the highlight. There are some photos on facebook here and here, and watch the blog for more.
The weather is not going to play along with divers this weekend and a cold front as well as a 5 metre swell with a fair amount of rain arrives tomorrow. The rain I can deal with but the swell will make diving very surgy and reduce the visibility. The water was not looking good this morning and had a greenish hue. I decided not to dive and that’s going to be the plan for at least the next few days.
The bookings are starting to roll in (the Saturday dive to the SAS Fleur is already full, for example) so if you have not yet booked please visit www.ctdf.co.za and pick your dives and book. We are on the following dives, if you want to join us:
Friday 10 August
Saturday 11 August
Early booking is a really good plan as if you book and pay by 31 May you can win an Apeks regulator set worth R7,000!
If you have not seen a 50 metre long fishing trawler up close before, pop down to Clifton and take a look at the one on the beach. There are some photos of it here and here. If all goes well, it will be gone by Saturday, if not it will be there for a while. Re-floating a ship that size is a far bigger task than most would imagine (witness the Seli 1, which is actually in a position far more conducive to being recovered, but was in much worse shape when she ran aground). There is also a risk of it tearing a hole in the hull as they drag it off the beach and this could mean a new wreck to dive.
Regards
Tony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog/
Diving is addictive!
… for the Cape Town Dive Festival?
It’s going to be held at the Cape Boat & Ski Boat Club at Miller’s Point. Don’t miss it!
On Sunday 11 March, since the Cape Argus Pick n Pay Cycle Tour was going to prohibit access to basically the entire peninsula, we decided to take an expedition out to the eastern side of False Bay to do a boat dive with Indigo Scuba, run by Kate and Deon Jonker. We’ve been meaning to do this for ages and ages, so we were very glad to finally get ourselves over there! The southeaster (which had blown strongly in the few days prior to the 11th) actually cleans up the eastern side of False Bay while it messes up the western side, or at least has some positive effect on visibility. So while we are diving in the Atlantic during the summer, Indigo launches out of Gordon’s Bay and explores local dive sites such as Pinnacles, Cow and Calf, and the Steenbras River Mouth.
We met at Indigo Scuba in the morning, loaded up the boat, and then drove the 5 minutes to Harbour Island in Gordon’s Bay, from where we launched. It’s an extremely civilised launch site and overall experience… The foul-mouthed snoek slinging fishermen crowding Miller’s Point seemed like a bad dream!
It’s about 11 kilometres from Harbour Island to Steenbras Deep, and one has the feeling of being quite far out to sea – although we could see the mountains surrounding False Bay on both sides of us. The wind was stronger than the weather man had predicted, giving rise to some quite serious wind chop and a bumpy and wet boat ride. When we arrived at the reef we could see that there was more wave action on top of the pinnacles than in the deeper water surrounding them. Deon dropped a shot on one of the two pinnacles that comprise the reef (the top of the pinnacle we dropped onto is at about 18 metres, with the sand at about 30 metres). A murky descent (standard for False Bay in summer!) down the shot line led us to the top of the pinnacle, where visibility was only about 2 metres and it was very green.
As we ventured slightly deeper we encountered some invigorating (ahem!) thermoclines (one of them was actually visible as a haze in the water) and improved visibility. There was quite a strong current in places, and lots of surge.
There are many similarities between the reefs we dive on the western side of False Bay, but the overall pattern of the sea life was subtly different. The fish seemed far less skittish than their compatriots to the west, and happily swam within a few tens of centimetres from my mask. Nudibranchs abound, and close inspection of the corals covering the rocks is well rewarded. There seemed to be fewer sea cucumbers, and feather stars were not quite as dominant as they are in some of the other parts of False Bay. The corals, sponges and sea fans are beautiful and very numerous.
The sand around the reef is very coarse and full of shells, and the reef itself abounds with cracks, gullies, small pointy pinnacles, and walls that can be traversed at a variety of depths. The gullies appear to be much beloved by west coast rock lobster, and shysharks were quite common too.
This reef is not in a marine protected area (MPA) – none of the eastern False Bay dive sites are. Kate, who regularly dives both sides of the bay, says she can see a distinct difference in the number of fish that they see on “their” side of the bay compared to the western side. So even if I am quite cynical about the competence of the administration and will to police the MPAs, clearly they are having some effect!
Dive date: 11 March 2012
Air temperature: 29 degrees
Water temperature: 12 degrees
Maximum depth: 24.8 metres
Visibility: 2-10 metres
Dive duration: 38 minutes
The very first Cape Town Dive Festival will take place on Friday 10 and Saturday 11 August 2012, at the Cape Boat and Ski Boat Club at Miller’s Point. As many of the dive operators as possible are co-operating in the planning. The aim is to promote diving in Cape Town, and we’re very excited about this event!
The cost is R200 to register, which gets you a T shirt and access to the discounted boat dives, competitions and festivities, and R100 for each boat dive you do. So if you do two boat dives, you’ve already saved yourself some money!
There are six dive boats launching three times a day to seven sites (wrecks and reefs at a range of depths for all qualification levels), as well as frequent shore dives to visit the sevengill cowsharks. There’s something for everyone – from the wrecks of the SAS Fleur, the MFV Orotava, the SAS Pietermaritzburg and the SAS Good Hope to the reefs at Pie Rock, Outer Castle, Partridge Point (for some seals!), Batsata Maze and more.
Visit the Dive Festival website for more information! Clare is handling bookings, so when you book your spot you’ll be interacting with her. If you want to join the Learn to Dive Today rabble on the boat, contact me to find out which dives we’ll be participating in. If you want to rent kit and cylinders on the day, be sure to let me know as soon as possible.
The Wind Atlas for South Africa (WASA) project was launched in mid-March, having been funded by the Danish government (masters of wind farming), and the United Nations Development Program-Global Environment Facility (UNDP-GEF). The atlas shows wind direction, frequency, and estimated power output, and the data was collected from a grid of wind measurement stations all over the country. Its primary use will be to assist South Africans in tapping the energy of the wind to generate electricity. This is incredibly exciting, as within a few months a wind turbine offsets the carbon emissions required to construct it, and then runs virtually emission-free for up to 20 years. Also, we’re all really tired of Eskom (supplier of electricity) encouraging us to purchase less of its product (electricity), and randomly switching off the power when we’re stuck in a shopping mall parking area or trying to cook dinner. I would love to see an economist’s take on that dogshow.
I digress. There’s quite a bit of techinical information on the CSIR WASA site, as well as in some of the news articles describing the project, but the gist of it is that measurements have been taken over the last 2-3 years, and supplemented by a mathematical model to provide a smooth map of wind speeds across most of South Africa. Thirty years of global data was used to calibrate the model.
All well and good, you say, but how on earth is this relevant to diving? Well, you’ll notice that the Learn to Dive Today newsletter frequently contains reference to wind speed and direction, and this affects where we can dive, and when. In summer, if the southeaster has been blowing, it’s Atlantic or eastern False Bay. In winter, the northwester makes the latter two destinations undiveable, but cleans up western False Bay delightfully. So wind is pretty central in the lives of local scuba divers. Wind is also the primary generating force for waves and the massive swells that arrive at our shores from the Southern Ocean, which affects our diving too.
Wind is also fairly central to the lives of everyone else who lives in this part of the world… If you speak to any Capetonian about the weather (a favourite topic), the wind is bound to come up (in discussion, not literally)!
With all this in mind, it’s quite gratifying to look at a WASA map, and see that our local obsession is justified. The Cape Peninsula and Gordon’s Bay area are among the windiest in the entire area mapped. Red indicates wind speeds of 10 metres per second, the green is about 5 metres per second, and purple (there’s almost none of it) is virtually windless. The source of this map is here.
If you’re a local diver, I encourage you to pay attention to the wind. Even if the weekend’s not windy (most people’s diving time), the wind in the week before will give clues as to what the sea conditions will be. Reading the newsletters of ethical operators will give you good insight into local weather patterns, courtesy of his years of reading the wind and water. If nothing else, an awareness of the wind will lead you to feel less disappointed when a dive is cancelled because of it, and enable you to make safe diving choices about what sort of conditions you want to go diving in. Unfortunately not all dive charters will hold back on launching when conditions are poor, and you can avoid an expensive zero-viz dive or getting seasick (or lost) on the surface by watching the weather yourself and making deductions.
Hi divers
The last few weeks have been eventful for the marine world in Cape Town. For some thoughts about chumming, which has been very much in the news lately, you can click here and here, and for some general thoughts you can read this blog post. The ocean is a complex and ever-changing place, but it’s the same old ocean that we dived in a month ago. There’s something new to see every day – don’t let political drama and media hype put you off!
The picture above shows the patchy and murky waters of False Bay. Our diving plans for this entire week have been on hold as the weather, water and wind have not been of a nature typically required for diver training.
We did venture out last Saturday and dived the BOS 400 in very misty conditions. The visibility was around 15 metres but there was a huge fog bank hanging about so we decide to skip a second dive. I had cancelled shore dives for the weekend but believe it was a bad call as reports of great visibility and flat seas served to remind me that weather forecasting is best left to the experts.
We took the boat out today and dived with the cowsharks at Shark Alley and the seals at Partridge Point. The conditions were more windy and choppy than the weather forecast predicted, but the visibility was an acceptable 6 metres at Shark Alley and about the same at the seals, but very surgy.
Friday
We will launch from Miller’s Point and do a double tank dive or just one dive (I’m not taking the boat out of the water in between dives, so you can’t do just the second dive), maximum five people, dive site(s) and depth dependent on who books and how many dives you want to do.
Saturday and Sunday
Shore dives for training and Discover Scuba Diving.
Monday and Tuesday
Back on the boat for a double tank or a single dive (weather permitting) – sites on at least one of those days to be suitable for Open Water divers.
If you would like to dive, please let me know your preference for what day, and if there’s a particular site (False Bay side) that you’d like to visit. No promises, but your input is important!
This is going to be a big event, to be part of it you need to go to www.ctdf.co.za and register and book your dives. I cannot book for you, but you can do the dives I have booked if you wish. Or if you are tired of seeing my fins, pick any of the options available providing they are within your qualification.
Booked and paid for and we leave on Monday 7 May returning on Saturday 12th. So no diving with me that week, here, but you can still join if you’re tired of the office.
regards
Tony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog/
Diving is addictive!
