Location: San Benedicto, Socorro Island, Baja California Mexico
Every once in awhile, we are lucky enough to get conditions so perfect for the 218 mile crossing to the Socorro Islands that it is like cruising across a lake. Of course for an open ocean voyage it is pretty rare, and when it does occur my first instinctive thought is, “I wish it could be like this everyday out here”. Then I think, no, if it was like this everyday everyone would want my job. We left Cabo San Lucas, at the southern end of Baja California Sur, Mexico with virtually no wind blowing and the sea as calm as a sea can be. To our delight these conditions persisted throughout the 24 hour voyage, and we arrived at San Benedicto under a blue sky and ready to start our week of diving in search of Giant Manta Rays, hammerhead sharks, dolphins, humpback whales and more.
We spent our first day in the sheltered bay at the south end of San Benedicto at a divesite called ‘The Canyon’, in the shadow of an impressive volcanic cone last erupted in the 1950’s. The first dive of the trip, or the checkout dive as it’s called, served it’s purpose as the dive to work out any gear issues, fine tuning buoyancy, and shaking off any cobwebs that accumulated since the last dive trip. Current was slack but visibility was a little below average, the result of a southerly swell washing ashore and stirring up the ash along the beach near our divesite. Nonetheless many scuba divers surfaced with stories of several hammerhead sharks passing nearby, not bad for a checkout dive.
Conditions for dives 2 and 3 didn’t change much, but once again most of our guests had some good encounters with 8-10 big scalloped hammerheads, and a few divers had a black Giant Manta Ray cruise slowly by, apparently not quite ready to play yet. No worries, we’ve got another 5 days of diving and we’ll be ready for some of that good Manta Lovin’ when they’re ready. A beer in the hot tub while enjoying another gorgeous sunset was a great way to end day 1. Talk again soon,
Captain Gordon
Weather: Seas calm, winds light, skies clear, air temp 78F
Diving conditions: Visibility 20 ft, current mild to moderate, water temp 75F
A picture perfect transit across Lake Pacific
