I’ve had this persistent cough for the last two months – no fever, no blocked sinuses, so I’m not sure what it is; I have pretty much learned to live with it until it goes away.

Driving in from an undisclosed, secret Santa Monica location, I arrived at 7:00 AM – an hour early – and checked out the conditions.

Low tide and water that was flat as a lake, called me to finally get in the water again.

The regular divers started to arrive; even though the arrival of Chipper usually jinxes perfect conditions, that was not the case this morning.

Entering the water from The Cove, I slipped on a rock, did the splits and ruined my perfect entrance – at least I gave some entertainment to some tourists that were watching – it’s probably on the Japanese Youtube channel.

Logged SCUBA Dive #377

Off The Cove and to the right
Terranea Resort, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA

Dove with Not New Chris and Dennis G.

In With: 2600 psi
Out With: 500 psi
Max depth: 30 feet
Waves: Miniscule, maybe two feet at best
Visibility: 8-20 feet
Water Temperature: 57 degrees
Total Bottom Time: About 45 minutes

Dennis G., Not So New Chris and I went to the right and submerged.

Some places off of Terranea Resort resemble the barren seascape of Veteran’s Park.

A Sheep Crab awaits to attack passing divers.

Don’t get too close Dennis!

The crab attacks!

Combined with the shallow depth and lots of light, some parts of this dive opened up to 20 feet of visibility.

If you haven’t learned by now, don’t come here for sea life identification lessons; I don’t know what these things are, but they look cool.

An Opal eye gives me a stare.

A very rare purple starfish.

A starfish next to a sun star.

I’m not sure what this starfish is doing – it folded itself in half, over what looks like a sea feather.

Everyone made an easy exit at The Cove.

Donna The Hot Biker Chick, who is recovering from a cold, joined us for traditional debriefing.

Just a warning about newer vehicles – apparently they tend to lock themselves automatically after a while, so don’t leave your keys inside.

Around 11 AM, the sun was out and the public lot started to fill up.

To our amazement, we saw a family of six walking down from the distant free parking on the long driveway, all carrying beach chairs and boogie boards.

Boogie boards here?

I guess they saw a picture of the sandy beach and thought it went all the way down to the water?

In less time than it took to finish the King Of Beers, the family was walking back to their car.

Someone asked Military Bob which branch of the armed forces was he in – the first person to post with the correct guess, wins two 12-ounce Budweisers the next Sunday that I show up – you must be over 18 to claim prize.

Traffic was pretty light getting back to Santa Monica.

I will have to say, there is quite a difference between the Long Beach “Gang” Ghetto and the Santa Monica “Hippie” Ghetto.

In Long Beach, if you’re out in public and some bum asks you for money and you tell him to go screw himself, everything is cool – people around you may even laugh.

If you do the same thing in Santa Monica, a lot of times, some ultra-liberal piece of crap will step up and try and lecture you about the unfortunate plight of the homeless – so you basically have to tell two people off.

I know there’s a lot of homeless people that need help, but when I saw a “homeless” woman with her eight year old daughter, with all their possessions in a shopping cart, wheel everything directly into a nearby motel room at dusk, I wonder how many are just actors.

They had been on the side of the street collecting food and money all day.

Rain has been forecast for later in the week, and the lobster season clock is ticking – hopefully, I will have time to do more diving soon.

SANCTUM, a 3D action-adventure-thriller centered around cave diving, has been released today.

Since, as I pointed out in my previous post, I guess I’m now considered a journalist, here is my write up of the movie and press day.

I will try my hardest not to accidentally spoil any of the movie.

Alister Grierson, James Cameron and Andrew Wight – it’s interesting to note that James Cameron and Andrew Wight are avid SCUBA divers.

SANCTUM was inspired by producer Andrew Wight’s real life experience in 1988 when he was trapped with 14 other cave diving explorers after the entrance collapsed – all made it out alive thanks to a rescue party.

With that premise, and the addition of the risks and accidents that are known to happen in cave diving, emerges the theme of SANCTUM – but there’s a lot more.

What happens when a group of people are fighting for their lives to survive and one gets hurt, potentially jeopardizing the rest?

What happens when someone in that group slows the rest of the group down?

“What would one do in a survival situation? There’s a lot of very foolish decisions that we can make in very high stress situations…what we think we would do may not be what we actually do,” actress Alice Parkinson said.

Those questions are addressed in SANCTUM.

What impressed me about the cast is that most of them had to learn to SCUBA dive before the filming began, then they went straight to technical diving where they used rebreathers and full face masks.

The underwater cave sequences were all filmed at night in a large tank.

The actors also performed a lot of their own stunts – including a scene where two of the characters are buddy breathing from full face masks – something that seasoned commercial divers wouldn’t do

“We gradually built up the skills that we needed for the movie and kept up those skills… by the time we actually got to the diving, which was the last three or four weeks of the shoot, we were quite proficient. But we are actors making make believe, there was never any real element of true danger,” actor Ioan Gruffudd said.

The number one complaint that the cast had about using a rebreather is that you can’t take long, hard deep breaths, like you can on a simple regulator and tank – you can take a deep breathe, but it won’t let you exhale quickly; they all had to learn to relax and control their breathing.

“We started with SCUBA diving which was really quite nice, so I thought this would be a breeze. Then we had to learn to use rebreathers, which is really advanced technology… that was acting in it’s finest – pretending like we knew what we were doing.” actor Rhys Wakefield said.

What was the most frightening or tensest moment on the set?

“Personally, it wasn’t the diving or throwing myself off a cliff, it was doing that fight sequence with Rhys Wakefield, because emotions are high and we’re actually doing it for real. Rhys is literally trying to keep me under the water, I’m trying to struggle out of the water and we were exhausted fighting… when my eyeballs are rolling, it’s real because I’m gasping for air,” said actor Ioan Gruffudd.

Most of the cast that was asked said that they would continue to SCUBA dive recreationally.

“I look forward to SCUBA diving, where there’s warm water and you can always see the surface,” actor Richard Roxburgh said.

So, what did I think about SANCTUM?

Things I liked about SANCTUM:

– I’m not sure if little camera mounted remote controlled submarines are widely available, even though the technology exists, and I guess breathing directly out of an air bottle, sans the regulator, is probably possible, but SANCTUM was extremely technically accurate in the way it portrayed the equipment and dangers of cave diving. The verbiage that was used is accurate.

And yes, cave divers really do take off their equipment and shove it through narrow passages.

– It is not very predictable – some parts are, but for the most part it gets more and more unpredictable as the movie progresses.

– The 3D enhances the movie experience, and didn’t rely on any cheesy 3D gimmicks to make it better. 3D haters can enjoy the movie watching it in 2D.

The thing I didn’t like about SANCTUM:

– I’m not sure if I have a problem with Attention Deficit Disorder, but a lot of characters were introduced in a very short period of time, and it seemed that everyone was angry at everyone else when the movie started.

So when the cave started to flood, I was still trying to figure out who everyone was and exactly what was going on.

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Not only did I like the movie, but I plan on seeing the movie again, to catch the things that I missed the first time around.

During Press Day, I got to meet Mark from Neutral Dive Gear; we have been following each other’s blog for several years, but never met until now.