Malaga Cove, Palos Verdes Estates, CA<\/p>\n
Free diving With Ed<\/p>\n
Max depth: 15 feet
\nWaves: 1-2 foot ankle breakers
\nVisibility: 10-15 feet, sort of silty
\nWater Temperature: Maybe about 60 degrees.
\nTotal Ocean Time: 30 minutes or so.<\/p>\n
Malaga Cove is really shallow and I do enjoy free diving – here more than SCUBA.<\/p>\n
I picked up Ed from San Pedro around 8 AM.<\/p>\n
We stopped by Long Point (aka Old Marineland) to check out the newly opened public beach access.<\/p>\n
Without going in to great detail, it sucks.<\/p>\n
The parking lot is very small – 10 cars, maybe? – and the walk down to the beach seems like an endless fence maze.<\/p>\n
We arrived at Malaga around 9:30 AM.<\/p>\n
I ran in to Jim Molica in the parking lot – he was a “student body supervisor” (the students called them “narks”) when I was going to Palos Verdes High School twenty years ago and hadn’t seen him since.<\/p>\n
He said my name sounded familiar — yeah, I bet it did!<\/p>\n
We caught up very briefly on what we had been doing in the last 20 years, and talked about how stupid the school administration was in my Junior and Senior year – I almost got suspended for being drunk because they smelled Binaca breath freshener on me and thought it was Vodka.<\/p>\n
They also didn’t know the difference between smelling like cigarettes and smelling like pot.<\/p>\n
Ed and I suited up and did the pleasant walk down to the water with just our spear guns and free diving equipment.<\/p>\n
Compared to lugging SCUBA tanks around, I almost felt naked.<\/p>\n
We made an uneventful rock entry and swam out a hundred yards or so, clear of the muddy shoreline.<\/p>\n
In 15 feet of water, we could see the bottom.<\/p>\n
I loaded my spear gun, checked the safety and trolled for fish.<\/p>\n
Maybe a White Sea Bass or Halibut?<\/p>\n
No more Sheephead for me!<\/p>\n
They’re too easy to shoot.<\/p>\n
As the saying goes, “Shooting a sheephead is like shooting your dog.”<\/p>\n
After 30 minutes of trolling and diving, neither of us saw anything.<\/p>\n
Ed headed in about ten minutes before me.<\/p>\n
He complained that his new wet suit was too buoyant.<\/p>\n
We rested and headed up, giving a dive report to a group of SCUBA divers walking down.<\/p>\n
In the parking lot, we ran in to Tom from the old American Diving; he had collected some Uni (aka Sea Urchins).<\/p>\n
Tom couldn’t keep a straight face when he saw us.<\/p>\n
He was laughing, “I saw you guys a few weeks ago carrying that kayak down to the water and only making it out to where the shore divers were.”<\/p>\n
He continued to laugh, “You guys looked ridiculous hauling that heavy thing down to the water just to anchor right over there.”<\/p>\n
Tom was laughing so hard, he could barely stand.<\/p>\n
We had some beer in the parking lot while we dried off.<\/p>\n
Ed asked if we could drink here.<\/p>\n
I said, “Everybody is drinking beer here, they just hide it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malaga Cove, Palos Verdes Estates, CA Free diving With Ed Max depth: 15 feet Waves: 1-2 foot ankle breakers Visibility: 10-15 feet, sort of silty Water Temperature: Maybe about 60 degrees. Total Ocean Time: 30 minutes or so. Malaga Cove is really shallow and I do enjoy free diving – here more than SCUBA. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}