Catalina Dreaming

Catalina Island holds a certain mystique for me as a dive destination.  The underwater park at Avalon’s Casino Point holds memories of great joy and sadness, a bit of an aquatic dichotomy. 

Starting in 1986, and for several years after, I made annual pilgrimages to Avalon with the UCSB Scuba Club organized by Ed Stetson.  The UCSB divers really looked forward to this annual dive trip, usually held on the last full weekend of April.  We would take over a budget hotel on the island and dive every chance we had to dive at the underwater park.  Ed had every move on the trip choreographed from getting to the island, gear transfer between the hotel and Casino Point (and 40 or more divers can have a lot of gear), and getting back to Long Beach on the ferry.  The fun underwater was punctuated topside (and sometimes underwater) by the shenanigans that college students can get into when left to their own devices.  

I fondly remember the great times we had both below and topsides year-after-year.  Before the staircase to the entry point was built, we would scramble down the rocks of the breakwater, carefully timing our entry into the water with a lull in the waves.  Underwater, the kelp forest hosted a variety of sea life.  Structures and wrecks within the park boundary offered places to explore.  But, the sea is not tolerant of error and on one trip in 1994, the first I missed in 8 years, my friend Nejat drown while solo freediving.  I will have more to say about that in a future installation of the blog.  After that year, my visits to Avalon became increasingly infrequent as I started a career and moved from the area.

My last trip to Catalina Island was in 2014 when I dived with my nephew.  (his dad had joined me on one of the annual trips in the previous century).   My nephew learned to scuba dive at the Scout Camp on the island a few years earlier, but this trip was his first to Avalon. Many folks who made the trip in their 20's in earlier years now joined the UCSB students and brought their school-age children.  The trip had become intergenerational over the generation and a half we had been going to the island.  

I will soon be returning to Catalina Island at time yet-to-be-determined.  I have another nephew who recently was certified.  I would like to visit the underwater park and Avalon with him and let him experience some of the wonderful times I associate with the island.  I need to make the trip one more time before I hang it up and the surface interval becomes permanent.  As Leon Russell sang " I just hope you undertand, I just got to get back to the island"

And watch the sun go down (sit and watch the sun go down)
Hear the sea roll in (listen to the sea roll in)
But I'll be thinking of you (yes, and I'll be thinking of you)
And how it might have been (thinking how it might have been)
Hear the night birds cry (listen to the night birds cry)
Watch the sunset die (sit and watch the sunset die)
Well I hope you understand I just had to go back to the island