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Howard Steele
On: Dive Sites
A day out scuba diving in the Cape peninsula.
(Part one)
SCUBA diving cape town is just not as simple as grabbing your gear and getting down to the water, there are a goodie bag full of reasons and objectives to be considered before even getting down to the sea.
Of course the first action is acquiring a dive buddy. Buddy being a non sexist term so it applies to all, it might just come from the fact that divers in 7mm thick wetsuits and a barrage of shape altering accessories make some males and females undistinguishable apart. This can of course be assisted if the boys stuck to blue accessories and the girls to pink, but this is not a hard and fast rule.
So you start emailing your buds at the start of the week and begin eliminating the excuses, the weekends are a land mine of obligations for the parent/spouse/diver, there are kids school activities, shopping, household chores, besides the birthdays, anevesaries and family occasions such great aunt Aggie popping round for tea, then there are significant others who don’t dive and have other plans and other conflicting recreational activities. That is to say you don’t have the flu or the dreaded stomach bug.
This all eliminated and the day decided on, usually a Sunday morning then the big question is where?
You see the Cape peninsula is this mountain range that splits the Atlantic seaboard and False Bay into two worlds, you can be enjoying sundowners to a glorious sunset in Camps bay and at the same time in False Bay it could a muggy windy black south Easter. And of course this affects the visibility/VIZ”
A very important word in cape diving, VIZ, as used in the diving greeting when two divers meet
”Howzit! How’s the viz bro”
or the more gender correct version ‘Howzit! How’s the viz buddie?”
This immiadially confirms your status as a Cape SCUBA diver and informs the diver entering the water, how good the dive was, being Cape Town the answer usually includes a reference to the water temperature ,the later part sometimes frightening the spirit out of visiting divers as we always lie in the briefing and make the water a couple of degrees warmer.
So rule of thumb, howling South Easter off shore at Oudekraal and the upwelling cleans the water to a crystal 10 to 15 meters Viz, we won’t harp on the water temperature dropping to extremity chilly 6 degrees Celsius.
Now if the Northwester has been blowing it does exactly the same in False Bay and hey presto good Viz at a slightly warmer water temp.
So what’s the catch, well understandably and scientifically the wind can only blow in one given direction at any given time but believe me in cape Town it can blow in six different directions at any given time of the day.
So going by the weather report for the up coming weekend and deciding on a time and place the Dive is on.
All that information is condensed to a single sentence email or sms
The Viz is great, bro/buddie are you guys on for a dive at Castle/windmill/a-fame/pyramid/Justin’s just substitute the dive site name.
” Are you non divers getting the hang of it now”
So buddies procured and a rough guess at to which side is divable we usually meet at my place at 9.30 am. A relatively early start to the day in Cape Town.
Why my place? Well I’ve got tons of extra gear and the ability to repair just about any thing placed in front of me. And you know Capies argument of why buy anything new when dear departed uncle John’s rig from the Second World War is still perfectly functional, and if it isn’t well Howard can fix it or at worst lend us the equipment we need.
So gear loaded gear, checks done twice we head off in the direction of Simonstown to checkout the dive sites.
The first divable spot is Clovelly station,(in the sea next to the station of course) just outside Fishhoek. A relatively shallow dive with very little parking, not a bad thing as this is where the big fellows cruise by and have made their presence petty evident lately
So we dismiss this site with a relieved “no parking bro” and head for the next site that being Quarry: Which is pretty close to the first site, with plenty of parking but this site is generally ignored in Great White season.
With everyone checking out the mountain as we drive passed and only the newby divers commenting on how much parking is available.
The next site is Long beach, basically a training site but being a sheltered bay it ends up being the dive of the day if nothing else is working. We stop to chat to fellow divers and instructors with the obligatory ‘Howzit! How’s the viz bro?’With a bit of gloating that we are going to try Castle.
Castle Rock being the premier shore dive on the False Bay coast and on the day one of the best dives to experience. So with a check you later bro, we journey on. .
We pass the dive site Windmill beach, just below the Simonstown golf course. Which once housed the Boer prisoners of war and they used the little Beach for their ablutions, which then led To One of the first recorded Shark attacks at the cape. But like the windmill the sharks seem to have moved on.
Next up is A-frame so named from a wooden structure used by ships to get their bearings? This has long ago been replaced by an unromantic cement pole. If the sea is flat and clean we are now treated to what the viz is truly like. On clean days you can see the kelp beds clear down to the rocks and white sand and the anticipation grows. Cool, if its clear like this Castle must be awsome.
We race passed Spaniard rock, the climb down to this site is a sandy crumbling 30m high bank, not for the faint hearted and quite daunting task with a cylinder and a weight belt.
We spot the dive boats hanging above the Pietermaritzberg the name shortened to the PMB.Sunk as an artificial reef to be enjoyed by divers. this is the first boat dive for many novices and visitors diving in the Bay. Lying on the sand it seems to bear all the moods of the bay and diving on her changes by the hour so I always refer to her as her the PMS.
As we top the rise above the turn off Millers point launch site we are treated to what I rate as one of my favorite views.
The water is calm and has that translucent blue, as a bonus the sun is out and on a day like this resembles any island holiday destination.
Only two choices left Pyramid rock with a chance of spotting the elusive Seven-gill Cow sharks or Castle rock and the opportunity of experiencing all the marine diversity that False Bay has to offer.
The decision is made, Castle rock it is.
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