Winter morning at 2 Step with Brent M

 Hard to fast forward seven months in which so much shit happened, most of it unexpected and not all of it good.  But what's definitely good is that I made it back here to one of my absolute favorite, no-stress, coral-garden expanses with walls and sharks: 2 Step or Honaunau Bay. Especially on a day like today with no wind, no swell, and very few people. (It was 7 am).   

Teamed up with my long-time underwater partner, Brent M, and we navigated the way-more-sketch parking options, gear-up checklist, lava walk to the entry point and low-tide entry with little pilikia. Here we are with the low sun on our faces, then Brent took one of me.

Jumping in at low tide requires a bit of planning and caution:  there's a rock ledge that sticks out about 2 feet below the surface and if you drop in backwards you can catch your tailbone on it. If you giant stride, which is what I did today, you just have to aim a bit to the left and clear it into deeper water.  High tide entries are easier, but then getting out is harder, so I'll take low to mid tide at 2-step any day. Slotted into my happy-place and the world was right.  Water temp was 77, and I wondered if I dmade a mistake not bringing the hooded vest.  As it turned out I was comfortable in my old Pinnacle 5 mil, leaky seams and all.

 

 We dropped the float at the sand patch and headed over the wall, planning to follow the wall past the overhang that I call Godzilla Head, and then range back up the slope with a south heading and wander around the canyons and pinnacles near the point until time to head back across the coral gardens to retrieve the float. 

Immediately over the wall and down the cascading plate coral cliff.  It looked super healthy.  These shots are all with the GoPro, which I purposely took as my camera device because it requires no attention when clipped off.  There's no strobe but also no task loading which I didn't care to have on my first dive back.

 We angled down pretty far below the overhang to hang out with a bunch of Yellowfin Goatfish, and were also on the lookout for the big White Tip Reef shark that likes to rest on the bottom by the deep Aloha. Visibility was excellent at around 100 ft.

You can't see the shark through the goatfish curtain,, but it's there, bigger than I remember.  Later Brent said he's seen two of them at that spot so maybe this is the one I hadn't seen.  Anyway, he was too far away, as close as we were, for me to get a good shot of him with the wide angle setting.

We hung around at that depth for a few minutes, slowly moving west along the wall.  So many fish, and a few big eels. We'd gotten a bit farther west than I'd thought we'd go, but as we headed back up the wall I dialed in 180 to hopefully get us to the shark cave, but no, we ended up at the three pinnacles just off the point.  And low tide so we elected not to thread our way into the shallows but just head back on 60 degrees across the beautiful coral garden.  Here's Brent skimming over a nice coral head.

We wandered back toward where I thought the float was and eventually found the ancient thin car tire that told me we were about 20 meters away from our target.  Retrieved the float and made our exit.  

BAck at the staging area under the big tree we chatted with lots of people, including some Canadians who laughed at us when we tried to mimic a canadian accent.  They later joined others pushing Brent's car out of the puka that used to be a good parking spot until it got so dug out that you're basically driving into a hole.  Since parking spots at 2 step has gotten way more restricted you sometimes have to take a chance.  Fortunately, he was able to climb back out onto the pavement and all good.  

A good reason to do a safe, comfortable dive as your first dive back is to check out your gear.  Turns out my wireless fas pressure transmitter battery was dying, so replacing that before getting back in the water became my new project for the day.

On the way home I had to stop at Super J's for a few laulaus because of course I did.