I should take back what I'd said about my satisfaction with eBay and PayPal. So far, though I'm scheduled to receive a credit, my account has yet to be updated. I know it's supposed to take a few days from when the product was returned, but I returned it at least a week ago, and my account still does not show the credit. I will phone their customer service tomorrow (since it'll be a regular business day) and hopefully get a live person on the phone who can either correct it or at least tell me why it's taken so long. Maybe this process will take longer. I guess I've got time, since I'd bought the computer with the 6-month leave for payment...
Yesterday, Peter and I took another dive at the Shores. I changed my outfit so that I was only wearing the Fourth Element fleece-lined drysuit liner bottoms without the LL Bean Expedition Weight base layer beneath. The dive was uneventful, but executed fairly well. Peter still held one of my fins, though, while I donned the first one between sets. After waiting through the next set, I managed my second fin, and started kicking out through another couple sets of waves until I got into the more rolling portion of the waves away from the breakers.
We descended into about 20 feet of water among lots of little sand dollars (Peter calls them "sand dimes"), seeing a few small sea stars, and commenced swimming west into the "Crap Patch." We swam slowly and easily through the warm water (the water temp stayed around 60 degrees F). When we were on our way to Vallecitos Point, we came across a small group of divers who apparently were also headed for the point, and as they swam away from us, they kicked up A LOT of sand, clouding the water so that it was hard to see after they'd left. We ended up swimming to shallower water, noodling around, then finished the dive by swimming underwater until we got to a depth of about 12 feet, when I looked up, saw a few divers on the surface, and decided to swim the rest of the way on the surface. I kicked backwards, keeping my eye on Peter's form as he swam along the bottom until it was shallow enough to stand up.
After a first mislead, we drove over to Ski Beach on Mission Bay (on Vacation Island), where the Dive Animals were having a picnic. Peter introduced me to a couple of other members, and I introduced myself to a woman, whose name is Martina, I think, who is a native Southern Californian, but lived on the East Coast for a number of years with her husband, who recently retired. Turns out they'll be on next weekend's boat dive as well, so I'll at least have been introduced to a few people who will be on the boat. I think there are a total of about 28 people who will be on the boat, which, from what Peter told me, is well-appointed and staffed, with a nice swim step on the back with two fin ladders descending into the water.
Martina had won the raffle prize of a cabin seat for one on the October trip to the Cortez Banks, but since she and her husband are going to the Seychelles then, she won't be able to use it. She sold it to Peter for just a little less than the purchase price would have been and he bought another cabin ticket from Gayle so that we'd have the cabin for the two of us. Gayle commented that though the October boat is nearly full, there are still 4 open slots on this weekend's trip. So even though she'd planned to already have fewer divers than can be accommodated by the boat (I think it's the Horizon), we might have even fewer, which means plenty of space for everyone, which is good news for people diving dry, as dry divers take up more space (with gear, etc.) than wet divers.
I was able to download the license for MacDive onto my computer, so I should be able to start using all its functionalities now. I'll learn more after next weekend, when I'll download those dives, which will take me over the trial version limit of five saved dives. For $25, MacDive appears to be a good program which works well with the dive computer data. I like being able to see my dive profile on the screen.
I showed the profile from that dive to Kat. She commented that it looked like we went really deep. I looked, and then realized, somewhat surprisedly, that we'd gone to 84 feet, which is deeper than I'd thought. So the last two things that I want to work on (concentratedly, during the dive, as opposed to technique in getting past the surf and donning my fins) is breathing slower. Peter said it'll come when I become more comfortable and am able to relax while diving.
Relax, yes.
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