|
|
Mendocino's coastal area is chuck full of B&Bs, hotels,
motels, restaurants, camp grounds, gas stations, drug stores, McDonalds, Burger
King, a couple of movie houses, three stage theaters, 2321 art galleries, 3 or
4 boat harbors, boat launches, and 2 full-service dive shops. It has
campgrounds, cheap motels, some nice lodges and B&Bs, and some very
upscale, hautesy-tautesy resorts.
 |
Location/Distances/Driving Directions |
|
Most people get to the Mendocino area via
Highway 128 through Booneville. It's a nice, winding drive through low coastal
mountains and redwoods. Lots of new wineries along the route with free tasting
rooms. |
|
In contrast to the horde of bed and breakfast
inns, the Highway 1 corridor through Mendocino County offers only a pair dive
shops.
In Gualala, the hardware store is able to fill tanks and
supply basic diving equipment.
Just south of Fort Bragg, there's a well stocked dive shop,
Subsurface Progression, on
the ocean side of Highway 1 that's pretty hard to miss. |
|
 |
Boat Launch Facilities |
|
Use of boats off the Mendocino County coast can
be dived into two categories. Small boats (14' or less) and kayaks or
diveboards can be launched in many places along the coast. In the site
descriptions provided later for Mendocino County, those locations providing
easy small boat launching are indicated as such.
Larger boats (greater than 12') are limited in where they
can be reasonably put in.
Lugging a boat across a sandy beach is never much fun and,
about the 12' limit, becomes down right miserable. In terms of easy locations
to launch the larger boats, they are few:
- Pt. Arena Harbor has a boat hoist. For a fee and
use of YOUR hoist straps, they'll put your boat in the water. Be sure to
checkout what time the hoist closes; otherwise, you might end up stuck in the
water overnight.
- Albion River has a shallow draft boat launch. Try
to get there around high tide.
- Noyo Harbor, Fort Bragg has two boat launches of
South Harbor Drive. The first, smaller one is "dead ahead" when you turn off
Highway 128 onto South Harbor Drive. The other, larger launch is farther down
South Harbor Drive.
|
|
