 |
Location: | Just north of Stillwater Cove across from Stillwater Cove Ranch |
|
Mile Marker: | Between SON 3731& SON 3752 |
|
Access: | Shore or boat |
|
Facilities: | None |
|
Nearest Public Telephone: | North less than 1 mile on Hwy 1, you can find a
public telephone at the Ocean Cove General
Store. To the south, there's a public telephone at the day use parking lot in the Stillwater Cove County Park. |
The Cauldron is a cove about 100 yards north of
Stillwater Cove. It can be accessed by swimming out of Stillwater or using
trails from Hwy 1 parking to climb down to a small, bouldery beach.
The Cauldron gets its name from the appearance of the ocean's surface when the swell is up. Picture a witch's kettle at a roiling boil on a pitching boat and you get some idea of what it looks like once you get outside the surf zone on a bad day. In the surf zone, it can be much worse. The entry is mostly sand broken up by large boulders. These boulders border the entry as well as split it. When the swell is up, so's the surf. Surf crashing through a boulder field qualifies as one of those sites that's only for the very experienced divers with strong surf skills, some serious physical conditioning, and insufficient mental capacity to have learned to take advantage of their experience.
The unreasonable conditions on bad days are the result of rock formations above and below the water. The popular diving area is surrounded by rocks rising above the surface that are too small to provide any protection from ocean swell. Instead, they serve to breakup the swell into very lumpy conditions. This is magnified by underwater formations that rise to within a few feet of the surface from a bottom that can be 40 feet deep. All of which makes for some very spectacular freediving on those days when conditions are optimal.
Because this area is reasonably easy to access, it receives a lot of diving pressure. That pretty much guarantees you'll not find any trophies here. Legal abalone are rather abundant but generally don't exceed 8 1/2". How abundant you'll find them to be depends on the depth you can comfortably work. Below 15', your biggest problem will be making a decision on which abalone to take. Above 15', pickings slim down quite a bit.
Last Modified: January 31, 2005
