auchmeddan

We had our first dive from Wyndham on Saturday, formally Sonesta where we used to dive with Fantasea. To ensure a parking spot and pay our annual membership we turned up really early. This worked in our favour as we got our preferred spot at the entry point to the water for a change. It’s been a while since we’ve dived from here as the Hurricane in 2003 blew away the dock. Rather than build an expensive new wooden dock Blue Water have opted to build a make shift floating walkway from the beach to the boat. Not a bad idea but, with my sea legs I can see myself falling in at some point, especially seeing as how I’m laden down with heavy dive gear.

On Saturday we went to Killa Puffa Reef. It’s a massive reef that you swim round is probably the best way to describe it. Never been there before and seeing as how we are advanced open water certified, its time to do our own navigating. Got some general directions from Michael the Boat Captain and off we went. Followed the anchor line to the bottom where the visibility was pretty bad. As per his instructions headed north from there and found the reef. There wasn’t a lot of fish but maybe it was just that we couldn’t see them, everything was pretty blurry, especially when the sun wasn’t out.

We swam around, very slowly due to the strong current. Although there wasn’t much to see we saw a massive Hogfish of which Dave got a pretty good photo. This was probably the highlight of the Dive for Dave but for me it was finding the anchor line.

At about 25mins into our Dive Dave asked if I knew where the boat was. I figured that we’ll come back to our starting point and there will be the anchor. Only problem is reef all looks the same, time for me to use my compass. If we came out going north we have to head back south. At around 40 mins I started turning out from the reef and checking my compass. At one point I figured we must be close so I headed out to look for the anchor line with Dave. Much to my disappointment it wasn’t there but not to be discouraged I stayed out from the reef while Dave swam in closer to it. It had to be here and I knew you couldn’t see it from the reef. After only a couple of strokes I saw it. Made my entire Dive and Dave got a photo of me holding it. Such a small thing but I felt a great sense of achievement. Apart from a Constellation dive a year or so ago this is the first dive where we’ve not had to surface to find the boat. Whoo hoooo!

Didn’t fair so well on Sunday’s dive but, there’s always next week.

Jules

Pics below are the Hogfish, and me holding the Anchor line!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 19th, 2005 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Bermuda, Diving. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.