auchmeddan

I Finally got out Diving again last weekend, and it was damn cold! I was sitting on the boat shivering between dives. Jules was laughing at me.

Last weekend took Jules to 99 dives, and was the first time we’d dived together in a while. I didn’t take many photos this weekend, but did get a few of a nice sized File Fish and a cute little guy that I think is some sort of Blennie. (UPDATE : Joe identified this for me as a Razor Fish).

We have a dive holiday booked for next June, and we’re both looking forward to spending a week on a small boat in the Bahamas diving with Tiger sharks. We booked with Jim Abernathy’s Scuba Adventures for their Tiger Shark Expedition after I saw a great up-close photo in the back of a recent copy of “Sport Diver”. More info on the trip is available at this link - Shark Trip

There are some other things going on just now that had me more than a little worried that we were going to have to cancel the trip (that we’ve already put a deposit down on) but it looks now like that’s all going to work out in our favour. I’ll supply more news about what’s going on when I know more (but no, Jules isn’t pregnant).

I’ll leave this with a couple of photos of the Razor Fish and a File Fish.

Jules finished her Dive Master course this weekend, knocking off 5 exams on Sunday. Go Jules!

As part of the course, she drew this map Saturday of the Montana. Looks pretty good to me, but I’m always getting turned around on that site anyway!

Click on the map for a larger picture:

Jules has been doing well with her Dive Master Course, and was out again today - drawing a map of a dive site this time. Jules has really got the right kind of personality for this (the complete opposite of mine) and I think she would make a good instructor. There are five exams still to be completed, which Jules is studying for just now. I’m sure she’ll pass them all without much of a problem.

This course has been really good for Jules as she really enjoys meeting new people, helping them get their gear together, and then guiding them on a dive site. It sounds like Hell to me as I hate anything that messes up my dives (new dive buddies, sand-kickers, people touching the reef, fast swimmers, having to worry about someone else’s air, etc etc). I don’t know how she’s able to do it and keep a positive attitude! It’s very impressive.

As for me - The Hibees won the Derby last weekend and the Dolphins won, so I was happy. There hasn’t been a whole lot going on apart from that.

Well, lost out on both counts last week. We didn’t get to dive Argus Tower due to the weather, and the Dolphins managed to completely blow what should have been an easy win. It was painful watching them self-destruct, but at least Ronnie Brown started to look good.

I was out diving last weekend, and even managed to see Jules on the boat on Sunday, but overall the conditions weren’t great.

It’s cold enough now that I’m having to wear a hood, and the visibility sucked on 2 of the 4 dives. The only dive I really enjoyed was the Lartington, and it’s the only one I really got any half-decent photos on. Below are the resident Lion Fish, a Graysby hiding behind a rock, and a juvenile Blue Tang who was schooling with some yellow wrasse.

Jules has started Dive Master training, and as a result is having to study/work at the weekends when she gets the opportunity which leaves me without my Dive Buddy. It’s kinda weird for me, as we have always dived together.

This weekend was also the first time taking out my new toy, the DC500 underwater camera. I took it out Saturday and it completely failed to perform! Once I got it home it told me the battery was low. I supposed it must have been turned on somehow in the bag and drained the battery, but I would have expected an auto shutdown after a few mins of inactivity. It was very unfortunate, as we dived the Marie Celeste on Saturday and saw several very large black Grouper. They would have been great for photography!

The conditions were also pretty rough Saturday, with lots of swell on the surface and some decent current on the first dive. The afternoon was even worse than the morning, and there were quite a few people suffering from seasickness. Amazingly, I was not one of them.

Sunday was my first day diving without Jules. I went out with Eric and Tina and acted as their dive guide. If you knew how little attention I usually pay to navigation, you would realise how funny that is!
Fortunately, the first dive was on the Lartington. It’s a very easy wreck to navigate.

As soon as we got off the boat (I raced to get off first) we went down and I headed straight for the bow. I had a good look inside and was a little disappointed that the Lion Fish wasn’t there. We went on a tour of the wreck, and then I headed back to the bow again near the end of the dive.
This time when I stuck my head in to look for him, I almost head-butted it as it was hanging on the wall right over the entrance. Oops! Eric and Tina were able to see him before he swam back into his little chamber off in the side.

On the way back, I spotted a Graysby and Coney resting near a small rocky overhang low down in the sand. As I got close the Graysby moved off, but the coney wasn’t keen to budge, which made me hopeful there was an eel in there. After I stuck my head down for a look I saw something pull back a little into it’s hiding place, and after a moment realised that I was looking at a well camouflaged octopus, hanging upside down under the ledge. I snapped a couple of photos, and was just lining up for my 3rd photo when the Coney came back and “road blocked” the entrance. I guess he felt I had harassed his hunting partner enough, so he played his body between me and the hole, and rested his fin on a rock for balance. I snapped a couple of photos of him, and if you look carefully at the picture below you can see the eye of the octopus directly above the Coney’s eye.

I got a little lost on the 2nd dive at the Constellation, but recovered in time to get us back to the boat with 10 minutes of the dive left. We did spend a lot longer on the reef than I intended, but at least we got to see a 15 strong pack of Barracuda cruising around.

Jules is training again next weekend, so I’m diving with Tina. Hopefully Jules will be able to join us again soon.

Well, there was no hurricane. Nate was downgraded to a Tropical Storm, and we saw some wind and some heavy rain. And that was that.

Over last weekend we got in 3 dives and finished our Rescue Course. The highlight of the dives were the Smooth Trunkfish (we saw them on every dive) and the Moray Eel I spotted on the Darlington. I may never have noticed it if it hadn’t been for it’s 3 Coney bodyguards I first caught sight of it slipping over the reef and down under a rock.

We hung for a while and watched the little guy breathe (he was about 18 inches long) while the Coneys gave us dirty looks. They obviously wanted to get back to hunting with it.

The Rescue course wrapped up on Sunday, and Ondrej used Vlad’s camera to take some photos, which are up on his website. In between sessions I took off my mask, and managed to catch a tiny little Sergeant major in it. Ondrej managed to get a photo which, although it is a little out of focus, shows how small the little fella was.

Jules has now signed up for the DiveMaster course, which will take quite a bit of time to complete. Jules has been studying books the last 3 evenings, preparing for her first pool session tomorrow.

Oh, I almost forgot. Before we went out diving I was hanging my feet in the water off the back off the dive boat’s swim platform down at the dive shop in Somerset. After a few moments a Scrawled Cowfish came up to investigate my feet. I found wiggling my toes would sometimes draw him or his partner back. I was telling Jules about it a few minutes later, and dipped my feet back in the water. Sure enough, he came back up almost immediately, but this time he moved closer and closer to my foot, his mouth opening and closing all the time. I moved my foot to protect my little toe (as it was obviously what he was aiming for) and he moved in and nibbled the side of my foot. He was quite intent to get me, so much so that his horns were out of the water when he bit! It was a weird feeling, as the mouth is big enough that I could feet a bit of my skin inside it. It was quite a funny sight….wish I’d had the sense to have my camera close at hand.

Went out with Blue Water Divers (as usual) and got to a new dive site (Badlands) on the Monday holiday and had a very good time. I really wasn’t feeling well when I got up in the morning, but am glad I went out. The ocean was flat, the sun was shining, and the reef was beautiful and full of life. Visibility was probably around 60-80ft. Jules Nav’d the site well and we had a nice, relaxing, fun dive. We also dived the wreck of L’Herminie in the morning, and I started to have camera problems - the camera got a bit warm and the lens port fogged up. This problem followed me into the afternoon, and it’s really my own fault for using the camera to shoot video instead of stills as this has happened before.

We got back out to Badlands in the afternoon and Jules guided Eric and Tina around as well. This was our first dive together since they passed their “Open Water” course, and they really enjoyed the site and were pretty good on air consumption. It was a great way to spend a Monday.

There are a couple of pics below of a cannon from the L’Herminie and a Smooth Trunkfish we saw at Badlands.

Now, about that hurricane….

Hurricane Nate is supposed to hit us in the wee hours of Friday morning and it’s tracking pretty close to a direct hit, so I hope this isn’t a re-run of Fabian from 2003 when it decided to turn and go right over us. I’m a bit annoyed with Nate, as it may ruin our plans for this weekend. We really want to dive on Saturday and finish our Rescue course Sunday. Nate could get in the way of this, but we’re not going to stand for it! We’ve decided the Hurricane can just go and (insert your favourite expletive here) and go dissipate somewhere else. It’s not ruining our weekend, we’re not going to let it!

On a more serious note, considering we lost all power island wide for over a day in July due to a fire at Belco, I’m hopeful that the hurricane won’t cause any further damage to the power plant. That would suck.

To start, I’ll put up a couple of photos of the octopus we saw on Thursday night at Elbow Beach. When I first saw the Octo, it was blue (which I am told means happy). Then he turned a sandy white colour and tried to camouflage himself against the sand, and finally a red/orange colour to show he was not quite so happy anymore. At that point I stopped taking photos and left him alone, and felt a wee bit guilty for ruining his mood.

This was the 3rd day of our Rescue Diver course and was a lot of fun, concentrated mostly on missing diver scenarios. We tried location and recovery using 2 methods today - line and reel, and expanding square. If it’s possible, the visibility at Wyndham was even worse today than before as I was finding it hard to even see my outstretched hand! In a team with Jules and Johann though, I’m happy to say we did find and “rescue” our missing divers. For fun, Ondrej also had the missing divers all have some sort of problem we had to deal with as well.

So far, I’m really enjoying this course, and I think the awful visibility at Wyndham actually helped today as we really had to rely on our compass and kick counts to do the square and find the divers. This is a PADI course I would definitely recommend. I’m not saying I feel ready to Rescue anyone in a real situation as you never really know how you will react until something happens, but at least I feel I am learning skills that will be useful and could make a difference.

The real shock is that on the expanding square I was navigating and we actually found them! This is a major surprise as I almost never do any NAV as I tend to concentrate on photos and leave the nav to Jules.

This is a good course, and we’re lucky to be doing it with good people.

We finished our “Night Diving Specialty” course on Thursday night. There really wasn’t much to it if you are already comfortable diving in the dark. The conditions were not ideal though, with reasonably big surf breaking, and constant surge under the water. We finally found an octopus at the end of the dive, which was the highlight.

On the way back out, I was knocked over by a wave and end up sitting on my arse in about a foot of water waiting for the next wave to come and slap me. My fins are really not very user friendly to take off in that sort of situation…well, at least not when you are holding a camera in one hand. I got knocked over a few times until Jules took my camera off me, and I was able to put my hand down to get up.

We ended the night with a couple of beers (for me) and a chat to a motorcycle speed-freak called Eric who was on the course with us, even though he’d clocked about 150 night dives.

In conditions like that I probably would not take my camera out again as the surf was not very kind to it. It didn’t leak, but the amount of sand I found wedged against the O-rings after I opened it was a little worrying. I’ve cleaned it once, but will check and clean it again tomorrow.

We started day 2 of our Rescue Diver course today and did some panicked and unresponsive diver skills below and on top of the water. We had some fun with water exits (carrying unresponsive or weak divers out of the water) and ran through towing a unresponsive diver, removing the gear from both of you, and getting them out of the water all while providing rescue breathing. Very good skills to learn, and pretty enjoyable.

I got picked on a couple of times today though. Once, while running through panicked diver skills underwater, Ondrej sneaked up behind me and turned off my air. It took a couple of breaths before my Regulator ceased working, and at that point I decided to do a Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent(CESA) to the surface. A CESA is swimming up slowly to the surface while blowing bubbles out the whole time(to avoid lung overexpansion injuries). I did it as we were only in about 10ft of water, and it was an easy CESA to make. In reality though, proper procedure would have been to signal “out of air” and get Jules Octopus to breath from but as we were shallow it seemed quicker to CESA. “Out of Air” isn’t something I’d like to experience deep, when I’d definitely need to secure Jules Octopus. It was a good lesson for both of us.

The Second time I got picked on left me with a large bump on my head. I was bent over putting my gear on when Jules picked up her BCD and Tank and swung it over her shoulder. She hit me right in the head with her First-stage or tank (I’m not sure which) and it really bloody hurt! I cursed her out (of course) for not looking around before swinging her tank blindly over her shoulder and I hope she’s learned something from it and will be more careful in future, but I’m not convinced. I may start wearing a football helmet around her

Who knows what injuries I’ll end up with on day Three? As long as no-one partially drowns me, I think I’ll be OK.

I had a really bad dive Saturday morning - just one of those days where everything goes wrong and you think “hmmm…maybe today isn’t my day”. Further down this entry is my dive log, which is worth a laugh. On Saturday afternoon we did our “Emergency First Responder” skills and test, to prepare us to start our PADI Rescue Diver course. Our course instructor is a funny and upbeat Czech called Ondrej Hindl.

The worst part of Saturday was having to cancel our night dive as we were both too tired and had to study for the Rescue Diver test. We were in bed asleep by 10.

Sunday Morning we started our Rescue Diver course, and had a fun day although it was mostly theory and the written exam (which Jules got 100% in, beating my shameful 96% into the dirt). We had about 30-40 minutes in the water doing some basic refresher skills for Self Rescue, and then did some “panicked diver at surface” skills.

That was “panicked Diver” scenarios were kind of fun, and for some reason I didn’t feel stupid when it was my turn to pretend to panic. The skills were pretty simple today, but made harder by the awful visibility in the bay at the Wyndham resort - the vis was only about 10 inches at best.

We ended Day One of our course by putting oxygen equipment together blindfolded, which was enjoyable to do yourself, and funny to watch others do (especially as Ondrej would move pieces while you were blindfolded).

My dive log is below.

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Dive No 69. 27th August 2005 Location: Hermes. HELL DIVE

Everything that could go wrong did. Felt ill this morning from a Pizza I ate last night. The end of a hurricane (or maybe high pressure or something) brought us 6 foot swells on the way out. I felt a bit ill - Did a backwards roll off the boat clutching my camera (with great concern for it’s safety) and lost my mask as it was ripped off my head! IDIOT! I shouted to Jules that I had lost my mask and then had to fin on my back for 5 minutes in medium current while Jules and Leanne retrieved it from 71ft of water. Michael (the captain) asked if I was OK, and when I shouted “I’m fine. Just annoyed” he smiled and told me to hang onto the mask strap next time.

Jules told me later that as she raced down trying to get my mask before it hit the sand that it was “attacked” by several Great Barracuda that were obviously drawn to the shiny object sinking helplessly. Jules reached it just as it hit the bottom, and brought it back up to 20ft where she relayed it to Leanne to bring up the rest of the way (Jules would have needed to do a 3 minute safety stop before she could have come up).

When Leanne popped up in front of me with my mask I was so happy! I got down to about 60ft, and noticed several Great Barracuda swimming around. I took 4 photos and as I wondered why all the photos looked so dark in my LCD screen I finally realised my strobe (flash) was not on! IDIOT! I had some good Barracuda shots lined up too!

As we got closer to the Hermes I realised my Octopus (the 2nd regulator) was leaking air. Jules had a look at it and tried to purge it to clear it, and it went into full free flow! (if you don’t dive - this is bad. It means it just starts dumping air continuously and forcefully). I tried to shake it, tap it, turn it upside down but it wouldn’t stop. I tried breathing through it but it pretty much blew itself out of my mouth. I managed to hold it in place for a few breaths, blew hard out through it, and after a couple more shakes managed to get it to stop. Cool. no need to abort the dive.

At the wreck another diver in our group was stressing me a little and when I checked his air he only had 1000 psi left and thought he was OK (he had used 2000 psi in 20 mins, and we still had to get back to the boat through the current and do a 3 min safety stop). We decided then it was time to start heading back. We went up and had to swim against the current on the safety stop - if you didn’t pay attention or stopped finning you would be swept away from the boat. The weird thing about the safety stop was as you finned in place tiny jellyfish were swept past you continuously, sort of like the old Windows Starfield screensaver. It was cool, but made me a little dizzy trying to watch them.

On getting out of the water my tank slipped out and Michael had to grab the tank valve and take me back to my seat.

…and then I got seasick!

I decided not to do the 2nd dive!

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The worst thing about my mask sinking to 70 feet isn’t that it was bumped, nudged, and prodded by Several Great Barracuda on the way down (it has a shiny silver frame)- it’s that I didn’t get to see or photograph it. I’ve gotta start carrying a spare mask!

Oh, and I need to thank both Jules and Leanne for salvaging my mask and something of the dive for me!

I guess the good thing about the experience is I didn’t panic or get freaked out when things went wrong, I was just generally annoyed.

And finally, Ondrej took a quick look at my Octopus on Sunday and tightened the screw inside it in about 5 minutes. It seems fine now. Thank you Ondrej!