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Published: December 21st 2011
Little warning: This blog was supposed to have four short videos attached. All the family is currently in Fiji and internet is really slow here, which means I have trouble attaching those fun movies. If you want to see them, do come back here early January.
Last week, the kids were enjoying the last few days at school before the long Christmas holidays, and Mari has been so kind to let me go scout a diving place ahead of the family. I didn't sleep on terra ferma in Australia, but spent 4 nights on the SpoilSport yacht with a bunch of divers.
Great Barrier Reef, the name say it all, magic, beautiful, we all dream about the place. Australia is country number 34 for me in terms of diving...and the first question any diver is asking me once we speak about diving the world....did you dive the Great Barrier Reef? Now I can say I do, and here is a full detail of my little trip.
Diving the Great Barrier Reef is for sure not as straight forward as one would think. Show up in Cairns as I did many years ago,
and indeed they do offer one day diving on the Great Barrier Reef, but be warned. Here is what they offer you. You go on a boat with 500 other fun tourists, and of these 500, few are diving, most are snorkelling, out of the same boat. I know, you are going to ask me if I'm kidding or what, but no, this is what's on offer from Cairns.
You would have a way better chance out of Townsville to dive the Yongala wreck. I'm sure I'm going to this one day, but as wrecks are not high on my wishlist, the Yongala will have to way...for now...
Next, why not chose a great resort, even some serious luxury like Hayman Island, or even better, Bedarra Island. These are amazing luxury single resort islands, but no great diving out of here. The option could be also Lizard Island, and the only good dive site out of here is the Cod Hole...I'll be back to it, but it's a little thin for the demanding diver.
Next option, and to me this is actually the only option are the liveaboards. The interesting point is that
there are only three of them in the area...I would have thought there was a lot more on offering. All of them offer the same thing. A three nights, three days diving, or a four nights, three days diving option. The 4 nights is going to the Coral Sea, aka the Osprey Reef, while the three nights option, also call the "Cod Hole" is actually limiting itself to diving the Great Barrier Reef between Lizard Island and Cairns. To dive Osprey Reef, you need to be "advanced open water", to dive the Code Hole, you need to be only "open water"....guess which one is offering the most impressive diving!
Only three boats to chose from. The Taka...the words around is that the staff is pretty young on it....the Spirit of Freedom, good boat, but only one hull boat...and when the sea becomes rough, I can garantee you, you will appreciate the stability of the two-hulls of the SpoilSport catamaran. For those in the know, the SpoilSport is nothing else than the Mike Ball boat...so when people do dive the Mike Ball, they are on the Spoilsport. Trust me, this can lead to some confusion!
This is
my tenth liveaboard...so I start to have a little knowledge of what is available or not around. For info, I have a full wishlist of future liveaboard, and my full list has a total of 20 boats to dive from...so ten more to go!
The Mike Ball can take up to 30 divers...this is a lot! We were 25 on this trip. I admit, for me, the less the better. The only advantage of a higher number is the higher chance of finding nice people to dive with...or if you want to be cynical, exactly the opposite.
We had a pretty good mix, with people from Australia, the States, Canada, UK, Sweden, Switzerland, South Africa, and myself from "who know's where"! What was nice is that the proportions were pretty well respected. The crew...well...as very often on liveaboard, nice, professionnal...well done guys don't change anything!
The boat is really spacious, so we didn't suffer with the number. I was in an inside cabin, no window, but a little shower....nothing spacious, but clean and confortable. The food was just right. People like the Dancer Fleet do offer way more luxurious, but this
one was just fine.
On most liveaboards I've done (beside Thailand), your average diver has 300 dives, and if you are below 50 dives, you are the only one with so few dives. I'm very very close to 400 dives....and trust me, if most of the time I'm learning from other divers on liveaboards, here it was closer to the opposite. Hey, what do I expect...not everyone is running the world with a 1000++ dives! On this trip, at least half of the people had less than 50 dives...and close to no diver was in the range of having dive the world. I guess if you dive the shorter itinerary of the "Cod Hole", it's even worst when it comes to experience.
Our four nights, three days diving started at 6pm from Cairns. We sailed up the GBR most of the night. The next night we sailed to Osprey Reef, spent a night there and back to Lizard Island by 7am on the last morning. From Lizard Island, we took a one-hour low level flight over the Great Barrier Reef back to Cairns. That was an experience in itself, but pictures will speak for
themselves.
The diving! Rating top 10 in the world? That would be maybe pushing it a little too far...or it would take the 9th or 10th place. Yes, I mean it, diving is really nice here, but there is way better. So come diving the GBR, but don't put your expectations too high.
On our three days diving we had a lot of rain, this is not the best to help with visibility, but it wasn't either a huge disadvantage. We dive the first day the upper part of the GBR, from Challenger Bay to the Cod Hole next to Lizard Island. Visibility was just below 20 meters, warm water at 29 degres...saw few white tips sharks, and many cool huge cods!
The next two days are the best when it comes to diving, with way better visibility to at least 40 meters. Here, it's shark world...fun, and I love it. You won't find many divers on the Osprey Reef in the Coral Sea, as only liveaboards can come here, a good 7 hours ride from Lizard Island.
On the second day they offered us a "shark baiting
dive" at North Horn. I'm against shark baiting, and I'm still against after it. It's a show, it's not a dive...and yes, it's not natural. But would I have stay on the boat missing the show on offer, that was not really an option for me. The good point is the pics and videos you get from the experience. Our twenty minutes of fun turned even more interesting once at least 10 white tips and grey reef sharks ended up chasing, or trying to munch on the tuna piece....less than two meters away from my fins...I would actually say way closer once I review the video.
Do you remember our Belize entry back in July. At that time, our new and great friend Chip teached us the way to attract sharks...and we experienced on each dive very close multiple shark encounters. Well Chip, it seems that the trick originate from PNG (Papua New Guinea)...as here most of the staff new about it. The cruise director was not the most happy at first when I show him my little toy....back in Belize, none of the staff would believe us on the boat, the captain had to come with
us to believe our magical trick...here, Kerrin, the guy in charge told me simply...just be careful, last week, Brendon, our engineer got nearly hit by a silver tip. Ok, I went in with my toy, play with it...but trust me, it does bring some element of stress not to know what will show up next to you in seconds...a cute white tip/grey reef shark...or a less tranquil Bull Shark. And yes, for North Horn dive site, with or without shark baiting, you don't want to pull out the toy! It was kind of cute to see my buddy, Tom, 200++ dives...hiding behind me when the first Grey Reef Shark showed up after I had play with my little toy for few seconds...
Oh, I didn't mention, here you dive buddy type, or following a divemaster, it's your choice. I can read a dive map, so we went on the buddy type diving for three days.
You may still want to know...but what is the trick, what is the toy? Well, you'll have to dive with me, Mari ...or Chip...to know about it!
Going back the GBR...a lot of sharks, multiple sighting
on each dive, as well as many huge potato bass, aka the cod. Here the place is full of hard corals, it's nice, but not as nice as soft corals. The crew pretended to me they had a lot of nudibranches...don't agree with them. We saw few moray eels, few lion fishes, but mainly a lot of "aquarium fishes". In 14 dives, I didn't see a single ray, but did spot two turtles at the end of my last dive.
Osprey reef is also all about going deep....multiple dives below 30 meters along nice walls....meaning you do get very close to your dive computer all the time. Other divers had interaction (no "s" to interaction) with a little hammerhead and close encounter to silver tip shark, I was not that lucky this time.
Our next dive is coming soon, but for now it's swimming pool and golf in Fiji. Mari, Leslie and Tiffany arrived here just few hours after me, and we are enjoying a great pre-Christmas time.
Our next entry, as you can guess is coming soon. Next liveaboard is coming in April. We know where we go...it's going to
be four of us...with great adventurous divers...should be simply very impressive...not luxurious for sure though!
Coming back to you soon, with more family pictures!
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Amazing!
Lovely pics P A! What an experience it must be to swim in waters teeming with sharks. Sometimes, I really do wish I could swim and join you divers beneath the ocean waves :)