Mike Ball Dive Expeditions, Part 1

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Thursday morning (19^thof April) was an early start at 4am to be picked up by a taxi and driven to the airport to take the 6am flight to Cairns. When I got to the check in, my diving gear weight over the allowed limit, so I took out a red bag I had inside it with clothes, but I didn’t remember that I also had my brand new Swiss army multi-tool knife in that bag. Surely enough, when I went through the security check in, I was asked if I was carrying a multi-tool in the bag. It was around 5:15am and from what I could remember, I had made sure the night before to specifically put the Swiss army knife in the diving bag, until I realized I had taken the red bag with clothes out of the diving bag and that the Swiss army knife was in there. The only thing I could do if I didn’t want to hand it in, was to look for a store in the airport in which they sold envelopes and stamps and mail it to my address in Sydney, but when I got to the store, I found out it was still closed, so I had no choice but to go back to the security check in and hand in my Swiss army knife, which was very disappointing; but not much I could do about it. It was a 3 hour flight to Cairns, in a rather empty plane and I slept most of the way. I arrived in Cairns at around 9am and as soon as I got my bag, took a taxi to the Mike Ball Diving Expeditions office.

There, I had to fill in some paperwork and then take an open book exam, for which I had an hour. While I was doing the exam, Mike Ball approached me and introduced himself (he’s the owner of the company of course and he doesn’t go on the trips himself, but he runs the office). We had time for a brief talk and he asked me what I did back in Chile and after I told him I was a Navy Officer, he told me he had been in the Royal Marines and about his years there. He seems like a very nice and easy going person. After I was done, I had about 4 hours before I had to be in “Trinity Wharf” to go onboard the “Spoilsport” (The live-aboard). I walked around Cairns for a little while; it’s a small town, very touristic, mainly because of the diving and definitely a place I’d like to find a job in. After walking for a while, I went to a food court and had a good T-bone steak with chips and a beer (I hadn’t eaten anything since that morning in the airport before boarding the plane). After that, I bought an ice-coffee and went to seat in a park nearby to rest for a while. At around 2pm I headed to Trinity Wharf and boarded the “Spoilsport”. No one from the crew had arrived yet and there were only a few people working on the boat before it set off. I ended up talking to an old man named Bruce, who was a carpenter/handyman who worked on the boat whenever it was berthed (once a week). After he left, I talked for a while with "Pirate" Pete, the skipper of the boat. At around 3:30 the rest of the crew arrived and then I was told to help get luggage in the cabins and then change into “my uniform” (red T-shirt and blue short trousers) to greet the passengers. Right after they board, the passengers get shown to their cabins and then they head up one deck to the dining/lounge area to get welcomed and introduced to the crew. The crew consists on the captain (Pete), a first mate (Nick), a trip director (another Nick), a dive instructor (Lisa), a hostess (Becks), a chef (Levi), a photographer (Julia) and two volunteers, one who does mainly domestic chores (Danny) and the other who works in the dive deck (me). The passengers were 9 from different nationalities: 3 Germans (Steffi, Johannes and Timo), 3 Americans (Maurice, Aaron and Kristine), 2 Australians (Martin and Allyson) and 1 Chinese (Sammy). There weren’t any dives the first day and it was mainly a few briefings and the rest of the evening not much to do. About the following days, they won’t be as detailed, because I did lots of dives and lots of small chores as well, but because I didn’t have much time off, I couldn’t really write the specific things I did, let alone be able to remember them now.



The first night we navigated from Cairns to the Cod Hole, a dive site located 132 Nautical Miles (NM) and on Friday did 2 dives there. I’ll blend in the description of the dive sites and how a normal day is on board the "Spoilsport", based on what I had to do; for the staff it all starts at about 6am, with my duties being cutting oranges in the morning and make sure that the towels for everyone diving were dry and in their spots in the dive deck. Then, grab something quick for breakfast (breakfast number 1) and be at the dive deck at 6:30am to set everything up for the dive (throwing mermaid lines, shot lines, the bar do to safety stop, untie the wetsuits, etc. At around 7am, the guests and everyone involved in one way or the other with the dive, assist to the dive briefing done by the trip director in the dive deck. In my case, I could either get to dive or if not, usually be on lookout on the top deck to see if any divers drifted away and had to be picked up by the boat. After the dive, there’s breakfast number 2 (proper breakfast with eggs, pancakes, sausages, bacon, etc.). After breakfast number 2, we had a second dive at the Cod Hole (I can’t remember if I dived in the first or second one and during the other I was on lookout). After the second dive of the day, it’s usually lunch time (the food on board is abundant and very, very good).



After the Cod Hole, we went south about 40NM to a place called Challenger Bay for another 2 dives (The Cod Hole is the northern part of Ribbon Reef 10 and Challenger Bay is the southern part of it). I did two dives there, the latter being a night dive. I did the first dive with Timo and Maurice. I did the night dive with Sammy, a Chinese who lived in the States for a while and was now living in Colombia, with a Canadian passport. Nobody found out what he did for a living. He was a very outgoing person and always spoke his mind no matter how uncomfortable other people might feel. He had a lot of bizarre stories and whenever he spoke, people would usualy stop whatever they were doing and listen.



The dives at the Great Barrier Reef are really spectacular, with visibility between 30 and 60 meters, clear blue waters, amazing colors and aquatic life. The photos in this blog won’t be anywhere close to what you see there, it really is spectacular. All dive sites are different and they have specific features that make them, special. The Cod Hole, for example, is called that way because there are fish called Potato Cods, which are really massive fish, but very tame and you can dive centimeters away from them.

After the last dive, it’s dinner time, with another good buffet meal. Most days, there’s also a night dive, but this day wasn’t the case.

In summary, for a passenger, a normal day starts at 6:30am with a light breakfast, then a first dive, then full breakfast, 1 or two more dives and then lunch. After that, there’s usually about another hour and a half until the next dive, then another break, night dive and dinner. Eat, sleep and dive; can’t get much better.

As for the crew, everyone helps clear dishes and wash, dry and clean everything after every meal.

Back to the itinerary: during Friday night, we went 93NM north to Osprey Reef, where we spent the two following days.



Saturday I did 4 dives out of 5 (I was on lookout for one of them), which was really good (after all, diving was THE motivation for being there). The names of the sites I dived in were “False Entrance”, “Half Way” and “Admiralty Anchor”. This last site has a swim-through in which there is an admiralty anchor which might have been left behind by a ship sometime. I also did the night dive here. I hadn’t done many night dives before and it had been some time since I did one of them, so having night dives almost every day has been excellent experience-wise.



Sunday morning, there were 3 dives at a place called “North Horn”. I did 2 dives here and the second one was a shark feed dive, which I was really looking forwards to. For this dive in particular, all the divers “take a seat” in an area that has a semi amphitheater shape and in the middle there’s a bommie (Australian slang for “lump of coral”). On top of this bommie, one of the persons on board attaches a metal garbage bin with a couple of tuna heads. He swims around with the garbage bin being followed by sharks (these are reef sharks, white tip sharks and the sometimes people spot silver tip sharks and hammerheads) and getting close to the divers for them to get a better look at these creatures. My buddy for this dive was Danny, the other volunteer, who was working doing the domestic duties. After two whole circles with the garbage bin, the diver releases the lid and the two tuna fish heads attached to a metal chain come out and the sharks go berserk. This goes on for about 7 – 10 minutes until they finish everything off. After that, the divers get to swim around the area until they hit their air reserve. It was a very good dive and after the feed, there were plenty of sharks swimming around.

For the third dive I was on lookout again, so not much to tell there. In the afternoon, talking to Danny, turned out he’s also a couchsurfer, so he offered to host me for the days I’ll be staying in Cairns after I finish the two weeks in the “Spoilsport”, so one less thing to worry about.

There was no night dive that day because it was “barbeque night” (this is done the evening before people leave the boat). This is pretty much designed for the stereotypical “American tourist”, with a very enthusiastic trip director and crew and much cheering from the guests (not really my thing when it comes to travel). The food again was excellent. After dinner, I went straight to bed. There were a few days in which I took the time to write this blog and other days I was really tired and just went to bed straight away. This was one of those days.

At night we set off to Lizard Island (a very exclusive island which is neither easy nor cheap to get to, 84NM WSW from Osprey Reef).



Monday morning, I only got to see the island from the boat and briefly touched land when I helped take the luggage of the passengers who were leaving. Here, guests doing half a week on the "Spoilsport" disembark and new guests arrive. Only 4 of the original guests stayed and 10 new guests arrived. During the trip I had the chance to talk to a few passengers and crew members whom were interesting enough and willing to talk; others didn’t really bother.



It was the same drill for the people arriving: show them to their cabins, welcome them on the lounge area, then set up their diving gear, etc. From Lizard Island we went 12 NM east to the “Cod Hole” (dive site I mentioned earlier where there are fish called Potato Cods). Here I did a dive with Maurice and Becks. The second dive here I was on lookout and did a third dive (night dive) with Maurice again. For the dives I usually got paired up with whoever needed a buddy. After the night dive, I was asked to help out in the kitchen (Danny left the boat from Lizard Island due to an ear infection, so I was the only volunteer left on board). There, I helped Levi with boiling prawn crackers and tofu. Then dinner and, after that, I took the time to update the blog, which I was still behind on.



Tuesday morning, I woke up at around 6am again and went to the kitchen to cut up some oranges, fill water containers with water and ice, fold towels, help dry kitchenware; all the usual stuff. After that, head down to the dive deck to help set everything for the first dive of the day at 7am. For the first dive I was on lookout, but got to do the next one. The first dive was at a place called “Gotham City”, which is a big crater between 5 and 25 meters. For this dive I was buddied up with an older German woman, Claudia, who I didn’t really like, but had to suck it up and just go with her. The second dive was in a place nearby called “Lighthouse Bommie”, which is basically a cylinder that goes from 5 to 25 meters and is full of marine life. I especially enjoyed this site, it was excellent. For this one I went with Maurice and an English girl, Amy. The fourth dive I was on lookout again and for the fifth, I went on a night dive with Sammy. He wasn’t a very experienced diver, so I had to watch out for him. He wanted to lead the dive, which I had no problems with. I jumped to the water first and while I was waiting for him, I saw about 3 or 4 reef sharks swimming around at about 5 meters. After he jumped in the water, we started descending and when we were at around 10 meters, my flashlight went off. I reached out to him and told him to surface again (the pressure gauge, compass and altimeter all glow in the dark and the computer has a backlight, so there’s no real problem to ascend safely if the flashlight goes out). On the surface I headed to the edge of the boat and asked for another flashlight and we descended once again. I let him lead the dive and we got to see plenty of shrimps and a couple of lobsters as well as enough fish on the corals. At one point I asked how much air he had and he was a bit lower than what we had agreed as the amount to make the way back. On the way back he took more time than before and when I asked him for the air again, he was starting his reserve, so I told him that we would go to 5 meters and make a safety stop while swimming to the boat at that depth. We did that and at one point I surfaced to see where the boat was. We surfaced at about 50 – 70 meters from the boat. I took a compass bearing and then went down to about 3 meters to swim back. After I got back on the boat, I went to take a shower and then to the kitchen to help out (but not before I went to pick up used towels to put them in the dryer). Then dinner, help wash and dry everything and finally got some time off to have a coffee and finally, after about 5 days, caught up on the blog.



Wednesday morning: one last day to finish the first week. I got up at 6:10am, shaved and went about the usual daily routine. The first two dives were in a place called Steve’s Bommie. For the first dive I was on lookout on the top deck and for the second dive, even though it was good, I got stuck with Claudia again. The site is a big bommie with lots of marine life, including octopus, small reef sharks, stone fish (very poisonous), lion fish (also poisonous), clownfish and a lot other colorful ones that I don’t know the names of. There were a few sea turtles swimming around as well. After this dive, I went to help in the kitchen until lunch time, then had lunch and a short break before the next dive briefing. We moved to a site called Flare Point where I was in the dive deck for the first dive and again, had Claudia as a buddy for the final dive of the trip. The site wasn’t as good as the others, but I saw two nudibranchs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudibranch), which very really nice. After that dive, I got out of the water and started helping clear everything up in the dive deck and then help in the kitchen. When it was time for dinner, I went to take a shower and then went to eat something. After that, I had to stay in the bar until the last guests went to sleep.



Thursday morning I had an early rise to help in the kitchen at 6am and we arrived to Cairns at around 6:30am.

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Comments

[Maisondubonheur]

Hi...that's a detailed entry!
Hi Daniel, I was on the sportspoil back in December...dived with Captain Pete, the Nicks and Brandon. Well, you do write long and detailed entries...I'm impressed with all those details. The big problem with that liveaboard...is the big number of guests...and the even faster turn-over...so I guess, every stay is different...but I love the way they propose to volonteers to go on the boat for few days or few weeks...and let them actually dive! Need to check your blog...but have you dived South West Rock? i'm going there after PNG early july. Happy diving! PA

[Patiperro]

Yes indeed
Hi Pierre, thankk you for your comment, it's nice getting the feedback. Indeed I try to be as specific as I can, I guess sometimes it's details that make the difference and also it gives my family and friends a better idea of the things I'm doing everyday. I'll take a look at your blog as well, seems interesting. I haven't dived in South West Rock yet, but I've herad about it. Take care and happy diving also!