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Published: December 2nd 2006
Woke up much better (thanks for asking!) but started the day with the drug and cotton wool saga to help me on my way! Wake up call was at 05.30am as we were to be in the water for our first dive at 06.00am- this was hard!
It was a lovely dive, the sun had only just risen in the sky and everyone was so excited about the day ahead.
We were down for about 30 minutes again and to about 18 metres which is our certified deepest depth.
Our Dive was an exciting drift Dive along the Wall at Brigg's Reef - which meant we kinda coasted over the coral in the current. We saw many giant clam's again, some parrot fish and bat fish and all manner of fish and critters we couldn't possibly begin to name or remember.
After exiting the water it was time for a quick breakfast, before jumping back in the water at 08.00am down to about 14m.
By lunch at 12.00pm we were absolutely ravenous, even me who had done well to keep some toast down from Breakfast was doing well!
After lunch we watched a DVD of our
course which had been filmed over the last few dives and edited on the boat. This was fantastic as it’s a great collection of images of wildlife that surrounded us, some funny moments, our ‘graduation’ and a great collection of dives with our new diving buddies.
We then rested for a number of hours to get the nitrogen levels down in our system (all technical stuff really, but nothing to worry about, its all very normal). The next dive at 4.00pm was a free dive, this meant that those feeling confident could go and dive on their own without a dive instructor as they were now qualified divers.
For me who had missed a supervised dive the day previous, I had to catch up, so went down to complete my ‘skills’ with our Dive Instructor (that Dan had done yesterday). While doing this, Dan hired a camera and took some great shots of us and the fishes, you’ll see them attached. He also found a Blue Spotted Sting Ray whilst the Instructor and I were busy, and we got a few close up shots of it before it got up and swam away. They bury themselves in the
sandy bottom really quickly - and can be quite difficult to spot.
We had decided now that we had qualified as Open Water Divers we would take the next step and complete our Adventure Dive certificate, to do this there were 3 stages, the photography section (as above), a night dive (see below and a navigation section which we will cover tomorrow.
Dinner was at 6.00pm before jumping in at 7.30pm for the night dive. Armed with torches in the pitch black night, we jumped in to the sea to find the strongest current we had ever faced (we later found out that this was the strongest current most of the boat’s crew had seen as well!). Kicking like mad to get ahead of the current and to try and descend below the water to find a weaker current was so tiring. It was like trying to swim against a brick wall. Dan and one of the dive instructors unfortunately couldn’t descend quick enough as he wasn't wearing enough weight and from about 3 metres down at the back of the boat were carried about 40 metres behind the boat to then be faced with the arduous job
of swimming back up to the surface and nto the current to get back on the boat. The rest of the group including myself descended into the darkness.
This was very spooky and eerie with only our torches for light we attempted to look out for wildlife. What we found was most sensible creatures were hiding from the strong current and so couldn’t be found. After an exhausting 20 minutes, we stopped swimming and let the current carry us back to the boat, to find it had taken all this time for Dan and the Dive Instructor to get back to the boat, they had only just climbed back on board themselves!!
So after 4 dives in one day, we were all ready for bed!
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Mum G
non-member comment
Well done!
Reading this has left me speechless, what an experience. Well done you two I am very proud of you both. The pics are amazing, can't wait to see the DVD. Dan you just had to find that stingray for me did'nt you? I wonder how much searching you had to do to find it. So relieved you both returned from this expedition unscathed. All my love Mum G. XX