Saturday June 19, 2010

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The girls and I woke up pretty early, which is pretty good seeing that breakfast was served at 7. I found out I slept through the anchor being put in the water late at night, which apparently was ridiculously loud. Yup, lets add that to the list of just about everything I can sleep through. I went out onto the deck and saw a gorgeous sunrise and an even more beautiful beach behind me. There were a bunch of people preparing for a dive, but it turned out to be an introductory dive for the students. I chatted with the crew a bit, even making a few friends and earning myself the nick-name “Buffy - the dolphin slayer”, “dolphi” and “dolphin girl”. By the time I left I think maybe ½ the crew knew my real name and the rest called me by the nicknames. It turned out we were at Whitehaven beach, the whitest and most pure silica beach in the world. I guess NASA is the only one allowed to take sand from the beach, and they use it in the spaceships for something I can’t remember. They got us to the beach via small dingy’s and we stayed there for a few hours. I walked the beach a bit, did some snorkeling (the sand was so fine it made the visibility miserable) and did a small hike to a lookout point. The lookout was gorgeous, and you could see a reef and lagoon off in the distance with some mountainous islands on the horizon. Back on the boat we set sail for Luncheaon Bay at Hook Island. On the way I took a nap and had a briefing on my first dive, which would be a navigation dive. There were four other students besides myself and we were taught how to use a compass, natural landmarks and other methods that would enable us to navigate distances underwater. I was starting to get a bit of seasick, so instead of puking on the divemaster I took some of the seasickness meds I brought with me. At Luncheon Bay we waited a bit for some of the other dive groups to go before getting into the water. I was buddy with the dive master. When you dive everyone has a buddy, and this person you do a buddy check with before getting in the water to ensure all diving equipment is operating correctly, and you stick close to them when underwater. If anything is to happen, they are the person you turn to first. Being the buddy for the dive master meant that when underwater I had to wait for the other buddy groups to do their partner exercises before I went off with the dive master and did my exercises. Once underwater he had the groups navigate different degree tracks using compasses. We did a straight line, a triangle and a square; and measured distance in fin kicks. While the other groups were working the dive master Simon and I played tick tack toe on a underwater write-on board and checked out some different corals. When it came time for my turn I was pretty cold, but was able to navigate a straight line, triangle and square using different fin kicks. After all of our exercises we were able to set off for the rest of the dive. I got to see and hold a sea cucumber and feather star. Feather stars are distant relatives of starfish and look like and walking underwater fern with tendrals. The soft coral structures were UNBELIEVABLE, I can honestly say I was shocked at the variety, color and amount. Out of the water we dried off and watched as Simon fed chicken scraps to a sea eagle. He would shake the scraps to attract the bird, then would throw it up in the air. The eagle would swoop down in time and grab scraps out of the air before flying off with it. It was really cool, and the bird was pretty good sized. We watched the sunset, had dinner and set sail. The skipper planned on heading out to the great barrier reef, but the girls and I were too tired to stay up for the trip as we were exhausted.

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