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Published: December 24th 2009
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So we started our advance course on Monday 21st. Peter (Frenchy) the frenchman who has been with us for the last week decided to join us on this course. The course consists of several 'specialist' dives, where you have to peform navigation and bouyancy exercises etc... The course is with the dive body SSI as appose to PADI - the difference being there is slightly less classroom work with SSI and more dive time. In Thai they would say 'same same but different'!. We also had a different instructor for the advance course - to Frenchys delight - A Frenchman called Xavier.
The first dive was back at Japanese garden, though this time the visibility was pretty poor due to high winds on the surface. The Objective of the dive was to peform several bouyancy exercises underwater, such as being nuetrally bouyant upsidedown, front flips, backflips and swimming through a small hoop just big enough to fit you and the scuba tank - then doing this backwards & upsidedown. You use quite a lot of air doing this so the dive only lasted 30mins.
The second dive of the day was a navigation exercise - we had compasses and had to
swim a given distants in a given direction - then return to the startpoint. We then had to swim in a square, also returning to the startpoint. This was at a depth of 16m's - on this dive I saw 3 Trigger fish, 2 Stingray on the reef and a massive school of small barrachuda.
That night the bar at the dive resort opened for the season and they had a massive opening party - me and Phil only stayed until midnight though as we had the deep dive (30m's) at 7am in the morning. This did not put off Frenchy though who eventually bowled in at 4am! Then at about 4.30am we heard what sounded like fireworks going off just outside our hut - then lots of shouting and screaming in Thai. I got up to investigat and was shocked to see the hut 3 huts down from ours full ablaze, flames licking the sky! It took about 3 minutes for the hut to burn down / out. Unbelievable. We just went back to bed once the flames died down.
The next morning we set off early doors to the dive site - Chumphon - where we had previously
seen the bullsharks. French was a little worse for wear and was on the Redbull. This was probably my favourite dive of all the dives - We got down to about 34m's (though we could only record 30m's in our divebooks) and were on the same level as the bullsharks. They really are amazing creatures the way the just glide through the water taking it easy - though you could just sense they could turn on the power and speed in an instant. We also saw what looked like a big Tuna but in actual fact was a Trevali Quuenfish. There was another school of barruchuda and more trigger fish, and a huge school of bright yellow fish we swam right into and followed for a bit. 30m's felt fine though there is less light and you use air 4 times faster than on the surface. Every dive Phil always uses a lot more air than the rest of us and was soon signalling to Xavier that his air was low. Air usage is down to a few different factors such as how relaxed you are or how you exert yourself but mostly it is just natural and is down
to your body type. Anyway as we began to surface (you have to surface very slowly from 30m due to potential narcosis) Phil had to go to the instructors alternate regulator - basically breathing from the same tank and ascending together - a bit of excitement! On any deepdive the instructor always hangs a spare scuba tank and regulator on a rope 5m's from the surface in case of air problems and so we ascended to this and both me and phil and started to breath from it (I had 50bar left we needed to do a 3 minute safety stop at 5m's). When we eventually surfaced and checked Phils tank he was on absolute zero - no air!. A brilliant dive where we got to use all the alternate air source exercises we had previously practised. The objective for the second dive of the day was Fish Identification for me and using a Dive Computer for Phil. On this dive we went to 20m's for 41mins. I saw Angel Fish, Clown Fish and trigger fish among many others. Phil was getting pretty seasick on the boat previous to this and when he got into the water and was floating
around he was sick. The instructor asked him if he wanted to continue with the dive and he wanted to - he said as soon as he got underwater he was fine. Strange I also found this with my stomach upset a couple of days earlier. Painful on the surface, but fine underwater.
So then it was back to the hut for food and a much needed nap ready for our night dive that evening. The night dive was unreal - really really strange! We got the boat out at 7pm and sailed 10mins to the dive spot called No-Name. You take a torch down and this is the only light down there. Other than the torches it is absolute darkness. So wherever you shine the beam of light - normally on another diver or the coral you can see, but you dont know what else is around you, making it easy to become disorientated. And midwater when you cant see the see bottom you have no reference point and so theoretically you could be upside down without realising! If you turn the torch off or cover it up you can see flouresent plankton - really beautiful. We saw loads
of fish but nothing big. Also we saw some crab. I was hoping to see some big rays but unfortunately there were none at this spot. It occurred to me when I was down there maybe this is what it feels like to be in outerspace - floating in darkness, your senses are pretty useless - the only noise you can hear is your breathing through the regulator!
The next morning we got the taxi/boat/minivan/ferry/coach/public bus (12hrs!) to Krabi to meet Liam and his girlfriend for Xmas - this is where we are now... HAPPY XMAS EVERYONE!
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Tobe
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Well done boys, you're pros now!