No muff too tough, we dive at five!

I am writing this on the sun deck of the Kangaroo Explorer, about 60km off the coast of Cairns, in north-east Australia. (Of course this will only be uploaded once I am back on land.)

The sun deck

We arrived yesterday (Tuesday, January 27) and will leave tomorrow afternoon, and by that time I will have done ten dives. I have already done five, three of which counted towards my Advanced Open Water certification – a night dive, a deep dive (30 metres), and a navigation dive.

I have two more elective dives to go – underwater photography and diving off a small boat – which I will do today and tomorrow, and then I will be an Advanced Open Water diver.

View some of the under water pictures that I took.

Last night’s night dive was the one that I was somewhat apprehensive about, because I suspect that I have claustrophobia. But the instructors drilled us well on the use of torches and on how to communicate under water at night. So it all went well and it was not much different from the day dives that I had done. The best of the dive was when a white-tipped reef shark swam past us, paying us no attention.

That's me making the scuba diving sign for "Everything's OK".

This morning I went for a deep dive. At 30 metres and below, the nitrogen in the air tanks begin to play tricks with your mind, and different people react differently – almost the same as when people get drunk. To show this effect, the instructor gives you some written questions down at the bottom and you have to write the answers on a white writing pad.

My five questions were:
1. Spell your father’s first name backwards.
2. Name five breeds of dog.
3. We had to do some simple arithmetic, adding, subtracting and doing division, and then give the final answer.
4. What is the maximum no-stop decompression time left on your dive computer?
5. Draw your favourite sexual position, using stick figures.

I could answer all the questions without hesitation, except for the arithmetic, where I thought 9 + 17 = 36, instead of 26, which goes to show that the nitrogen did have some effect on me.

During this deep dive we saw a giant sea turtle, barracuda and another (or the same?) white-tipped reef shark.

Sebas, a fellow diver from Spain, getting ready for an early-morning dive.

We had to get up at 05:30 in the mornings for these early dives at 06:00. This made me think of the inane little rhyme we used to say in the Army whenever we referred to the Navy (though it differs by one hour): “No muff too tough, we dive at five!”

I addition to the great things I see on the reef, the best value that I am getting out of this trip is the confidence that I am growing with each successive dive – especially when they are done in such rapid succession as in these three days.

The boat sleeps 34 people, but fortunately it is not very full at the moment. It is a very international crowd. There are divers from Australia, Israel, Ukraine, the UK, USA, Germany, Spain, and of course me from South Africa on board at the moment.

 

From the left: Sebas, Doug (instructor), Laurenne, me, Marcos, Tony

See Laurenne’s very funny blog here.

***

It is now Thursday and I am back on land, in Cairns, and I am now an Advanced Open Water Diver! I did ten dives in three days and it was wonderful. I met some nice people during my three days on the boat and last night I had the privilege of leading some of them in the drinking game called “One Fat Hen”.

My dive buddy for the three days, Tony Ryan, from the UK, also did the Advanced course and he was a pillar of strength and calmness those few times that we did get lost underwater or when a dive did not quite go according to plan. And above water he is not too bad a chap, either. 🙂

 

With my dive buddy for the trip, Tony Ryan, from the UK.

 

One of my better attempts at underwater photography. Don't ask me what kind of fish this is.

More pictures taken on board the Kangaroo Explorer