Diving Activities

So Min is a diver. Diver Min she shall be known as from now on.
Seriously though we went on the live aboard trip on the weekend and we both had a great time. We left on Friday night about 8pm. True to form Min and I were packing and buying the last necessities on the way to the boat at about 5 to 8. Eventually we made it and were introduced to the crew. Ian the Trip director, Rhys the Instructor, Possum the Cook and Ron the Skipper. The crew were really friendly (not al skippers are friendly) and were easy to approach when we had problems.

The first day we were off to Wheeler reef. All of Mins dives on this reef were training dives. I mixed it up between diving with others and tagging along on the Open water course. This way I managed to get some photos of corals and animals as well as some of Mins outstanding preformance as an open water student.

So 4 dives on Wheeler Reef, including the night dive. The night dive was awesome (my first in a while) you get to concentrate more on a smaller patch of reef and see some of the things that you miss during the day as you are to busy looking around. No photos from the night dive though as the camera didn't like the low light conditions and flashes just don't represent the proper atmosphere that you get out on the reef at night.

Next we were steaming over to Davies Reef. This is the reef that AIMS has its weather station on. There were meant to be another 4 dives here but I only managed 3, well 3 and a half. I was down at 10m and waiting for the open water students to descend when I noticed a stream of bubbles coming from my 2nd stage (The Regulator bit that goes in your mouth for those that don't dive). I thought to myself "That's weird I'm not breathing out". Well I took the reg out of my mouth and looked at it as I had determined with my lightning quick brain that something may be amiss. Well I saw that it was leaking from a join in the hose, It was not a dive ending leak though as it was only a bit of a trickle. Then all hell broke loose as I placed it back in my mouth. I herd a large burst almost like a bang, then a absolute gush of air. I looked around and the only person I could see who was looking in my direction was Henrick a Dutch guy and a student on the open water course. I quickly signalled that I was going up and he nodded with large eyes looking at my regulator spewing forth air. The reg had become hard to breath from by this stage due to a lack of pressure reaching my mouthpiece so I decided too switch to my alternate air source. I slowly ascended (not exceeding 18m per minute) watching my pressure gauge slowly dial down. I lost 80 bar or over a 3rd of the air in my tank in the minute (roughly) it took to ascend. I didn't panic but I couldn't say that It wasn't worrying when I was down at 10m. Anyway drama was over then and I slowly swan back to the ship.
Everyone other than Henrick though was wondering where I had gotten to. Henrick signalled that I was OK and then proceeded to write down on the slate that I had surface and gone back to the boat. The big problem was that he wrote it down in Dutch so everyone just looked at the slate in confusion then assumed that I was an experienced diver and could look after myself. They were right but it does illustrate a point about diving. You really should develop your own skills and abilities so that you can look after yourself because buddies and groups are not always that helpful. I do still recommend diving in groups of at least 2 though as other people can and do help in many situations, there are as they say safety in numbers.
The trip was excellent in General and Min loved the diving so we could be doing a bit more of it now that we are both certified.
A concern voiced to me by Min though was that she might get sick on the yacht trip at the end of the year. So we are off to the Whitsunday's to hire a yacht sometime this year as a practice. When would be a good opportunity maybe a long weekend. Oh well details of that to follow.

Cheers L.