Myself and Dan are now certified open water divers and adventure divers.
Boat Trip – Day 1
We boarded the boat at about 7 on Saturday morning and after a three hour boat trip we were at our first dive site. I was feeling fairly rough after the 3 hour drive to the site so instead of being nervous about the dive, I was dying to do it so that I’d be off the boat. We got geared up and did our buddy checks and away we went. We did our descent by rope so we all held on to it with one hand and then let the air out of our BCD’s with the other hand and down we went. I was only down about a meter when there was fish swimming right beside me. It didn’t feel like i was in the ocean but in a huge fish tank… The dive went really quickly and in no time we were starting our ascent. We had lunch and in what felt like 15 minutes we were ready to dive again. This time, The whole group was way more relaxed and we got to see so much more. We went snorkeling afterwards and its amazing the amount of fish and coral you can see so close to the surface. That night while the advanced divers were going for there night dive, there was 3sharks around the boat. I was cool to see but all I kept thinking was, that’ll be us tomorrow night. Doing our night dive with sharks all around.
Boat Trip – Day 2
Wake up call was at 6.45 and the first dive at 7:15 so again no time to be nervous. We got to see a baby turtle on this dive which was surreal.. He was just there swimming so casually past us. We had our second dive done and were certified divers by lunch time. In all those dives we had these little training exercises to do, some more enjoyable than others. The one I liked the most was the one we you have to be neutrally buoyant. So you basically just stay motionless in the water not touching the bottom. The one i liked the least was the mask removal one. We had to take our masks off and then put them back on again and clear them. I always managed to get water up my noise and down my throat. Not nice…. We also did things like practicing being out of air and taking your buddys extra air supply. One of the guys in the group was taking his turn of doing this and he didn’t clear out the regulator(Air supply) so he took a big breath and instead of getting air he got a mouth full of water. Thankfully he didn’t panic and head to the top, he just had to swallow it and try to get back to breathing normally.
After lunch we had our first solo certified dive. So we were allowed to go without an instructor which was cool but also a lot of work. Our instructor sue was great and she knew the reefs completely so she’d know were to go to see turtles of nemos etc so this one, we were on our own. We managed quit well but also managed to miss three turtles that it seemed everyone else saw. Later that day we decide to go on and do the adventure course. we would be doing all the same dives as usual bar one being a deep dive. Doing it means that we can dive to 30 meters and we can dive the yongala, a ship wreck off Brisbane which we’ve heard is really really cool. 6 of the 8 from our group did the adventure course so that meant we got to keep our instructor sue which was great. i wasn’t looking forward to doing the night dive so having the same instructor put me more at ease.
Right before we went for the night dive, the skipper decided to feed the fish that were around the boat – i.e the sharks.. at least they were freshly feed before we got in but the fact that we were basically jumping in on top of them was freaking me out. We had glow sticks on our backs and torches so that we could see the group and see the fish. We all did our descent together and when we got down we had to do a compass navigation exercise. They had told us the procedure for if you lose your buddy and what happened to me.. I lost Danny.. I shinned my torch around in every direction and no sign, i was just about to start panicking when there he was. I don’t know what happened because to Danny we weren’t separated so I’m either blind or he was trying to ditch me.We saw a huge turtle sleeping in a kind of cave and at some points in the dive we’d all put our torches out so that we’d see how dark it was and what the visibility was like without them.
Boat Trip – day 3
We had an early wake up call again and got ready for our deep dive. Some people when going down to 30 meters, they get narced – so your basically drunk underwater, hah. We all wanted to see if any of us would be doing stupid things down there.We did our descent as usually and then we started swimming around, before i knew it i looked at my computer and i was at 28.2. I didn’t even realise we had gone that low but it is scary to think what you would do if something went wrong. Red colours disappear when you’re down that low so Sue brought a coke bottle along and the lid and label looked black rather than red. After the deep dive we were certified adventure divers. We went out for a snorkel were we saw nemo and sharks and a little ray as well.
Our last dive was a really cool dive, we didn’t have to go with the instructor but she came along cos she loves to dive and its cool to be shown where things are. I think that dive was the one were everyone in the group was most relaxed and were we most enjoyed it.
To sum up the whole trip I would have to say it exceeded my expectations. Everything was excellent, from the training to the boat to the food to the dives. Diving was a high priority of mine and Dans and it definately deserved to be. I cant wait to get down there and explore some more.
