My friend Ronelle is back in the country for a very limited time, in transit from South Africa to South America. She is now a qualified dive instructor, and encouraged me to complete the PADI Advanced Open Water course, on a liveaboard trip to the Poor Knights. I had completed the first Open Water course in Thailand earlier this year, but had not been out diving since. This was a good excuse to do some more diving, complete the course, see the highly rated Poor Knights, and most importantly, catch up with Ronelle and Tara.
We drove up on Friday night, slept on the boat in the marina, then headed out on Saturday morning. Hanging around being monkeys seemed to be part of the pre-dive warmup:
A busy weekend followed, with four dives on Saturday, and two more on Sunday. I was only diving in a 5mm wetsuit, and with water temperatures around 15°, I was getting pretty cold and tired, so I sat out the third and last dive on the Sunday. We had some good dives though, doing things like navigation, going deep (26m), night diving (perhaps not my cup of tea), and probably my favourite, the naturalist. Basically for that you just went and looked at the fish, plants and animals. That’s more like what diving should be. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t suitable for doing a wreck dive on the way home, and indeed the trip back was a bit more interesting, but it was still good on the sheltered side of the islands.
I didn’t get home until 11pm on Sunday night, and was pretty well stuffed at work on Monday. No worries though, it was a really good weekend. Special mention to my Dive Master Tara, for looking after me, and getting me home safely. I’m not sure that drinking with your students the night before a deep dive is recommended practice though…
I don’t know how much more diving I’ll be able to fit in, as I’ve got lots of other things to do with my weekends, and I don’t know where I’d store the gear around my apartment, but I will be going out again this weekend, a bit closer to home, at Goat Island. Hopefully get a feed of scallops too.
And finally, here’s something you don’t do every day: get your ex girlfriend to help you write an ad for an Internet dating site. Hopefully I don’t come across as many odd sorts as she did. We’ll see how it works out. With a bit of luck, I’ll at least make a few new friends.
One reply on “Getting cold and wet…and loving it”
wa wa wee wa!
i got the big ups!! for bringing you home six times too 🙂
we had a wicked weekend!! you did awesome and watching you get narc’ed at 26m was a shit load of fun. but watching you enjoy a pleasure dive around the pinnacle (our naturalist dive) was a highlight too.
so you might not want to dive a lot but we are dragging your ass to goat island this weekend (pete needs a buddy) and if you have signed up for internet dating, then thats as if you have also given me permission to haul your ass along to dive club cos there are lots of girlies there and thats just what friends do.