A Full Day of Diving on our Seventh Day

Monday, June 16, 2008

Yet another amazing day! I was able to sleep in a bit which was nice but still managed to get up in time to meet the early birds for breakfast. It was a nice and relaxing morning but looked like we may be in for some rough water. I came back to the room to prep for our days’ worth of diving. We had three dives planned again, so exciting!

We got to Sam’s before our other boat divers so we geared up and got ready so we had some time to relax and check out the shop some more. I had already bought a couple shirts but wanted to take another look around while I had some time. Sam’s Tours has a great setup, I have heard that other divers say it is the best out of any other dive center they have been to. Sam’s has a nice dive shop, a video center, Bottom Time Bar and Grill, a compressor room, all the shore diving you want, and boats right there to take you to the dive destination. There is also a great schedule board set up so you can just look and find what boat you are on and the other divers that are coming along. They try not to put more than 8 divers on a boat so it makes it much more comfortable. The staff is also extraordinary. Everyone is so polite and friendly, they love what they do! I have also met so many that are there as interns or just working for a year or two before moving on. To do what they do would be awesome. I have learned so much and met so many incredible people, I don’t want to leave.

Well it is time for diving. Our first dive was Turtle Cove again. This time we started through a Blue Hole and just worked our way around and along the wall. I saw so many turtles and anemones, and Anthias, Triggers, Sea Fans, etc, etc, etc. I could have stayed for hours just looking at all the amazing life, but of course you can’t L. We also had a father/daughter couple who seemed quite unexperienced so they got in the way quite a bit. It made for a not so enjoyable dive if you got too close to them or vice-versa. I stayed my distance and just gazed at the beautiful wall ahead until it was time to surface. We got back on the boat and headed out for some lunch. We anchored at a nice shallow area where there was some great snorkeling. There were lots of huge cucumbers, cute little blennies, beautiful Acroporas, lots of Porites, very tiny Tangs, and I even spotted a Blue Velvet Nudibranch. Again I could ramble on and on about all the stuff I saw but I don’t want to bore you with reading it when I can show you some amazing pictures. Enjoy!

After lunch and some nice snorkeling (which I got a bit of sun), we headed out to our next destination, German Wall/Channel. We usually take the channel out on our boat rides to some other destinations so now we actually get to dive it. The wall leads into the channel where a lot of the larger fish come into. There is also a cleaning station that is somewhat protected and we were told that we were not allowed to swim through it. We were all really hoping to see a Manta Ray as that is the area where they are usually spotted. Fingers crossed throughout the whole dive. So we started along the wall which did not have a whole lot of life but was nice nonetheless. We made our way into the channel which was quite murky because of the cleaning station along sandy bottom. We saw a lionfish chilling along with all sorts of other smaller fish being cleaned my Blue Streak Cleaner Wrasse. It was so amazing to see fish coming in to get cleaned and then continuing on our way. We found a spot along the bottom to settle and wait a few minutes to see if any larger fish would swim in for a clean but no luck. Also my computer started warning me that I was getting close to deco so I had to start ascending. I was a bit bummed. Along our way back through the channel I had turned to check the divers behind me since I was towards the front and when I looked back ahead of me I practically swallowed my regulator. There in front of us was a HUGE Manta Ray! It spotted us or got spooked by our bubbles but we finally got to see one of these big beauties, and I was able to get a couple pics of it before it completely was out of sight. You could just see the excitement of the other divers!

What famous TV cartoon does this remind you of?

It was time to head back to Sam’s dock since not all of us were doing three dives. We unloaded those not coming and then headed back out to our third dive of the day, a wreck dive called Jakes Sea Plane. It was a fairly shallow dive and I ended up diving Nitrox since my no deco time was getting a bit high on the scale....and we were doing one more dive afterwards. I stayed with the computer on air but with diving Nitrox, I was able to off-gas more. Jakes Sea Plane was awesome, I got to sit in both the back and the front seats and imagine what it was like to fly it, and crash it. Pretty neat I must say. So after a short dive, we headed back to Sam’s during some chilling rain and rough waters.

We got back to the dock not long after since the wreck was just around the corner. I sat with Joe and Andy and Kelly Joined us for a bit. We had some sodas and just relaxed since we would be going on our fourth dive, my first night dive! I was nervous and excited all at the same time. We discussed where we were going, the Helmet Wreck. It was nice since we had already dove that wreck earlier in the week so it was familiar. We headed out of Sam’s just before it got too dark and arrived at the Helmet Wreck. It’s a stationary dive so we started descending down the line. Once at the bottom of the line, we all turned out our dive lights. It wasn’t completely dark but dark enough. It was thrilling and exciting. We turned out lights back on and continued to check out the wreck and search out shrimps, cowries, sleeping fish and feeding corals. I have finally done a night dive!

We made our way back to the boat and we were all quite cold. Each dive you do your body temperature drops a bit and I was really feeling it today. It was also raining a bit so it was even colder. We got back to Sam’s, rinsed our gear and hung it up in the locker room. The three of us had some dinner and then went back to hotel to warm up and get some rest. What a day!