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Reef Encounter liveaboard dive trip, Cairns.

Good, while Nicky writes the last lines of the trip from Cairns to Cooktown and back to Cairns I'll start writing a nice little story about just 2 days. But as those days where packed with no less then 6 dives there is plenty to tell. Unfortunately we have NO pictures of the underwater world, we could have taken a camera down there but the viz (visibility) was kinda shitty and the reefs where nice but not as astonishing as the reefs we'd seen with ProDive. Nevertheless it was a good trip and with 6 dives (including one qualifying boat-dive for our Advanced Open Water AND a night-dive) it was great fun AND a nice confidence builder for the both of us as all 6 dives where unguided.

Good, the story. The wakeup was EARLY. I mean, we're both used to getting up when the sun rises but this time we had to get up at 6:45am and be ready and in front of the hostel our friends stayed at 7:05am. Luckily we already packed our bags for 95% the night before and we where there at a nice 7:10am. Too bad the transfer was not free (as they told us at our booking office) and it was a walkable distance so kinda unneccecairy but hey, we where sleepy anyway so we didn't care that much. (Would you care for a whopping $8,- total?) Couple of minutes later we where at the wharf, still 5 minutes walking to the pier our transfer-boat leaves from. Around 8 it came in, being nothing more than a crappy old though not really small boat from the 70's. Quite clear that they used that boat solely for cheap-ass dive/snorkel/boomnet/reef-cruise daytrips and transfers to their bigger (and way more luxurous) liveaboard. As it was a fairly small boat and the sea fairly rough it bumped a lot, the whole lowerdeck was filled with really pale looking people, hiding their faces in their towels. Kinda stupid though, that's about the worst thing you can do when being sea-sick. Just hop onto the stern (rear), breathe fresh air and watch the horizon. Or be smart and use 2 KWELL's just an hour before you go. Me being quite sensitive to sea-sickness had absolutely nothing and stayed hapily on the bow of the boat while chatting with fellow divers. The inside presentation and briefing was a bit shitty, no intercom so they had to yell. Some dork tried to sell his reef video's and was strawling along the boat to make a nice video with the people on the trip on it to sell to them afterwards. Too bad that he found a group of 8 on the bow of the boat, all turning out to be just using this boat as a transfer to the liveaboard so absolutely no use for him and his camera. Anyway, we found another couple there, who also went to Cooktown to dive and had the same problem as we, no boat, no divemaster, no diving. Though for them the divemaster-problem was not really there as they where PADI instructors themselves. (Which turned out to be very handy for us afterwards but that's for later.) We warned them for Port Douglas, not to go there as (as you coul've read in Nicky's story) you can only go down with an instructor. Bit sad if they use the same rules on them I presume and I have the feeling they WILL. "Divemaster? Instructor? Course Director? (The highest level you can achieve.) No, sorry, you HAVE to go down with one of our guides..." Really, If I was an instructor I would book the trip and then gently loose the guide and tell 'm to piss off when they'd yell at me when again at the surface. But hey, who am I, just some jerk with his 15th logged dive in his logbook an a way too big mouth.

Anyway, after a 2,5 hour bumpy ride we where where we should be, Hastings Reef and got transferred to their large liveaboard safely moored at the reef. The sea a bit rough the transfer on a tiny glass-bottom-boat was a little wet but we managed to get on the boat safely. And the boat was GOOD. Only filled with 25 people (half of it's capacity) and luxurous as a middle-class hotel with diner served at your table and even the multi-share rooms being just 2 seperate beds with a PRIVATE bathroom that was kinda ok. Bit too much for us actually, we don't need that kinda shit but hey. At least we had unlimited shower time which turned out to be very nice to wash the salt off after every dive. So lunch, and then a quick briefing for our fist dive, starting at 13:30. As you cannot share a dive-computer we got a dedicated BCD, cylinder and octopus and a number on the board to remind you of which was yours for the trip. Some of them lacking a compass and me wanting to improve his navigation skills we'd swap it straight before the dive with a divemaster with his own gear so I was free to go and could finally work on one of the things I failed during my training. (But hey, I still got certified!)

First dive.
Entry 13:40, exit 14:15, maxdepth 13,9mtr, bottom time 20 min, location Hastings Reef, GBR, viz shitty (10mtr).
As I forgot to remember the topology of the reef AND forgot to set a decent compass direction we plunged into the water, swimmed around a bit and got nicely lost... Saw my first sea-fan and the regular stuff like a complete toilet, (Hmmzj, that's not really regular.) and some bannerfish etc. Too bad we also saw a lot of dead coral and completely missed the coral-garden in the neigbourhood because I missed the bommie which you could use as a navigation point towards the garden. Nicky got trouble with her buyoancy, descent was therefore a bit shitty and probably due to some stress I sucked my air out in 20 minutes so we had to surface pretty soon.

Second dive.
Entry 16:00, exit 16:45, maxdepth 12,2mtr, bottom time 32 min, location Saxon Reef North, GBR, viz moderate (15mtr).
We went down with Chrissie and Brady and as their nav skillz where a bit better we followed them. When Nicky pointed me at a couple of X-mas tree worms and how to annoy them I finally got it. So the rest of the dive I was harrassing them by waving my hand 30cm above them making the water flow. *ZIP!* And they're gone... Retracted in their tubes till the water is safe again. Nicky got the giggles when I was playing my little game underwater and behaving like a little boy who just found a new stupid game to play. Stupid it was but oh so funny ;-) Brady found a tiny Calamari sea-urchin hidden in a rock. My first one and I was very happy to finally see a sea-urchin here. The're cool. (Though the Calamari just has very tiny spines, not the huge ones I've seen in Egypt.) Also found a blue-spotted stingray on the bottom. After 32 minutes we had to go up to the surface as Nicky had trouble equalizing her ears and lost the group. Surface-swim to the boat and preparing for our 3rd dive of the day. (A nightdive.)

Third dive.
Entry 19:35, exit ~20:00, maxdepth 12,9mtr, bottom time 24 min, location Saxon Reef North, GBR, viz night & shitty.
As the sea got a bit bumpy we had the biggest giant-stride till now, a nice big meter from the divedeck to the water. *SPLASH!* Down with a torch on our first night-dive with just the 2 of us and no instructors whatsoever around. Scary but kinda cool to do... Saw some typical things you only see at night like lionfish, a sleeping green turtle and bioluminescence. The last thing really rules, hiding your light to let your eyes adopt to the darkness (and you see a LOT underwater just by the shine of the moon and the boat) and then waving your hands through the water. *PLING!* Tiny little ligts, like stars, but just for a second. You really must've seen it to enjoy it but it's fun. And only seen at night :-) We got chaced by Trevalli, bit predators who use the beam of your torch to find prey. Shining in on a Nemo-fish or some other lovely cute creature can mean *MUNCH!* and exit fish... Too bad Nicky wasn't that happy underwater in the dark, she kinda freaked out as the lost me a couple of times. Luckily I never lost contact with her and at the end everything was kinda allright but still a scary experience for her. Hopefully next time she's more confident and it will go better but it IS kinda freaky going down in the dark as the only way you can see what's up and down is the direction of your bubbles and the water in your mask. We got up to the surface and it rained! Heavy current, tyring swim and very choppy sea. They really had to drag us up the dive platform, submerged half a meter, toss us on our knees (*BANG!* Murf hit the platfor kinda hard...), and reeled the whole platform up the boat. Nicky got an unfriendly divemaster and so did I as the told us the limit was 10 meter and Nicky accidentally hit ~14,9 meter and I hit 12,9 meter as I tried to follow her and not loose her out of sight. The way they did it was a bit annoying, they could've asked questions but ok, we're just baby-divers so in one way I can imagine they where not happy. Nicky simply didn't hear the instruction not to follow the achorline all the way to the bottom and leave it at 10 mtr.

Fourth dive.
Entry 6:35am, exit 7:10am, maxdepth 21,4mtr, bottom time 24 min, location Saxon Reef North, GBR, viz moderate (15mtr).
We got called out of our beds at 6am... *YAWN!* That's kinda hard, you're half asleep and then slip in your wetsuit to go down. But it's worth it. We got into the glass-bottom-boat for a one-way underwater swim to the boat, following a kinda deep wall (the bottom being at 26 meters). They told us OpenWater divers not to go below 18 meters, being an SSI certifier they did NOT really understand that we're allowed to go down to 30 meters with our adventure dive in our pockets. Ah well, nobody complained that we hit 21 meters on that dive. We had to do our first backward roll entry ever (SCARY!), ascended with the group, followed the wall for a descent time, and found a white-tip reefshark swimming around! A moment later we discoverd a second one sleeping on a sandy patch with the swimming one next to it for a second. They're small and harmless but pretty cool to see them in their own environment. And the white tips on their fins really is cute. We saw a Moorish Idol as well (for you Nemo-fans, that's one of the fishes in the movie) and when surfacing we discovered 2 green turtles almost at the surface aparently going for some air as they can NOT breathe underwater but take air from the surface and then live on that for max 8 hours. (Try that as humans...) One of them found a nice little snack in the form of some jellyfish and I waited a couple of seconds to observe it. Really cool to see, I've seen turtles knibble on coral but never eating jellyfish. Surface swim back to the boat, nasty current again.

Fifthdive.
Entry 8:35am, exit 9:10am, maxdepth 13,9mtr, bottom time 29 min, location Saxon Reef North, GBR, viz moderate (10-15mtr).
For me this was really a great dive. The wildlive was almost familiar but I tried to focus on my navigation this time and that worked out quite well. Swimming in a fairly straight line to the reef, swimming around for a while, finding a giant clam, a giant sweetlips at a cleaning-station (with all little cleaning fish around him while the sweetlips was lying at a rock) and an unidentified very ugly and scary fish at another cleaning station. This monster had around 6 rows of very tiny teeth in his mouth and with a cleaning fish in it that was wide open for the world (and unexpecting divers) to see. After our tour I navigated back to the boat and found the anchorline quite where I expected it. Did our ascent following the line and popped up at the surface around 5 meters from the boat, to complete surprise of the lookout. She was looking at 30 meters and more and it took some time before I got her attention and she saw my big OK sign :-> I came out of the water with the biggest smile on earth as I was so proud that my navigation was good enough to find the boat back and come so close to it at the surface...

Sixth dive.
Entry 10:35am, exit 11:10am, maxdepth 14,2mtr, bottom time 25 min, location Hastings Reef, GBR, viz moderate (10-15mtr).
Being back at the reef where we messed up completely at the first dive and wanting to see the coral garden as everybody was so enthousiastic about it I tried to print it in my head and have some proper orientation and compass directions. We did, found the bommie, found the toilet again (and now I can pinpoint you WHERE that is on a map), swimmed through the corridor and... Ended up in the coral garden! Bit nasty entry, we had to pass a very shallow patch to get into the garden (which was beautifull but Nicky really has trouble with zigzag dives and officialy you shouldn't do them anyway but sometimes you don't really have a choice) and suddenly there was coral everywhere. Couple of giant clams, LOTS of corals (hey, that's why it's called a coral-garden), and the usual fishes down there. Later we found out that there was a deeper entry to the garden, but that was back on the surface when looking at the coral from the upper deck. Just for fun we did some underwater head-rolls. Never dit it before, had some air left and just tried it. Fun, you loose your orientation for a secont but it feels extremely free. Swimming back we thought we'd found the boat, till we where at ~8 meters and saw the stairs. Signed "NO, WRONG" to eachother as this must've been another boat but we had to surface quite soon as I was running out of air so we surfaced next to it. And indeed, it was the TUSA boat, not ours. Signed OK to whoever liked it and did a surface swim back to OUR boat... Oh, I saw a goatfish Nicky missed :-) (As she missed a green turtle at the nightdive as well, she pointed her light at the animal but afterwards told me that she did not see it and with one hand occupied with your torch you can not make the "turtle"-signal...)

Hmmm, and that was it! We did 6 dives in a row on our own, unfortunately in worse conditions than we had (shitty viz and lesser reefs) but still very good. Back on the boat we talked again with the PADI instructors and suddenly she realized that with our boat-dive and our backward-roll we met the requirements for the Boat-Dive Adventuredive as we where diving from boats all the time already. So whe was so kind to officially sign the dive as being an adventure-boat-dive (she WAS on dinghy and noticed that our entry didn't even look if it was the first time) so leaving us only the navigation-dive to become Advanced Open Water. That is a serious one, you really have so swim a square to get it signed off, something for one of our next trips.

After the dive we got back to the taxi-boat with the group, we could stay little longer on the liveaboard, $120,- for 3 extra dives, but not being entirely confident with the coral, nor the viz nor the operator we decided not to and just stick to what we've had done. After all, 6 dives in little more then 24 hours is for us unexperienced divers a lot and to be honest, enough. So back to shore, looked at the boomnetters who got towed behind the boat on a net till they lost grip, and went for some dinner. The rest of the group (now existing of a total of 6) went to The Woolshed, we wanted unhealthy food so got to KFC (Murf) and McDonalds (Nicky). Promised to go to the Woolshed afterwards but where simply too tired (sorry guys) so headed back to our van. Looked at the beach where people where dancing on realaxing housebeats with fire-diabolo's, fire-bars, fire-whatever, (a GREAT show, some of them really know how to work it) and walked back to our van for a well-deserved night of sleep.

And that's where it ends so far. Night was good, Nicky finally got some sleep, tonight or tomorrow we head OUT of Cairns, do the Tablelands and then follow the shore back to Sydney, looking for some great diving sites along the way. (With the wreck of the Yungala and the Sydney Harbour already on our list.)

TTYL!

Murf

Murf | 09 Apr 2005 (Sat), 05:35 @ story