20 April

We overslept a little this morning but luckily it was not too much of a problem. We head down for breakfast and afterwards I run to other accommodation halfway across the Island (10 minutes) to ensure they kept a room for us (it's cheaper than where we stay now). He doesn't want to take the money but promises me that there will be a room available for tonight. I head back to the jetty where leanne ensured the water taxi taking us to the large Island didn't leave without us. We head to Turtle bay divers where we kit our gear and have a review of the material that we needed to study for both the wreck and night dives. Afterwards we head to the wreck - almost 30 minutes drive by speedboat. There are no other diving operations there yet so most of the fish would not have been frightened away. We do a vertical decent (the water was quite choppy) using the buoy line and head to the anchor of the wreck.

The wreck is known as Sugar wreck, it was on route from Singapore towards Thailand and on the way the engine broke. A local tow boat was used to tow it to the harbor but along the way they passed through a storm causing the ship to take on water and they had to cut the line letting it sink. The cargo it carried was sugar - sugar wreck!

The wreck lies only 18m from the surface and completely intact allowing us to swim along the one side and also enter the hull swimming through the cargo deck. The fish were plentiful around this artificial reef and included Blue spotted fan tail and Kuhl rays, bamboo sharks , lion fish, scorpion fish, bat fish, barracuda, puffer, porcupine and Java fish! With the visibility being 15m we ended up staying 55 minutes before surfacing. After the dive we head back to the dive shop where we substitute new tanks for our old ones (for the night dive later) and a water taxi takes us back to the small island.

We head up to our new accommodation on top of the hill separating the coral beach and long beach of the small island. Luckily he kept a room for us, we drop our bags and head back to Senja to collect our other bags. We take a shower and head to the restaurant for a fruit platter before transporting our bags, unfortunately we left the keys for the mesh of my backpack in the bag at the other accommodation. Now we need to walk 2 times across the island instead of once!

We had hardly settled in at our new accommodation before we needed to head down to the beach for dinner, you are strongly advised to eat before attempting night dives. The food was nice, Mee Hoon noodles with 4 pieces of chicken and some vegetables. From there its only a two minute walk to Turtle divers new shop on Long beach, the old one was destroyed by a palm tree that fell on it. We kit up, Leanne is a bit anxious but she soon calms down. There is a bit of a swell as we anchor for the vertical decent. At the bottom there is not much to see as the torches only shine for approximately 4m distance. We are required to navigate a straight line for 15 kick cycles, sounds short but its quite a distance, I get my coordinates and give the reciprocal to Brie before heading out. A master diver accompanies me to ensure I don't get lost, for some strange reason I thought she told me 25 kick cycles, by the time I reach 22 the master diver stops me and I ascertain the reciprocal return coordinates before heading back. With my last kick cycle I almost swim past them but at least I found them. Now its Leanne's turn , she seems a little more anxious as her light and compass don't glow as much but she heads off, Brie and myself have to hold our lights against our wetsuits reducing the light significantly. On her return Leanne also swims a little to far and the master diver has to grab her fin to get her to stop.

With the requirements behind us we spend the last 20 minutes exploring the 16.5m shallows for nocturnal fish. We find a parrot fish under a rock, when they sleep they blow a bubble which covers their whole body ensuring their scent does not attract predators while they sleep. We also see blue spotted stingray, black blotched porcupine fish, stot faced moray eel, scorpion fish and may crabs and shrimps. We head to the surface and back to the dive shop where we wash our gear.

This has been my best dive of the whole course but in contrast Leanne's worst considering she had a mask that didn't fit and continually filled with water. We head to Panorama again for a chocolate shake to discuss the dive and ease her mind. 22h00 we head back with our handy torch through the trail usually littered with monitor lizards.