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11/21/10

5:45 am wake up call and dive briefing, somehow between the time it took me after hearing the knock on my door and going to the bathroom and brushing my teeth I missed the quick dive briefing. Not a very big deal since we had dove this site before and my buddies had heard the directions. This dive was a bit different since James wife Julie decided to join as his buddy for this dive up to this point all her diving has been with her wanting a guide. This was a good sign that she was becoming more comfortable with diving. We also added Jose who is from Barcelona, Spain and his girlfriend was usually his buddy but I think she opted to sleep in instead of dive on this morning.

6:06 am was off diving but this dive was not great. The night prior had a lot of rain and it was a bit windy and that caused the visibility to not be as good as it had been. It was somewhat funny but as I descended down the mooring line James came up and pointed to my BCD. I looked down and could not see anything. He came over and was messing with my BCD and I found out after the dive that I was not aware but I had a back up flashlight in the pocket of my BCD and it had been bumped and turned on. The visibility actually got worse during the dive since while we were under it has started to rain again. Not too much to report I was hopeful to see a lot like I did the previous morning but did not see much at all. I also made it 42 minutes under so I was very happy to be in the range of 40 minute dives which I had been shooting for.

8 am Breakfast was served and I was excited to get another good meal the conditions were getting worse with bigger waves and swells were going to make the diving a little more challenging.

8:30 am Dive briefing the new location was Norman Reef and the site was called Clipper (Caves).

8:56 am The conditions were bad with high waves, rain, and poor visibility. I was buddied up again with James, Chris, and Jose. Julie opted out of this challenging dive with the current conditions. This dive was a good test of my skills but we did not see too much on the reef so it was a bit of a let down.

I was now only down to one more dive left in this trip which would be my 12 dive in 3 days. I was sad it was coming to an end since I was loving "DIVE TIME" and I also was not looking forward to saying good bye to my new friends who I had spent a lot of time in the past 3 days with. My roommate Eli ended up now being a certified open water diver but he was in tough shape his last dive he got a bit dizzy and was not feeling well. To top that off he was starting to feel seasick and decided to just lay in bed and was not sure he was going to do any more diving.

10:30 am dive briefing and we were at the same site as the 8:30am dive. The newly certified open water divers were now free to dive on their own. The girl from Texas named Christine asked if she could join our group for this dive and we were fine with that.

10:57 am My buddies for this dive were James, Chris, and Christine. The dive was challenging again but the visibility had improved some and this time I was able to see plenty. I pointed out a shark to Christine and we also saw these huge fish on the bottom that had coloring that made them seemed to blend into the sand. I was happy that my last dive was a good one but I still just wanted to keep diving. I joked that I might stow away during the transfer so I could get in some more dives.

Noon lunch time was good and I ate a good amount since I knew this would be my last hot cooked meal for a while. Chris ate a light lunch since he was afraid of eating too much and with the rough conditions he thought he might get seasick on the day boat back to Cairns.

The transfer happened at 2:30 pm and we got on the other boat and headed back to Cairns. We arrived back in the city by 4:30 pm and then I had to say good bye to James and Julie and also Chris. I enjoyed their company and getting to know them. I know kind of wish I had gone on a longer dive trip with more days and nights on a boat. At least I know that I like this now and maybe I will get another opportunity on this trip to do some more diving. I was dropped back off at my hostel and got to work on what to do next. I decided that I would catch the greyhound bus the next morning and head six hours south down to Townsville. That was the jump off point for what is supposedly the best ship wreck diving in Australia so with diving on my mind I was going to head that way.

I went and walked along the beach front and saw some of the city and I attempted to walk to a local park at the edge of time but it was a bit further away then I realized and as I got within five or six blocks it was dark out and I was not sure if the park had lights so I turned around and headed back to the hostel.

I thought it was funny that I got put back in the same room at the hostel as before and I ended up taking the same bed. I looked across the room and it looked the same so I assumed that the only other guy in this room was the same guy from before. I actually meet him this time and he was interesting. He is a teacher and he just completed a course on improving his English skills so he could teach that since now it is going to be part of the teaching that Switzerland schools must do. I found out that he was catching the same early bus as me in the morning as he was headed further South then I was. My trip was going to be 6 hours in the bus and his was to be 11 hours.