Dive 5 22/9/2014 Adv training #1 Diving with Roede, at_________. PPB , fin pivot, hover for 60 seconds. Did buoyancy training, skimming the sand and had to knock over a weight in the sad with our respirator the invert over a belt. Neat swim through. Dive 6 22/9/2014 Adv training #2 with Roede. End Nav skills at 3 rocks. Bearing for one person, second person counts 10 fin kicks. My goggles kept filling and missed Roede's command to follow we were figuring kick distance. And then he had to come back. Then when we got down there my buddy had not followed with us. Ran square search pattern. Heading out for night for night dive, Dive #7, night dive with Robin. 22/09/2014 The night dive was amazing. Lets just start with that. I grouped up with Michael, Lilly, and Deadra. Michael used to be a dive instructor for Impian and he and lily are here on vacation. Also just got engaged, a nice underwater scuba proposal. Deadra just got here and will be doing her master diver and instructor for Impian. But back to the dive. Geared up torches in hand we jump in the water at White Rock pinical. The ocean is a very mysterious and power full entity. To be anxious about jumping into it multiple kg strapped to you even in the middle of the day is fine and good. When night falls and all you have are the lights of the boat and the starts draped across the sky give a bit of a shiver to everyone. But you just have to do it. Our torches light up the ocean like search lights sweeping the sky. Beneath us we see life darting in and out of our beams. We make our way to the drop line and make sure we have everyone. All here, ok signals around the group and we deflate our jackets and our heads dip bellow the water. We fall into this other world, drifting down along the line. Our lights beam down into the depths but the bottom hasn't revealed herself yet. Its like a haze of algae caught like dust in the air. Down and down we go. And the coral bed rises forth to greet us. As though a great curtain for a performance has just drawn open to a scene where most of the players drift back and forth in the gentile swaying current in a restless sleep. And now our journey or hunt begins. Because now we comb the reef for signs of things that don't show themselves during the day. Every where you look there it is rich and vibrant. The torches give a full light to that which in the normal rays of the sun through the water looks blue green. The reds come burst to our attention. And it is this red we are looking for. It is the color of shrimp and crab and other best seen at night creatures. Within only a few minutes of being down we see crabs; hard shell and hermit. The bright red little legs of the hermit popping out of his shell as he goes about cleaning the coral. There are fish tucked up inside sections of coral, fish floating ideally by, and fish on the hunt. It is amazing to see all the life. The feather coral swaying back and forth. The yellow margin triggers lounging in the coral beds. The the red shimmering bodies of the dancing shrimp light up the cracks and gaps. Our heads and bodies float through the water as we peak around corners and peer into holes looking for the elusive. There is so much to see and so many things we haven't seen yet. No barracuda, or other hunters for us. I did find a blue spotted ribbon tail ray, super cool. After a bit, we swam away from the pinnacle a bit and sat down for the disco light show. There are tiny algae that will produce a bioluminescence when agitated. So we sat, torches pressed to our chests and started waving our other hand about in the water in front of us. Sure enough, tiny spots of light spear in the wake of our motions. Its as though we are dipping our fingers in the pool of magic and its sparkling dust is swirling about in front if us. Now that we have had our fill of casting spells we spiral our way back around the pinnacle making our way back up. Another amazing dive in the book.
Dive #8 adventure dive training with Roede. 23/09/2014 Morning Deep dive training at white rock. We are going deep today, down to 30 meters. Down here you use your air 4 times faster, will pass through a thermo cline and need to stay aware of your nitrogen levels. The further down the more nitrogen we absorb. Which means we need to take more time between dives and make sure a proper safety stop is done at 5m for 3min to let that nitrogen back out of your system slowly. Is down we go along the mooring line defending quickly to maximize our bottom time. Once at the bottom of the mooring line we make our way out from the pinnacle to deeper water. At about 25 meters we hit the thermo cline and the water drops about 8 degrees. Brrrrrr. We keep heading out checking our air gages periodically. Ok. We are at 29.4 meters. We are at our depth limit. Time to check out a few things. Roede has brought along with him a nice bright red bag of crisps. We all had a good look at it on the surface. Now down here at 30 meters he pulls it out from his pocket and the bag is the size of a large tennis ball. You can see the foil pressed in around the crisps within. The bright red is now a dark green. We all pass it around and feel the compressed bag. Quite a unique experience. Now its time for the 11 test. He will put up a number and we are to put up the number to make 11. Simple right....? It is, unless you experience nitrogen narcosis. Then simple thinking tasks can be sluggish and you might act like you are a bit intoxicated. And for me ....that was the case. I knew what we were supposed to do, what number was being held up. But I couldn't get to the number out to my fingers to complete the set. It was quite weird and as soon as he went on to check every one else I realized I had just mirrored the same number back. Time to go up a bit so we can relieve my narcosis. We head back to the boat and ascend to our drop tank for our safety stop after we make a deep stop for 1 minute at half our max depth.
Dive # 9 23/09/2014. Wreck dive with Roede We head to the wreck dive site after a good 40 minute surface break. Its an old gun ship the US gave to the Thai army when they were done with it and then the about 4 years ago the Thai army dunk it here. There is a big gunners chair on the bow and a small swim through in the capt. Chamber. The ocean is starting to reclaim the vessel as plant and animal life start to make this ship its home. Un a few more years corals will start to bloom and it will become quite the site of life in the sea. Its a short dive, we only have so much time on our interval and we need to stay within it. Back up for a deep stop and a safety stop at 3m for 5 minutes. Dive complete advanced dive training complete.
