I was picked up at 6:30 and and after picking up the rest of the gorup taken to the shop. After some unimportant stuff we were taken to the harbour where we entered the Reef Kist, the CDC’s day trip boat. It took us about 2 hours to get out to the reef. There were big waves and the boat was heavily rocking into all directions.
While most passengers were busy with thoroughly filling the brown paper bags with their breakfast I was having the time of my life 😀 smiling from one ear to the other I enjoyed the constant up and down.
In the beginning I stood on the front of the boat where the rocking was the strongest. Several meters up and down. After a while I got cold and went back to my seat inside to relax.
At some point the boat suddenly stopped. Whales!!! I went back out, waited a while, and suddenly a huge whale jumped out of the water right in front of us. Amazing! Unfortunately I wasn’t fast enough with my camera because I was caught by surprise. I saw it swimming for a little bit, then it was gone.
Eventually we reached our destination, the Kangaroo Explorer. It’s a huge ship where we live on for 3 days / 2 nights. It takes us to the different diving locations on the Great Barrier Reef and is our home for the time being.
When we arrived we went straight up to the sundeck on top where we got a security briefing before we were shown around the vessel. When that was done we got our cabin numbers. Half an hour later we had lunch and when that was finished we went through the preparations for our first open water dive. The whole process was no different from our pool practice. When we were done and our buddy check was a success we went into the water.
There was quite some current, so we had to hold on to the rope between the ship and the dinghy. When everyone was in the water we swam to the front and used the anchor to slowly descent for the first time. We went down to about 12 meters. It was amazingly easy! I had no problems with equalizing the pressure whatsoever, and my new mask was really comfy.
One girl had problems and floated back up. Because the instructor can let nobody out of his sight until we’re certified, we all had to go back up.
After telling the lady what she had done wrong we went back down and practised our basic skills. Then we went for a cruise before we arrived back at the boat and practised some surface skills before we finished our first dive. We had about 2 hours of surface time while the boat moved to another location. In the meantime we had afternoon tea.
Shortly before the next dive I realized that my towel was gone! I didn’t fix it properly to the railing. Damn! Luckily my bathers were not so light and were liying on the ground. What to do? I did not bring a second towel for the 3day trip and definetely needed one. I went to the hosties’ office and asked whether there was a towel in the lost property box. I know have a Liverpool towel in exchange for my lost Germany FIFA 2010 towel. Not the best deal, but better than having no towel at all!
The second dive was longer than the first one. Because every repititive dive must be less deep than the one before, we only went down to around 8 meters. We practised more basic skills, cruised around, surrounded by beautiful fish, looked at the coralls, practised the skills again, then ascended and ended the dive.
For every dive, the maximum deptht, the time and the used oxygen is logged and we have to sign it when we climb back onto the boat.
Again we had some time before a delicious dinner. I used it to have a quick shower and then uploaded the day’s photos to facebook.
Yes, I have internet on the Great Barrier Reef! Thanks to Telstra’s next G laptop and the really good modem in my laptop. 🙂
After dinner I wrote this blogpost while a part of the group went for a night dive. My night dive will be the following day. When the others are back we all will write our dive logbooks and then I’ll crash. The last 2 nights were too short anyway and scuba diving is extremely exhausting.
Don’t expect underwater photos yet – remember, I’m not allowed to take a camera before I’m certified.
From 2011-07-17 Dive course day 3 – to the Reef. Posted by Philipp Hübner on 7/17/2011 (18 items)
Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher 2