Class started around 10am as Toby, the other MSDT was finishing his Oxygen provider course which was great as both Simon and I were feeling a bit worse for wear.  I still can’t believe that Englands 2nd goal was disallowed, that might have been the turning point and maybe in another life we would have gone on to win ..oh well. Well done Germany  ..again!!

In class, we sat down and one by one, stood up to give our prepared presentations.  I got a fit of the giggles during mine, for whatever reason, I just dont know.  I blame Si, as he’s always making me laugh.

For our Digital Underwater Photography spec, were shown a slide show on the Do’s/ Donts of photography which we knew most of anyway and then how to check/set up the camera and housing.  This I must say will very easy one to teach students.   I was just eager to go out and have a play with the camera out on the afternoon boat.

Just so you know, we are each assigned specific skills to brief and debrief on every dive, we’re not just having fun 😉

Before breaking for lunch we went over to the tank room where we analysed & marked up our 32% & 36% Nitrox tanks ready for tomorrows morning dives.   Each tank has to be analysed by the person who’ll be using it, equivalent air depth worked out, marked, dated, depths and  checked and signed off.

On the boat, we briefed each dive.  First was a multi level to 30 meters. Each of on this took camera’s but the viz what terrible that we aborted the 30 meter and just stayed at a corner of a pinnacle snapping away, basically playing with the camera / settings.
The second dive was at Green Rock, where we took photo’s of a new buoy being deployed in the first 10 minutes and then had a nice leisurely dive.

Unfortunately Si had really bad sinus problems and suffered a nasty reverse block.  It took some time to ascend and once on the surface told me that it felt as though his eye had popped out and his head was throbbing. When we returned to dry land, Si went to the Pharmacy to get some decongestant to enable him to complete dives the next day..(situation to be continued tomorrow!)

Returning home, Simon made dinner, a random mix of carrots, tofu, green beans, chilli, ginger, oregano, coriander, onions and tomatoes… After chucking a bunch of noodles in… it was a tasty treat and felt very nice to actually have a home cooked meal… boy was it spicy!!!

Bed by 11pm ready for early dives the next morning…..

Today we were in the classroom doing part of our MSDT’s (Master Scuba Diver Trainer).   We didn’t start till 9am and finished at 4.30pm so not a bad day really.  I used to hate the academics, presentation side of things but it’s slowly growing on me.  As we only had a class of three, it was really relaxed and a real laugh at times.   Toby who’s doing it with us is from Sweden is a really nice chap, was so funny during his presentations, for every ‘contact story’ (basically a non diving story relating which you can relate back to diving  ..eg: Narcosis  …is like being drunk underwater) he used hiking everytime  ..which became very funny  ..you really had to be there.
I remember last year standing up to do my first presentation infront of several people and hating it  ..I suppose everything become pretty easy when you know what you’re talking about ;-D

As we had more presentations to prepare we went straight home.   After an hour or so, we headed out to ‘Hippo’s’ restaurant as they were doing ‘specials’ before 8pm.  A juicy steak and glass of wine for 190baht and 2 beers for the price of 1.  I had a juicy tenderloin cooked medium rare while Simon had a veggie burger and a couple of beers before heading down to ‘Choppers’ to watch England v Germany.

Choppers (Aussie sports bar) was packed.  We headed upstairs where most of the Crystal crew had gathered.  The atmosphere was great, the big screen was up and trying to get to the bar and a place to sit to watch the match was a nightmare but we finally got some drinks and wedged ourselves in at the front on the floor just in front of the big screen. There were a few Germans in the bar, Carsten (Crystal Instructor) was geared up with his German flag over his shoulders, whistle around his neck ..he looked like a young kid, full of excitement and just beaming from ear to ear.   Anyone walking in that we recognised, everyone gave a big ‘wwwwwhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy!!’  it was so funny ;-D  I did feel for the Germans being out numbered and everyone chanting England football songs.  A lot of emotions were flying around during the game and  I just wish we’d taken a video clip on our phone to show you guys.

After a 4-1 win to Germany, we shot home to bed

We helped out on the dive site clean up today.  Crystal’s smallest boat went out with around 20 of us on and we split into three groups, the first got dropped at ‘Green Rock’ and the second and third, which Si and I were in, got dropped off at ‘Twins’ armed with baskets to collect rubbish and scissors to cut any nets or lines that may have been dropped.
On the first half of the dive we didn’t find a thing then as we went shallower, we came across some fishing line, rope and a few nets.  I was taking photo’s so didn’t find a great deal but got some good shots of everyone else.

Coming to the end of our dive, which should have been 60 minutes, we found a really small pinnacle around 5 meters, wrapped in fishing net which we began to untangle but it proved very difficult as the scissors we had were useless. 

Doing stuff like this you become absorbed and before I knew it, I was down to 50 bar (low on air) and we’d done a 100 minute dive, so signalled to the others to leave what they were doing and ascend.
What I hadn’t noticed as I was so engrosed with detangling was that Si and Carsten had already gone. Carsten had run out of air and had to use Si’s alternate air source.

On the surface we had a pretty long surface swim back to the boat and then the boat headed off in the opposite direction to pick up some of the other group.  I think we had to wait 10 or so minutes before they came back to pick us up.

Back at the pier, we unloaded all the rubbish.  As we were late back, most of the rubbish collected by the other dive schools had already been sorted and the volunteers sorting through it (which isnt a pleasant job) said they had everything in hand, so we walked back to Crystal to wash and pack our dive kit away.

In the evening we met Matt, manager of Crystal to see if he could have a word with his contacts about Si’s missing bike but on the way, we rode past Morava, where Si’s bike had been stolen and there it was!   We couldn’t believe our eyes ..what a turn up for the books. 3 days have passed since the theft… That brightened our day no end.