Early mornings are great but it’s just the ‘getting out of bed’ that I hate 🙂   06:00 the alarm went off and Si jumped out  ..sorry, should say, staggered out of bed and put the kettle on whilst I jumped in the shower.  After sipping out tea and packing our bags with the days essentials, we hopped on the bike and rode to Crystal to grab Si’s dive bag and then popped to Deep Down to collect Si’s camera.  Today, Simon’s went out with Nathan to film some of the bleaching at ‘Chumpon’ one of Koh Tao’s deepest dive sites.  It’s good to have this documented and they may put together a short film for ‘ECO Koh Tao’

I’m still not allowed back in the water for a few more days so stayed on the boat with Nathans son Kailash whilst everyone went diving.   It was nice to have the company, even though Kailash was feeling pretty sea sick and threw up several times.

With everyone back on the boat after a fabulous dive, we headed to ‘White Rock’ where the visibility was really poor, I think when everyone came up from that 2nd dive and moaned that they didn’t see much at all.  I was sat on the boat and heard one of the girls shriek, looked over and beside her was a massive sea snake popping it’s head out for air.  My first sea snake and I didnt even have to get wet.  How cool is that?

Back on dry land, Si headed up to Deep Down with his monstrous camera that weighs a ton whilst I quickly nipped back to Crystal to drop his dive bag off.
At Deep Down, Si was helping Nathan pull off some footage off his harddrive which didnt work very well, so then Si decided to take Nathans HD home to see what he could do. We spent the rest of the afternoon on the computers, sorting stuff out.

Si had to be up bright and early to catch the a.m. boat as he was doing the deep & naturalist ..I decided not to accompany him today as Heidi was coming at 11.30am to give me ride down to Crystal so she could borrow my dive computer and compass.

Down at Crystal, I got a coffee and water and caught up with some mails.   Half an hour later, the morning boat was back and Si, Nath & students.  Their first dive was a ‘Chumphon’ which apparently was stunning and the 2nd dive at Green Rock where Simon got badly triggered for around 10 minutes on his 29 minute dive, wearing his brand new fins, which he’d only picked up this morning.  There were holes and various bite marks all over them. Check out the pics I’ve never heard of a Trigger being so persistent.   Si was not happy and on top of that, had a splitting headache.

Simon’s account: ” I took 2 students down to 20m and headed towards the coral, delicately avoiding the notorious Trigger Pits (their nest). Once past and along the coral, we started noting down different kinds of sea life as part of their course. In the distance, I noticed a big Titan Triggerfish swimming… no problem, plenty of space between us, but for safety’s sake I warned my 2 students and we backed slowly away. All of a sudden, the “Trigger fin” went up and the battle was on. He belted through the water and I knew immediately he meant business. I put my fins up and started swimming away slowly at first, trying to keep myself in between my students and this bad boy. He got a couple of hard bites to my fins before circling back round to get a attack position on my body, but every time he went for me, I pushed my fins in the way. 10 minutes of swimming backwards, with the Triggerfish attacking me, and keeping an eye on my students who were sh”tting themselves (like me!)…. it got the heart pumping. I used half my air!!!

Finally he left, and after checking that my 2 students were okay, I looked around to see him coming yet again for another go…and then eventually he left. Then I examined my fins…. my brand new fins…. destroyed!

The rest of the dive was an attempt to get back to the coast but after being surrounded by 5 other Triggerfish, I ended the dive after 30 minutes, and had a long surface swim to the boat. Not a great dive, but what an experience!”

What an exciting morning, mine seemed rather dull as I’d just started trying to enter some of the Coral Watch Data for Nathan.  All was going well until I tried entering the lattitude and longtitude of dive sites.  For some reason it wasnt accepting the data that I’d been given by Nathan so I’ll have to put that on hold for the moment. 

My afternoon was spent painting, making signs out of odd bits of wood for ‘Junk Yard’ with a few others while Simon kept an eye on his students whilst they completed all their knowledge reviews for their Advanced Open Water.

This evening we’re meeting friends at ‘Hippo’ for a meal. It won’t be a late one as we’re on the 7am boat.

Si was assisting Nathan today on a Advanced course and met down at Crystal at 9am and I was meeting Kiwi at the Crystal Market to help out with equipment repairs.  After finishing my coffee I walked over to ‘Market’ but Kiwi wasn’t there, so I popped back to Crystal (2mins walk) and sat for a bit, expecting him to turn up late as usual  …then after about half an hour, he’d still not surfaced.  Slightly annoyed as I hate waiting around, I found out that he had to do surface cover on the a.m. boat.  He could have at least text me.

As Si, Nath and students were out on the afternoon boat doing Peak Performace Buoyancy and Navigation dives, I decided to go along for the ride to catch some rays.
Both dives were at Aow Leuk and the visibility apparantly was pretty rubbish at 3 or 4 meters so I was smiling inside.  I hadn’t missed out on to much 😉

We returned to Crystal around 5.30pm and had a 1/2 break before Si and the gang had to be back on the boat for the night dive.  I’d earlier bumped into Katti who wasn’t doing anything, so agreed to come on the night boat with me for company to watch the sunset and have a little picnic.  So Si and I popped to 7eleven and got some coke, crisps and cookies and Katti popped off to buy some fruit.

Once at ‘WhiteRock’ and everyone was in the water, Nath who was surface cover for the evening, Katti and I, gathered and feasted  🙂   Lovely!!

Simon had a pleasant dive, guiding the students around on their 1st ever Night dive… seeing a couple of big Sting Rays and a lovely cuttlefish.

After the dive we gathered at the bar, had a drink and then went to Dirty Nelly’s for food.