Apologies for the lack of daily updates.

The last few days have been pretty quiet so not much to write home about, plus the internet has been very flakey which is driving Simon crazy.  He’s trying to do his UK work and the connection keeps dropping out, so everything is taking twice as long   ….how frustrating is that?!

In the last few days we’ve had rain.  It’s been slightly overcast and has drizzled on the odd occasion but the other evening when we were at the Crystal bar waiting to watch the Open Water movie the wind came from nowhere, lightning tore up the sky and the heavens opened.  It was incredible.  The Crystal bar area is big and undercover but the wind was just driving the rain in and everyone ended up huddled in the most sheltered corner watching the movie on a tv, as everything was getting soaked and blown away. A few people just went out and sat in the sea, sipping their beers watching the lightshow  ..nutters!   Maybe next time though 😉

Anyway, we’ve had a couple of dives at ‘Junk Yard’ and found the smallest sweetlips ever.  It was so small that I thought it was plankton at first, how crazy is that?!  

Today when we went out, the longtail brokedown a hundred meters or so off the beach, so we all put our dive gear on and surface swam to ‘JunkYard’ while we left Nathan on the longtail, moored to a buoy. 

At Junk Yard, quite a few of the structures had come apart/fallen down due to the storm the other day, so we spent most of our time assembling them and moving the structures we’d dropped the day of the ‘Dive Clean Up’.    It was a productive dive and a long swim back.

Back at Crystal, Nath was sat down in pain as he had towed the longtail back on his own and put his back out, even for two people, that would have been a real struggle.    ..I think we’ll call him ‘Super Nath’ from now 🙂

Tonight it’s the newly qualified instructors celebration party as well as instructor Luca’s surprise birthday party.

Not much to report today.

What I have made is a quick video clip of stuff that Jen has filmed on the last 4 dives..

Quite the budding videographer eh?!

We arrived at Crystal around 10.15  ..Nathan was already there talking to Carsten and the DMT team as to what needed to be done for the beach clean up. 

Teams were sent off with gloves and bin bags down the beach to collect rubbish and then groups started to sift the sand at the side of the decking as it was full of polystyrene balls which had escaped from the tired old bean bags used in the bar.  I personally think they should bin them and replace them with some environmentally friendly seating.

Whilst this was going on, Nathan, Si and I gathered all left over gear that was going to be deployed at Junk Yard (weights system, cross trainer, pvc coral garden etc) and put that to one side, ready to be put on the long tail, then stored all the left over pvc piping, rope and did a general tidy up.
A couple of hours had passed and the sifting had stopped, rubbish had been collected and before breaking for lunch, everyone helped to load all the gear up onto the longtail.

We had an hour or so for lunch, so Simon & I rode up to ‘Deep Down’ to see what was going on and had a coffee whilst ordering lunch from ‘Zest’

Back at Crystal and before the dive site clean up began, Nath, Si & I jumped on the longtail and dropped off all the equipment at Junk Yard.  We’ll be arranging it and assembling items in the next few days and then finally, Junk Yard should be complete.

Back on land, everyone gathered, dive kits assembled and after a briefing by Nathan we headed out equipped with rubbish bags (nets) and scissors.  Some got dropped off from the longtail whist some of us just swam out.

It didnt take that long to fill our bags, we’d found nets, plastic bags, sacks, piping, drink cans and clothes to name a few.   The longtail was coasting about, so on surfacing, we’d call it over and empty out the contents and then carry on collecting.

Our dive was just over an hour and we’d collected 693kg worth of rubbish between us which was sorted into categories and then disposed of.
In the evening, ‘Vibe’ were having a fundraising bbq for ‘Save Koh Tao’.  There was tug of war, which Crystal won :-D, a limbo competition and more but as we arrived late, I think we must have missed a few.