Today, was a day off…. so we went diving!

2 dives at Twins, with Jen using her camera… I got to play with it for 5 mins and have an encounter with a Triggerfish..

I have uploaded the raw footage so you can see how aggressive they can be.. (and this one is a small one!)

Plus, Jenny took some nice footage of a Porcupine Puffer Fish… bless.

At the end of the 2nd dive, Jen suffered with a “Reverse Block”, which is trapped air in the sinuses… very painful.. We spent 15 minutes at 5 metres to try and ease it.. but to no avail.

She has taken some decongestion tablets and is resting in bed.. I doubt she will be diving for a day or 2…

Me, I start another Open Water Course tomorrow….

SD

Once a month… Crystal organises a special trip to Sail Rock..

It takes about 90 mins to get there, and we do a double dive with lunch in between..

Here’s some footage from the dives yesterday! Beautiful Juvenile Yellow Box Fish!!!

Dives 3 & 4  –  The visibility is brilliant  today and and our first stop was ‘White Rock’

After overseeing the students set up their equipment, Laura did the briefing.  Tom, who was a bit freaked yesterday decided that he wanted to have another go and jumped in with Laura. I would have thought that with the visibility being so good that it would have helped with his feeling of claustrophobia  ..but as soon as he popped his head in the water to look down, he was sure he didnt want to continue.  I really take my hat off to him as he really tried but it just wasn’t to be.

Once in the water there was an abundance of fish, students seemed to have improved no end on their buoyancy and completed all the required skills without any problems at all. Everyone came up with massive smiles on their faces and said the dive was amazing.

Dive 4 – I briefed the students, only a couple of skills to complete, mask removal and a hover.
Conditions were good and the students kept in their buddy teams really well.   The rest of the dive was just a leisurely jaunt around ‘Twins’ which was most enjoyable.
Back on the boat,  we filled in log books and the students were really happy to have completed the course of which nearly all of them signed up for their advanced.

Later in the afternoon after I’d completed all the paper work for the students temporary cards, I met Alex, the chap who freaked in the confined session and spent an hour or so in the sea, just trying to get him comfortable breathing for long periods underwater.  Eventually he felt comfortable to do the confined skills session in pool which took me over an hour to do but at least he was feeling more confident within himself.   Hopefully he’ll join another group on the their dives 1 & 2.

That evening we popped back home for an hours sleep, showered and then went to Dirty Nellys for the students video which was really good.  After the video we hoped on the bike and headed to ‘Vibe’ for a bbq and  charity auction for one of the instructors who’d had a motorcyle accident.

We left around 11 as we were both pretty shattered…