First Dive with Oonas Dive Club - we got picked as planned around 7.45 and whisked down the road to the dive clubhouse.
I think we were both a little nervous for ourselves, Sam for the twins and me more for myself as I'm never sure if I can breathe properly. If I get anxious, it's worse so I have try to ensure everything goes right. Everything was ok although it took some time as our dive leader, Anne, is French, and we misunderstood one or two things. She was extremely patient and helpful - she deserved a medal!! We finally got kitted up and unfortunately had to walk a few hundred yards, thru the beach dwellers, to get to the sea, including our cylinders & weights in 30 deg C heat. The cool (!) 26 deg C of the water was very welcome. We knelt in the shallow waters, slightly sinking our knees into the sand, before donning our fins & heading to the buoyancy checkpoint. This is simply a quick check to see if you need more weights to stop you floating at the surface... You need to be neutrally buoyant, as the wet suits and saltiness of the water make you more buoyant. Both Sam and I had a couple of kg added to our BCDs by Anne, from a conveniently pre-sunk weight belt on the sea floor. We then descended gently to begin our dive.
Here are the details from my Dive Logbook:
Max depth: 14.3m
Dive time: 45 minutes
Water temp: 26 deg C
Time down: 9.15am
Amazing dive - our first in the Red Sea! Borrowed a mask that didn't leak at all, so that made things perfect overall. Shallow water entry. Saw fish immediately but not sure which ones! Buoyancy checks ok after extra weights added to my BCD pockets. Gradual descent swimming over and around lots of coral. Saw Parrot fish, lion fish, box fish, pyramid fish?, coral fish, & more that I don't know lol. Glided across underwater grass the size of a football pitch. Both of us managed a somersault but missed each other doing it. Few ear probs but nothing serious. Finally met up with lissa an Connor & their instructor for a photo op & deco stop for about 1 minute. Excellent dive.
**** end of log book entry ****
So I beat my max depth by 1m and dive time by about 20 mins... Not that I'm counting lol. I have a dive logged as 37 mins, but it was actually 2 shorter dives of under 20 minutes each, it's just the way the computer logged them.
Jon told us about the perceived arrogance of the Lion Fish... And he wasn't wrong. They are magnificent looking fish about the size of a persons head including all their spiky mane display. They are poisonous so not really prey to many things, if anything, in the sea, so they tend not to swim off if you approach them - hence the arrogance label. Other fish are curious and swim an inch past your mask, probably like excited and hungry puppies, but the lion fish has that sort of pet cat arrogance... If you call it, it ignores you, walks away and shows you its butt. If you give it some fuss, it allows you to fuss him, he's not grateful, he thinks you should be! It's like a "royal" with his subjects... That's kind of the lion fish's attitude. I did actually feel very grateful to see some, think we saw 4 in all in various places.
My other new favourite was the Trumpet Fish... Talk about looking like you're from another planet. It's like someone took a normal fish, got a rolling pin and rolled the thing out to three times it's normal length, but without the squishy bits in the middle coming out or the eyes popping like bubble wrap. It looks very odd and permanently startled, and always made me smile wen I saw it which makes your mask leak!
The photo we got with the four of us is brilliant but on another camera so can't upload it yet.
Back on dry land, we grabbed some lunch in the associated bar: burgers, chips & pizza type stuff, and talked about doing another dive later the same day. Everyone was keen but tired, so after a long discussion, we all agreed we were too tired, today had been great anyway so let's not spoil it and do too much.
Afterwards we talked with Nick about a boat dive to a max of 18m and the twins will go to 12m to be safe. Unfortunately we couldn't remember the days we'd booked excursions for, so we had to leave it til we knew the dates so we could book.
Oonas is such a nice dive club, full of really helpful people. Anne, our dive leader, said we could leave our kit to save us lugging stuff back and forth. She gave us crates with our names on, so we stowed our BCDs, regs, wet suits and a few other bits n pieces. We kept our masks & snorkels & fins in case we needed them for other trips.
They got one of the drivers to take us back to our hotel and we all crashed out for a few hours. Diving can be so tiring. I think we only had the energy to eat dinner, play cards and then get to bed, but it was an awesome day.
Bye for now.
Cheers
Stootz
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