Fun diving just Bobbi and I in Musandam with Nomad Ocean Adventure

My logged dives #1408-1411

Friday and Saturday Jan 15-16, 2016

Bobbi and I scheduled one last cross-border dive trip for this weekend. It was time for Bobbi's visa renewal and we held off submitting her passport so we could use her still-valid visa for one last crossing. But she wanted to visit her mother in February and she would need to apply for a renewal soon afterwards. Those visa renewals can take weeks. With both Bobbi and I doing them annually, we are each without passport for a month each year; e.g. two months a year that one of us doesn't have access to one of our passports.

So we booked our usual room, called by staff the "Vance Special" at our favorite chill-out place, Nomad Ocean  Adventure. After a hectic work week, arrival at the border is still not completely without hassle, but once across life goes on hold. We check into our pleasant room. We go for a jog to the Golden Tulip and back. By the time we've showered it's time for the dinner buffet. We linger there and talk to people we see there time and again till sleep calls everyone to their rooms, and we sleep late in the morning. 

We can sleep late because the dives depart at 9:30, plenty of time for coffee and meager continental breakfast which holds us over till after our first dive an hour away by boat, when a filling continental lunch is served. We dive again and return mid-afternoon to port, and go for a jog if we feel like it, or just soak in the pool, maybe both. The cycle of dinner, small talk, early to bed, late to rise, and diving repeats next day, Saturday. But once back in port, we scurry to get back across the border, checked out of Nomad, and home 3 hours later.

This weekend we went in search of decent visibility, starting with Ras Morovi north side, and Lima north after lunch. The following day we did Ras Morovi and the hidden reef the first dive, Wonder Wall to round out the day.

I'm bLogging this diving long after the fact and don't recall much remarkable. But check the videos and see.

Diving with Mermaids in Musandam, August 29-30, 2014

My logged dives #1300-1303

No one, not even me, seemed to notice that I made my 1300th logged dive with Bonnie Swesey, the kind lady who put Bobbi and I up, or put up with Bobbi and I, in her flat for Bobbi's last year teaching at ACS in Abu Dhabi while we both resided in Al Ain and Bobbi commuted occasionally, but not every  day, thanks to Bonnie's hospitality. In return I offered to help Bonnie get back into diving with an intensive refresher course. We didn't do an official course, I just took her diving, and by the end of it we had restored her to compos mentus with her basic diving skills.

Also in our group were my lovely wife Bobbi, our best dive buddy Nicki, and a newcomer to our team, Kelly. We dove for two weekend days, Friday and Saturday Aug 29-30 from Nomad Ocean Adventure in Dibba Oman, always a relaxing place to stay, eat, and check Facebook.

We joined with MSDT Rosien and two of her student divers, so our dive spots were conservative, but still enjoyable. Our first dive was at Ras Morovi where in the cove where we usually begin fishermen had strung a net right up against the reef so that Bonnie and I had to go over it. That was the easiest way without risking damaging it, pull it down to our level and then ease over it.  There is some tension between divers and fishermen. Nets on the reef are not good for it, and what's not good for the reef is not good for the fisheries. Still the fisherman has to feed his family, so despite the fact that fish are caught helplessly there, best not to interfere in the local economy, so we left the net alone. Bobbi and Nicki and Kelly were lagging behind Bonnie and I (we were going at Bonnie's pace to let her get comfortable) and  I'm not sure what they did at the net, but we didn't see them till after we had come to the surface. It was a pretty dive as usual. There is a cave at the start of the dive, an alcove really, that used to have a couple of crayfish in it, but then there was just one, and last few times I checked, none. Eaten I supposed, until on this  dive I found more big ones thriving in the rocks nearby. It's a pretty part of the dive, swirling with fish from the top of the reef down the wall to the blue. The video above begins with that view.

Our next dive was at Lima Rock, the  north side, which was calm relative to the south, which was getting swells. The north was calm enough for Rose's students, but she put us in with the usual warnings about currents at either end of the rock. We didn't see much on the dive (as I commented on our exit, which I put at the end of the video) but we did see the nudibranch there, and as we came to the eastern edge, we had some excitement as the current picked up. There is a point of no return there where you either go back or go with it. I was ahead of the group buddied with Bonnie. The others I thought were following but they went conservative and turned back. It wasn't a strong current, just a mild sweep toward the point, and with just Bonnie in tow it was easy to keep an eye on her. Often we find barracudas there, but not this time, not much to see on this trip. We hugged the reef as we went around the corner to where the wall begins to the west, but Bonnie was low on air and it's a sheer rock wall for 5 minutes, so I guided her through the gap back to the north side where we surfaced and picked up the others, as you see at the end of the video.

Next day the seas had calmed a lot though not enough for us to dive Lima Rock south with beginners, and maybe not that pleasant for experienced divers challenged by rolling seas. Many are susceptible to seasickness, so we dived the more peaceful Lima Headland and Ras Sanut on the way home. We saw rays in both places, cowtail or feathertail (is there a difference? we debated this over lunch on the boat). On Ras Lima Bobbi  called us all over to see a large coronet fish, and I found a large lionfish with whom I practiced buoyancy skills while I hovered next to him getting GoPro closeups. We saw a lot of crawfish as well and I ended the Ras Sanut dive at a shallow ledge where I found some crayfish and then panned to a swim-through where some batfish were sheltering. I swam through and on the other side found another crayfish. It's all on the film.

Not the best diving we've experienced here but good enough for a few video souvenirs. The weather was fine and sea temperatures amenable to shorties, though I was comfortable in 3 mm. It was great to get Bonnie back into diving and to dive with Nicki again and Kelly from ACS. Hope so see more of these people under water in the near future.

PADI advanced and rescue courses, plus Discover Scuba Diving, in Musandam June 10-11, 2011

My logged dives #1049-1052

I had a lot going on this weekend. I had a guy who wanted to do an o/w course on the elearning program and Graeme and Rachel wanted to work on their rescue course so I tried to book them in at Nomad Ocean Adventure. Nomad was fully booked and couldn't actually accommodate everyone so the elearner decided to postpone. Graeme and Rachel still wanted to dive and our mutual friends Steve and Anna decided to join us snorkeling, so I offered to give them a discover scuba course just to sweeten the appeal and they accepted. And then Roger whom we had given our Blazer to decided to join as well and start on his advanced course, so in the end we had an interesting mix of agendas that made for some fun diving and plenty to keep an instructor fully entertained and busy.

Logistically we started out with Roger's deep dive as dive #1 on Lima Rock, north side. He rode up with us in the car that morning so I was able to explain the dives he'd be doing in the car on the way up. We worked out a nice 24 meter 24 minute multilevel profile with a second level at 16 meters for 16 minutes, followed by 12 meters for as much as 35 minutes, which is to say, until the air runs out. The profile was so mnemonic I don't know why I hadn't hit on it before, and next day I proposed he use it to conduct a multilevel dive for his 3^rd advanced course dive.

The deep dive itself was pleasant but not exciting. Vis was excellent for a change. Sea conditions were rough, with wind, and whitecaps foaming off the south of Lima Rock, which was why we went for the back or north side. It was fairly calm there. This time last year we had seen whale sharks here (on the front or south side), but there were none today. Roger and I went straight to depth and did his exercises in the sand, leaving the others behind, but then we returned to the rocks and found the others. We continued until at about 40 min into the dive, our first divers needed to surface. I remember a huge barracuda swimming amongst us at about that time, a large one with a tuna shaped head, a lone wolf, unschooled as it were (get it? alone, unschooled?). Rachel and Bobbi and I ended up completing the dive, coming up after 65 minutes. No one was limiting us, it seemed, very comfortable. We saw a large honeycomb moray with a blue wrasse cleaning its teeth toward the end of that dive, pleasant and relaxing.

We went over to Ras Lima to get out of the wind and swell and had lunch. We found a calm bay ideal for Roger's u/w navigation. Nice spot, about the right depth, with corals on the floor to give us something to look at and navigate on. I started by deploying my submersible marker buoy and tying it off to give us a reference and then leading us out from there 30 meters in a direction that Roger should be able to retrace. Roger calibrated his fin kicks on my estimate of 30 meters and then led us back to the SMB on dead reckoning. Then I had him take us 30 meters to the north and left a weight belt at that spot before we returned on a south heading to the marker. The weight belt would become a lost buddy for Graeme and Rachel who were kitting up to come in and rescue it. But I needed it for Roger's excercises just now. From the SMB I had Roger do a square pattern starting on a westerly heading followed by a turn to the north, so that on the third leg to the east we came out right on the weight belt. Perfect.

I had Roger wait with the weights while I ascended and called out to the boat that I had lost my buddy at that spot. Bobbi on board the boat was making note of the coordinates and would direct Graeme and Rachel to the spot where they would descend and conduct a square search pattern, 5 kicks one way, 5 at right angle, 10 at the next right angle, 10 at the next, 15 and 15, 20 and 20 and so on until the object was found. Meanwhile, Roger and I moved off the spot to the south and found my SMB, completing the square and his tasks for the u/w navigation dive.

I left the SMB in place in case we needed a reference to retrieve the weights, in case they weren't found by the rescue divers. I took Roger along the wall and we ascended to find Graeme and Rachel in possession of the weights and returning them to the boat. So all divers had accomplished their goals for this dive and it was time to have some fun.

The first day, Steve and Anna were snorkeling so they were not a part of the diving, but they saw 8 devil rays from the surface and another diver mentioned a 'massive' sting ray 5 feet across (almost 2 meters). We didn't see much that I recall. It was pretty diving but nothing to write home about (or to recall for a blog entry). Graham had an ear problem and ascended early on with his buddy Rachel. Bobbi and I ran Roger low on air and just after he ascended Rachel appeared with us having tracked our bubbles from the surface. We finally came up the three of us after 70 minutes on my computer, the entire dive spent above 18 meters.

The boat ride was pretty rough going back, and on arrival it was Steve and Anna's turn to start on their DSD course with an evening dip in the pool and then going over the flip chart poolside. After an hour of that we got their equipment together and went in the pool for those exciting first moments on Scuba. They were no trouble to train, and two hours later we had cleaned the gear and Bobbi and I were sitting down to an excellent meal of rice and meaty stew, with quiche, salad, and a mystery desert, all tasty and suitably filling after a long hot day of diving. We slept fine that night.

I wasn't sure what time we would start next day. There was a couch surfer among us who unfortunately arrived after Steve and Anna had finished but wanted to get in on the DSD course. I said if he was keen he should knock on our door at 7 next morning. Bobbi and I were safe though because he'd be coming from UAE Dibba where everyone else was staying, and he'd have to come by cab, so that didn't happen at 7 and Bobbi and I were still in bed at 8.

But we got up about then because we were expecting Steve and Anna to come try on wetsuits and take them in the pool with weights, and I was going to co-opt one of them to be victims for Graeme and Rachel, whom I could show rescue techniques for saving unconscious divers at the surface. But taxis in UAE dibba were scarce apparently (two many staying over there to fit into Steve and Anna's car) so they didn't arrive until almost ten.

So Bobbi became the victim and Rachel and Graeme rescued her a couple of times from the pool (poor Bobbi, sometimes married to a dive instructor, she really does become a victim :-). Meanwhile Steve and Anna had appeared and I had them try on wetsuits and then swim with them in the pool, and more importantly be sure they could sink there. I then had them add 4 kg each to compensate for salt water and air used on the dive, and if anything they were overweighted for their try dive (preferable to being underweighted).

We had a sunny day but rough seas again so we ended up on the north side of Lima Rock same as the day before. But this time I had first time divers on a discover scuba course and they were very brave to get their kit together on a pitching boat and enter the water with a backward roll first time ever, then wait in the surge where I had spotted some u/w boulders I thought we could use as reference on descent. I had already checked for current on arrival at Lima Rock so at least we didn't have drift to contend with.

Vis at that spot was as clear as a swimming pool. I had them come in to the rocks and descend on a beautiful patch of orange coral. They did well to come down gradually and I think they were so beguiled by the batfish there and the blue tangs (surgeon fish) and the parrots and rainbow wrasses that they soon forgot their trepidations, and next thing we knew we were all doing swim throughs and enjoying ourselves comfortably in the cool water.

Again we didn't see much apart from a huge variety of beautiful fish. Roger was paired with Bobbi and he conducted his advanced multilevel dive on the same profile as the day before. Graeme and Rachel had no skills lined up since I had needed Bobbi to team with Roger, but when Graeme and Rachel appeared suddenly I pretended to go catatonic so they could come over and recognize and handle a distressed diver situation.

My DSD divers ran low on air early and we were back on the surface after 40 min, having been mostly at around 12 meters but having touched around 17/18 meters. We then headed over to Ras Lima again, where we accepted to go because reports were that it was choppy at Ras Morovi, and also we were taken to a bay with a small beach, which I decided we could use in training. So after lunch I had Bobbi kit up again and go 'diving' alone, and of course she ended up on the surface face down in the water. Fortunately Graeme and Rachel and I had anticipated this and were already kitted up, so we entered the water and went to work on Bobbi, removing her gear in turns, and eventually getting her to the beach where we practiced carrying her onto it by practising a couple of dead lifts and carries.

The boat had drifted distant by then and I thought we could rescue one of us to the boat. Bobbi had been a victim too much today so Rachel volunteered, and said later that she learned a lot from being a victim. Graeme ventilated her every 5 seconds and removed her BCD while Bobbi and I waved and called the boat to come in a hurry. It came over to cut short Graeme's work and then we thrust Rachel's arms overhead and Sami pulled her onto the boat. We made sure he administered two more breaths before 30 seconds had passed, and we'll complete the scenario with CPR next time.

Now it was time for a last dive, an u/w naturalist one for Roger, and Graeme and Rachel could practice bringing a diver up from the bottom. I took a much more confident Anna and Steve on their second DSD dive of the day. The vis was not as good here and I didn't see much, just a moray, and one of those interesting helmeted crustaceans. Everyone else saw string rays. Bobbi saw one swim right over Anna and I, and Anna saw some in the sand where she was starting to get a bit deep, I thought, so I was staying higher up to get her to rise and so I didn't see them. Darn.

Lima / Musandam Oman April 16-17 2010 - My logged dives #963-966

This is just a quick recap of events last weekend. I booked in 8 divers for Discover Nomad, all keen to go in search of whale sharks. Bobbi and I saw one last time we were at Lima Rock March 19, and they'd been sighted off Lima the previous weekend. So the divers on the trip were keen to go. But the weekend before we were due to head out, two dropped out called away to South Africa, one got sick and couldn't dive, and Glenn and Gwen and Gulya descended on Abu Dhabi, Glenn recovering from knee surgery and couldn't dive, so Bobbi bailed too.

Jay Fortin, Bill Nash, and Greg Golden left Abu Dhabi Friday morning about the same time I did and we all rolled up at Discover Nomad, Dibba, Oman by ten in the Morning. The four of us were on a boat with two French guys using re-breathers, and two personable ladies Zana from Brazil and Laura from Lima (Peru, not the Rock). Zana, a rescue diver, turned out to be an artist with a blog: http://calligraphybyzana.blogspot.com/.

I was the "guide" for the boat so I got to tell the boatman where to take us, subject to negotiation with all on board, of course :-). First destinations both days were Lima Rock and the elusive whale sharks. To make a long story short, they eluded us all weekend. The baby was spotted off Dibba Rock on Friday, and when I stopped by Scuba Dubai on my way home Saturday, I spoke with someone who had seen one off Martini Rock, south of Khor Fakkan. None sighted off Lima by any of the divers there this weekend.

There were plenty around attracted to the prospect. I had never seen Lima Rock so crowded. On the first day there was a dhow moored off the south side chartered by the Al Ain Dive Club. I knew this because my friend Ali Bushnaq was on board. They put their divers in the water and strew over a dozen snorkelers in the water just as we were going down, and there were other dive boats at the spot as well. It seemed there was little chance of finding big game with so many people around, but we weren't entirely blameless for being there ourselves.

One nice thing was the current was slack. I went in with mask, fins, and snorkel and tested the water before every dive. So we got to pick our spot and meander over the reef at will. We found a couple of large honeycomb morays and I found a small sting ray under a rock, on both our first and second dives that day. But apart from that we didn't see much of great interest. Lots of morays, trigger fish, batfish at the cleaning stations getting their extreme makeovers courtesy of the tiny blue wrasses. Nice diving, cool temperatures, sunny but not too hot out, seas mild apart from a bit of a blow causing whitecaps on our way home the first day, dissipated by day 2.

The French divers, nice guys, had an unusual dive profile with their re-breathers. They started diving at 12:33 and were not due back for two hours, so after our dive, we had lunch on the boat while waiting for them. When they resurfaced, we headed over to Octopus Rock. We had two novice divers on board, Bill who was doing his 5th dive after completing his o/w course with me, and Laura, who had done about 25. So Octopus Rock was a bit of a gamble due to currents there. But I tested the water and found it fairly benign. There was another Nomad boat there and I noticed when their divers went down they were moved downcurrent, so with 4 in the water and Jay discovering a leaky o-ring as he was about to roll backwards, I told him to go in anyway, needed to get down while all were grouped near the rock. It worked well, we descended, Jay's air held out fine, and though we hit hard current each time we rounded the rock spiraling upwards, we had a fairly pleasant and successful dive.

Next day Jay developed ear problems and couldn't go so it was just Greg and Bill and Laura and Zana on our boat. By then we were a compatible dive team. Again Lima Rock was packed with divers from at least half dozen boats, and a bit crowded below, plus the current was back moving in from the east, so I had us dropped at that end of the rock and we swept along the entire south side. Greg had weighting problems and couldn't come down right away. Bill, impeccibly trained, joined him at the surface, so Laura and Zana and I were forced to dive without them (or resurface, and be carried to the middle of the rock). Greg and Bill continued their dive independently and did very well, ending up not far bahind the ladies and I. We didn't see much to blog home about, though Zana found us an electric ray.

The boats on the south side of Lima were picking up their divers and all moving to the north side, so I decided to heck with whale sharks, not likely to see them in the crowd, so with permission from our team I asked the boatman to take us to Ras Morovi. There, Bonita was diving with her group on the north side of the eastmost island, and Al Boom was diving there as well. I was thinking to have our boatman take us into the cove I like but another dive boat snuck in while I was pondering so there were divers there as well. We opted to have lunch and think about it. Meanwhile the divers had moved off. I wasn't familiar with that particular spot but it seemed to be popular with those who should know, my group were game, so we dropped in there.

Nice dive, one of the best of he weekend. We dropped to 25 meters in the sand. Vis there was a clear 20 meters. Again we didn't see much apart from beautiful flow of reef fish moving up and down the wall, but the dive was very pleasant, sweet, as one of the ladies put it afterwards. When we rounded the island (compass showed going north) we entered a murky patch on that side, so just as well we didn't dive the cove. Here we encountered some current so I reversed back to the south and returned us to the clear water on the east wall, and we ended our dive there.

It was a great weekend, compatible people, and nice to be diving with divers Greg, Bill, and Jay, all of whom I'd trained as advance and / or open water divers.

October 30-31, 2009 - Vance, Bobbi, and Nicki at Ras Morovi, Lima Rock, and next day Dibba, my logged dives #930-933

Diving Oct 30, 2009, Discover Nomad

Christophe set the depart time a bit early at the last minute so we had to wake up at 5 in Abu Dhabi and be out the door with our tanks weighting down a shopping cart at 6, and we managed to get Nicki from curbside (kerbside to her) at 6:10. Plus I had to stop off at my office to get a memory stick I'd left there so that when we arrived at discover nomad about 20 after ten I had got most of my grade reports done. Chris was still kitting up his divers at the dive hostel so our late arrival wasn't hanging up the show. Still Belinda, diving with us in our group, pointed out to us that she had got up at 5 in Dubai and had been waiting for us for some time. She had kids to organize as well, but 2 hours less driving. Anyway, somehow it all seemed perfectly timed (apart from the early wakeups) and we were on the speedboat and on our way toward Lima Rock at 11, feeling great, weather not too hot, and mountains rising up from the blue sea as we motored past the familiar fijords.

There were just 7 divers on our boat plus the local driver and Christophe: Bobbi and I, Belinda, a Canadian named Ryan, and a couple of French guys, Christophe's open water students, who took a lot of photos and conversed among themselves and with Christophe in French, and who seemed like decent blokes but didn't cross over their language barrier. I spoke to them in French a couple of times but anyone whose native language is French quickly detects that mine isn't ;-)

Anyway we were there to dive. Christophe took us first past Lima Rock to to Octopus Rock, what we used to call the Stack, but the vis looked bad there so Chris recommended we move a little few hundred meters south to Ras Morovi. The ras (headland) is a dragon's back of a mountain ridge that dips under water and comes up in a dragon's head across a narrow channel so it forms a narrow peninsula with an island at its point. There are many dives possible here, starting inside the channel or depending on current, at the ocean side of the island, but today we took a third way, one I hadn't done since diving here with Godelieve and her kids, and that is starting inside the first bay back from the dragon's back and following the wall around in a big U to end up in the channel.

My logged dive #930 - Only today we made a circle at the bottom end of the U. Starting on a south heading at the left point of the U inside the bay we went increasingly deep to about 25 meters or so keeping an eye out for seahorses in the green whip coral or seagrass or whatever that stuff is. It looks like a forest of green underwater swarming with fishes as far as the eye can see which on this day was about 7 to 10 meters I guess, not bad vis, not great. We found no seahorses nor anything much of interest really apart from some hovering lion fish, fierce-looking morays, and scrappy crawfish looking delicious in their lairs.

As we rounded the underwater mountain at the bottom of the U, I carried on along the wall and unbeknownst to me at the time completed a circle without checking my compass, thinking I was heading north the whole time. No wonder that part of the dive seemed repetitive (except that to compensate for depth, everyone was diving higher now ;-) But I realized it when I was heading north again back at the bottom of the U, 50 min into the dive, and Bobbi and I with about 80 bar still to go. I recognized it because there was an alternate route to the north which I hadn't taken my last time here, but which I took now. This one progressed up the channel and led us into a area of cabbage coral interspersed with pretty blue tufts of soft coral, and this area was full of turtles. We found a half dozen of those before we had to surface, Ryan hovering just overhead, air holding out well in a 65 minute dive.

All back aboard the boat and we motored over to Ras Lima, the east-west wall extending well off the small village on the beach, and scarfed down a few of Sylvienne's (Chris's mom's) sandwich wraps, interesting combinations of chicken and wieners, eliciting even more 'sausage' jokes from Nicki. Chris was planning to have us dive that wall but I made some murmurings of preferring to dive Lima Rock, a popular choice, and Chris said sure, why not.

My logged dive #931 - Chris put us in at the eastern point on the north side of the island and the plan was to dive the north side heading west. By the time all the divers were in the water, we were getting swept at an accelerating pace to the east, caught in a current we couldn't fight. Chris saw what was happening and hand signalled me to round the rock at its eastern point and dive the south side, so I had everyone descend, and from then on it was a drift dive. We went down to what I thought was the gap leading to the other side, but it kept descending and we were at 35 meters before I decided to level off, Bobbi clinging to me less in anxiety than for safety. We were getting swept in a direction I thought was west trying to stay on the wall, and coming alongside some very large meter-long barracuda, wow. Here I realized we were heading east, we'd somehow disoriented 180 degrees. By now we were midwater, no point in diving here, so I signaled up. Everyone stayed together. We came up to 5 meters and I signaled a safety stop. Everyone hung together, but in exactly three minutes I signaled up because I wanted to get picked up and taken back to the rock. At the surface I saw we'd been swept well off the wall, halfway to Iran :-) Ryan and Bobbi and I met at the surface where the boatman eventually saw us and came out to pick us up. Nicki and Belinda remained down till we revved our engines to call them up. They’d had had some sort of miscommunication, each thinking the other needed to remain under, but as a reward they had ended up in the middle of a circling funnel of barracuda.

We all had over 100 bar, but we’d had enough excitement for one dive, so we got the boatman to take us to the middle of the north wall, the sheltered side, where some live-aboard dhows were anchored. Here we finished off our air in the shallows, basically trying to avoid any further trouble. It was nice diving. Bobbi and I separated from the group and found half a dozen blue spotted rays under as many different rocks. We saw at least that many morays, including one large honeycomb, and some nice tableaux of lion fish. It was a relaxing end to an unusual dive.

We spent the night at Discover Nomad chez Christophe, but because beverage supply there cannot be counted on we slipped over the border to the hole in the wall at Royal Beach and dropped in on Terry and the other Freestyle divers to enjoy a cool one before driving back to Oman. Terry was overseeing the barbeque of a huge yellowfin tuna and he offered us a taste. We only tasted because we were heading back to Christophe’s for un repas a la Mauritius coutesy of Sylvienne’s kitchen, which deserved more than one etoille Michelin. There we were soon tucking into exquisite quiche, tender steak, succulent kabobs, and deliciously grilled shrimp, plus a fresh green salad, great complements to our two bottles of red wine, which we shared of course.

Somehow we got sleepy and found ourselves waking up a few hours later to another great day on the UAE seacoast. We moved off to return to Freestyle at 9 where we found we could get on a dive to the Inchcape.

My logged dive #932 - Nicki wasn’t in the mood but Bobbi and I joined a boatload and we were soon heading down the mooring line in a stiff current to the wreck at 30 meters. We had wisely worn lycra underneath our 3 mm wetsuits because it was cold down there, perhaps 24 degrees. Due to the depth it’s only a 20 min dive anyway, but the temperature was a shock after the warm summer. The wreck was beautiful as usual, swarming with schools of snappers and bigger fish. There were no rays there at the time but the two honeycombs to replace the ones who succumbed to the red tide were in their predictable places, easily spotted by all the divers. For Bobbi and I who have been here many times, it’s a treat to be diving it just the two of us, without having to monitor students, so we let ourselves slip into a minute of deco and we were last up the rope. We made an unhurried descent, our deco cleared at 9 meters, and we spent 3 full minutes at 5 meters even though we had been just below the other divers waiting for them to complete their safety stops. The current had disappeared at the bottom, but now we were being pulled to the side like pennants. We could see the other divers at the ladder climbing up onto the boat and when the last bum disappeared from the water we let go the mooring line and caught the ladder as we were swept beneath it.

My logged dive #933 - We did one more dive, at noon on Dibba Rock. Nicki had finally got her hair just right so she joined us. The sea and sky were bright and the water looked clear and promising, but it was a promise not kept. The viz was silty. We were dropped on the mooring at the north corner of the rock. We made our way back through the aquarium and onto the reef. I hadn't brought a compass because mine was on a console whose pressure guage had malfunctioned, but I could tell we had hit it right when I heard the clacking and saw a school of young barracuda overhead. Then a large black tipped shark appeared swimming nonchalantly across our bow. Bobbi and I watched it go by, but Nicki was lagging a bit and missed it. Too bad as it was our only shark sighting that dive. Due to the milky conditions I missed a turn in the reef and had trouble getting out to the end of it. I had to retrace my steps on the reef and didn’t know where I was exactly until we came on an anchor that’s been in the reef for some time. Orienting on that I managed to find the right way, and brought us onto a number of turtles in the process. There were frequent sightings of barracuda overhead, shoals of snapper, puffer fish meandering across our paths, and some cuttlefish occasionally, but all in all it was a slightly disappointing dive (what am I saying?! I must be getting jaded ;-)