Certified Luke Ingles in beginning open water August 18-20, 2011 in Musandam

My logged dives #1064-1067



Nice easy weekend planned with just one student, Luke, who turned out to have about the smoothest passage conceivable through the PADI open water dive course.  He did his elearning prior to our picking him up at his office Thu after work, 3 pm ramadhan timings.  We went over all the course explanations of what we were going to do in 3 hours on the road together, and we had him at Nomad Ocean Adventure by 6:30 that evening and in the pool an hour later.  Two hours after that we were having cook's delicious beef stew with appropriate liquid accompanyment, and two hours after that we had played some guitar and gone to bed.


I overslept the time to meet Luke in the morning but he was so proficient at his skills that we only needed 15 minutes in the actual water to get him through the module 3 skills and ready for the open ocean.  This was a bit harder to arrange in a boat with 14 divers in choppy seas, waves crashing up against the musandam coasline the whole hour in transit.  We skipped Lima and tucked in to the shelter of Lima headland.  We did a first dive there, touching near 18 meters at depth, 48 min. before Luke ran low on air.  Our second dive, for the record, was on the relatively sheltered north shore of Lima Rock, getting even closer to 18 meters this time, 51 minutes.


Both dives were pleasant in cool 25-26 degree water. Luke had picked up a 5 mm wetsuit but Bobbi was wearing a shorty over a lycra suit and I was wearing 3 mil long over lycra with a half mil rash vest on top, and on the 2nd dive I was chilled.  The vis was good.  There were tableaux of lion fish floating in full panoply and morays here and there, in including a large honeycomb on Lima.  There we saw large batfish, lots of puffers, and a small monarch bull ray in a cave.  It was a great day for Luke, a kind of mediocre one for Bobbi and I, but not a bad day out at all for any of us.


We got Luke through his dive #1 and #2 o/w skills and a few of the flexible ones as well, and after enduring the choppy ride back against an oncoming sea, I took Luke back in the pool and finished off his last two pool dives and 200 meter swim and float.   Luke asked if he could do the float in one of the inner tubes there while sipping on a beer, and I thought that was such a good idea I went and got one myself and kicked back in the center of the pool while he swam his laps around me :-)


Next day we slept at will, all rising in time for diving at 10 or 10:30.  You never know exactly but with Ivor in charge and not so many people on a Saturday, things ran more like clockwork and we were being asked to get ourselves down to the harbor at just after 10.  Seas were still contrary but the sun came out on the last half of the trip north and sea conditions ameliorated as the day progressed.  


Our first dive started in the same cove on Lima headland (Ras Lima) we had been in the day before.  The first day we had gone to the back of the cove and eased down through the sloping corals there to give Luke plenty of reference for his first ascent, but today we found a sandy patch and dropped onto it at 5 meters depth.  We then moved down to 8 where I tied off my SMB and ran it up for CESA.  I had Luke do his compass heading out and back and complete his other skills for that dive there in the sand before completing the CESA so when we arrived up top I could grab my marker and carry it back down with me deflated, and then pack it up as we went on our dive.


We had good luck with animals today.  We saw lots of lion fish and snappers and much larger species on all our dives, and several morays, plus a small torpedo ray on this dive, and a small ray poked head first into an alcove that was half as deep as he was round.  I think it was similar to the ones with darker coloring here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blotched_fantail_ray.  We also found a flounder on the dive, a curiosity to first time divers.


Sea conditions were still not settled but dropping to the point where Ivor decided we could head over the bay to Pearl Island which was still getting waves on its east face, and some surge but not so bad on the western sheltered side.  Bobbi and Luke and I took our time getting in the water so as to be C divers with a surface interval of 1:32 min with 53 min NDL at 16 meters after having spent 50 min at 18 meters our first dive (which put us in T pressure group).  To prolong the SI we got Luke's weight and BCD removal out of the way at the start of the dive, in the sheltered part ol Lulu Island.  


Lulu is a nice dive.  The idea is to round the island to the north and then head east over the sand to arrive at the second island further out.  It's a nice spot that sometimes has barracudas.  Not today thoough we did find a large crayfish in a lair when we arrived at the submerged arm of the outer island.  We also found morays and a large marble ray there, without a tail, impressive creature, and the regular suspects such as trumpet fish, trigger fish, placidly improbably puffers, and tiny blue striped wrasse cleaning everything from eels to batfish to all of the above.


Back on the boat one of the divers in another buddy pair who had also seen the marble ray said its tail wasn't missing, "it was a cow tail," as if it was born without a tail.  Garbage, we looked it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowtail_stingray but these don't look like the ray we saw. The cow-tails at that link look flatter than the one we saw, which had a prominently raised head area, more like the marble ray here: http://news.scubatravel.co.uk/2010/03/marble-ray-is-creature-of-the-month.html. There's no end to fish identification, especially after the fact, :-)


Nice weekend, nice people at Nomad as usual.  Good food, good company, some dodgy guitar in the evening and even dodgier jokes, but we all laughed politely and had a good time.

Abu Dhabi wrecks again, Ludwig and somewhere near Jasim, Aug 5, 2011

My logged dives #1061-1063

Bobbi, Dusty, and Michelle and I accepted an invitation from Al Mahara divers to come dive with Kathleen and Peter, our old friends (but not as old as we are :-).  We were trying to dig out our old GPS coordinates and locate the wrecks for one thing, and Kathleen wants to find them so she can take divers there for her new dive center.

I was helpful in locating the Ludwig.  That's always been one of my favorite wrecks.  That dive was a nice one. We dropped anchor after inching near the wreck but we couldn't get the boatman to get on it so finally we dropped anchor 200 meters from it, and the anchor dragged showing that distance increasing to 300 but then held steady.

In any event the Ludwig is not hard to find.  It's a big wreck.  It looms large if you know which direction you need to go to find it.  So Bobbi and I and Michelle crept up on it upcurrent at 26 meters or so till we saw the shadow of its hull. When we arrived there I led us to the stern and looked in the sand there for rays, found none, and so I led around to the deck side and then went up along the fo'castle to the high point of the wreck which happens to be the starboard side of the wheel house.  There the door was removed long ago making it easy to enter the wheelhouse which, being on its side, is a descent to the port side, which now lays in the sand.  The wheelhouse is roomy and doesn't feel that confined since there are window holes there that still overlook the ghostly deck.  But the big surprise was at depth where there used to be rubble there obscuring the exit to the sand.  It's been removed.  It's now an easy thing to go in the top of the wheelhouse, descend to the opposite side, and find and exit to the sand.  Who's been cleaning up this wreck?  Nice of them!

After that we proceeded along the bottom of the deck where the ship lays on its side until the bow.  I was keeping an eye on my computer, hoping to find something interesting at the bow (used to be lots of barracuda there) and knowing that we could then follow the deck up so as to manage the fact that we were then just one minute to deco.

To make a few more minute story even shorter, we followed the deck up as it contoured to 20 meters, the time to deco kept getting bigger but then counting down as we watched the fish up top. We were by now with Kathleen and her crew who were also finding their way up.  There was a rope trailing off the deck and I got my crew on it so as to have a reference for safety stop at 5 meters, and the entire dive lasted perhaps 40 minutes.

From there we motored south towards home and towards our GPS points for the Jasim, but we had worse luck here. I was unsure of where my coordinates came from.  Kathleen had some as well but in the end we tried mine, and these turned out to be on the tall buoy some distance from the wreck, so we never did find it.  Our dive with my group was half an hour in the sand at 25+ meters, to come up when the first person went low on air.

I still had 90 bar and Kathleen wanted to try her coordinates and see if we could find the wreck on a third dive, so I accompanied her, but she had no better luck, so we emerged from that one wrecklessly.

Finley the shark, seen below, wearing my face mask, gave his version of the Ludwig dive here: http://www.projectaware.org/blog/divemahara/aug-24-11/finley-goes-wreck-diving-abu-dhabi-and-gets-ready-mighty-mussandam. Finley, apart from these here, where are your pics ???

Shorediving Dibba July 25-26, 2011: Pinnacles (3 Rocks) and Dibba Rock

My logged dives #1059-1060

On Monday morning July 25, 2011, Bobbi and I and our son Dusty, and daughter-in-law Gulya, and her daughter, our granddaughter Gwen, our 3-year old Malinki Princess, all got up early and headed for Dubai airport. Gwen and Gulya were flying to Uzbekistan to see her other grandmother. When I hugged Gwen goodbye she gave this knowing shrug and said “but I'm only going to Doha.” That's where she was living when she boarded the plane, and she thinks her father went back there. But her dad went to Brazil for his holiday and now she's gone to Samarkand and another set of family dramas there. Eventually she'll wind up back in Doha but she'll never see her bobo and bibi again in their apartment across from the park on the Abu Dhabi corniche. No telling where we'll be when we meet again.

But as long as we had driven to Dubai Bobbi and Dusty and I thought we might as well go on to Dibba and go for a dive. And as long as we were there we thought we might as well spend the night and dive Dibba Rock the following morning. I called our favorite dive shop there, the one where the owner Terry died and his good son Andy took over, but Andy went on holiday to Thailand leaving James to look after the business.on that day.  James said he was doing a rescue course on Monday, from shore, and wouldn't be taking a boat out, but we could boat dive there on Tuesday any time, so we booked that. Bobbi went online and found that the Holiday Beach Motel's rooms just two beaches over from Freestyle were only 300 dirhams with breakfast when booked the night before check-in, so we booked that as well.

Bobbi had also tried booking diving anywhere on the East Coast for Monday, but everyone we could find was ridiculously expensive. At JAL, now the Radison (3 beaches over from Freestyle) the cost of just a 10 min boat ride to Dibba Rock was 165 per person (using our tanks and equipment), almost $50. the price of a prolonged meal at an all you can eat and drink in the all you can eat and drink restaurants in Abu Dhabi, almost twice what it costs from Freestyle. There were some other possibilities at the other dive shops further down the coast. We could dive Inchcape I with Divers Down for 165 each or the Pinnacles (3 Rocks) for the same price. We hadn't dived Pinnacles in some time but, that boat ride would have been again 10 min, using our tanks and gear, and it's possible to shore dive it. Also, Bobbi found at the last minute that the dive shop at Holiday Beach Motel would take us to Dibba Rock in their dingies for 100 dirhams each, reasonable, so we were considering that, and according to them we could go at 3 or at 5 pm.

We arrived at HBM at around 12:30 on a scorching hot UAE summer afternoon and we figured we should check out what shore diving might be like at the Pinnacles and then try to dive with HBM out to Dibba Rock at 3 or 5. After checking in at the Motel, lovely rooms if you're not paying normal prices, we all got in the car and drove down the coast to the stretch of highway just opposite the Pinnacles. These days you never know what you'll find on this once-pristine coastline, and there are a lot of hotels a-building over by Sandy Beach Hotel a stone's throw away, but this spot opposite Pinnacles was as yet still undeveloped and we could drive off road and park where we always did, just like old times.

And just like old times, it was a very rocky entry, tricky getting us all into the water for the swim out. The swim out was difficult as well with a stiff current pushing to the north. Dusty and I made it to the rocks in about 45 min but Bobbi was having some difficulties and let herself get swept to the north where we watched her pretty much barely holding her position as she tried to join us against the current. Eventually Dusty swam over and got her and brought her over to us using the fins on shoulders tired diver tow I always teach as being just the tow for difficult conditions. I had meanwhile found the place at the south of the rocks where the current seemed to be broken by the rock to the north, and when Bobbi got there and recovered her breath, we went down on that spot. It was by then 3 pm, a whole hour after we had set out on our swim for the rock.

Once under water we had a pleasant dive there. We didn't see anything hugely unusual, no sharks or rays or turtles or cuttlefish, but we found strange flounders, puffers and lion fish and eels and shoals of reef fish. As long as we kept moving east and west and avoiding the current as it picked up at either end of the rock we could move at will, but eventually I decided to lead us through a gap in the rocks to the north side of the collection of islands, and here again the current was fine, protected now directly by the rock. We had been diving now 45 minutes and we all had well over 100 bar left in our tanks.

This time I led us toward the west and we followed this out until the boulders got smaller and smaller, but always there was something to see. I knew we were out of the protection of the rocks but at depth the northerly current effect was only slight. My course was west north west but by angling on a westerly heading we could fin that way and be pushed gently to the north. It worked perfectly. 15 min later we were in the shallows and by 4 p.m. we were exiting the ocean right where we had parked the car.  Bobbi was relieved she didn't have to swim back on the surface.

We were back on the road by 4:30 and we tried calling the dive center at HBM to see if we could get on the last 5 pm dive to Dibba Rock. We called their mobile and then tried through the hotel but they didn't answer either mobile or land line, so we stopped in at Royal Beach Hotel, where Freestyle Divers is, to pick up supplies at the off license bottle shop there and have a cold one on the lanai with the view of the beach and sun dropping over the mountains. While we were there we washed our gear in the showers and left our empty tanks to be filled. We confirmed with James that we could come at any time next day so we said we'd call when ready and James said he'd fill the tanks and be ready for us and just call ahead and he'd be there from 9 o'clock on.

We then went to our hotel and had a very relaxing swim in the pool and walk on the beach, and had them bring us dinner on our front porch, which was delicious, comprising shrimp and curries and tasty sweet coconut nan, and we were by then tired and sedated so we went to sleep and slept soundly until Dusty received a text msg next morning which woke us all up. But that was a good thing since it was by then a quarter to 9 and we needed to get up and get to breakfast.

I tried calling Freestyle from our breakfast table but there was no answer, odd but maybe as we'd set no time and we were the only customers, it was ok if James was a little late. Then at 9:20 he txted to say he'd be delayed, he had to work out something with the Dept of Water and Electricity, the bill had been paid but they were threatening to shut off utilities anyway. So we txted back we were at breakfast, what time would we be diving? He txt'd back it would be around 11.

It was only mildly inconvenient to have to wait, but the clincher came at around 10:30 when James txted again to say sorry, he wasn't going to be able to make it down there that day at all. I txt'd back, “What about my tanks!?” but also if he'd let us know at 9:00 we could have possibly booked something else that morning, but at 10:30 our choices at that point would be pretty much what they were the day before. Except that the Holiday Beach Motel dive shop with its 100 dirham boat rides to Dibba Rock wasn't operating that day. as I discovered when I walked over there only to find out that they always took Tuesdays off.

Dusty and I were keen to shore dive Dibba Rock anyway, and James had txted back that he would send his worker to open the equipment room for me. Bobbi didn't want to join us after her experience the day before so she stayed behind to keep the room cool for us and Dusty and I went over to Freestyle where I txted James that we'd be shore diving there and we'd be there for at least two hours. He txted back “No worries” but that was the last we heard from him, and the worker never turned up that afternoon, nor after our dive, and when we were checking out of our hotel I was unable to reach James, so we were forced to return to Abu Dhabi, 3.5 hours by car, without our three tanks.  I'm not sure now how or when I'll be able to get back there and collect them, not happy about that :-( well, someone took them eventually to Freestyle's office in Dubai and left them there, and my son Dusty eventually made a trip there and picked them up, so the tanks are back with us now :-)

Meanwhile, fortunately we'd brought 6 tanks down, so Dusty and I had a nice dive on Dibba Rock. The weather was hot in the low 40s but bearable in the water. Sea conditions were calm and there was hardly any current, and we made the swim to the reef in about half an hour. We found the clacking coral and dropped down on a free swimming eel. Like the day before we didn't see much else of note but we made a nice tour of the rock and its undersea wonders. In most dives we do there, we are asked to limit our bottom time to 50 min and we usually come up after an hour, but today we could stay as long as we liked. Dusty ran down to 30 bar 90 min into the dive; I still had 70 – our no deco time remained at 99 min throughout the dive.

We went first on the east-west leg of the L shaped reef, where the raspberry coral is coming back, but still we haven't seen any turtles or big fish on that part of the reef in a long time, though there used to be lots of turtles and sharks there. It's hard to connect the different parts of the reef these days if you're not properly oriented on it, and so I had trouble finding the northward leg. On the northerly heading from the east-west part of the L, trying to find the north-south part, so just east of it and inside the right angle of the L, Dusty and I came on a mooring we hadn't seen before with slabs of rock oddly placed around it, Dusty thinks it was writing in Arabic, but he's thinking of the rainbow sheikh's writing his name Hamad in such a way that it could be read on Google Earth (and it can be, check it out: http://news.discovery.com/space/big-pic-hamad-abu-dhabi-space-graffiti-110721.html).

Eventually we came on the clicking and clacking reef and followed it without seeing sharks till we had to turn east to avoid running off the reef, from where we made our way to the aquarium. The aquarium is always nice, full of fish with a backdrop of rust-colored coral. We each had over 100 bar so 50 min into the dive I led to the back side of the island. Here we found batfish in cool thermoclines in 12 meters of water and sand where we looked for rays but found nothing but pipefish. We meandered over the sand and then back to the rocks on the back side where we had a choice. Circumnavigate the island and come up where the coral is sparce and head south for home from there or backtrack along the way we came with some chance of seeing sharks. I chose the latter, back along the boulders at the back side and up the shoulder to the aquarium, then east toward the clacking coral and south along the reef on a hunt for sharks, but there were none today. Still a 90 min dive was nice and relaxing, worth staying over the extra day (for Dusty and I ;-)

Diving with Freestyle Divers July 9, 2011 - Family outing on Dibba Rock

My logged dives #1057-1058

On July 9, 2011 Bobbi and I and my two boys Glenn and Dusty awoke at a reasonable hour in the morning and by 8 a.m. we were on the road for Dibba where we turned up well before noon in time for a dive on Dibba Rock which eventually got under way at 1:00.  We did two dives there, both from the mooring on the northwest corner of the island.  They both went about the same way.  The mooring is right off the aquarium so on both dives we started there.  On the first we were in the lee of a strong westerly current which we only discovered as we were fairly carried to the reef to the west and then had to struggle to stay on it as we continued along it south.  By the time we had come to the end of the L and were turning to the east, we found we simply could not, the current was too strong against us.  So we went back to north and then back east, in the shadow of the island, to the aquarium, and then penetrated a little to the back side until we hit the thermocline there. By then we had consumed an hour and varying amounts of air, so we surfaced.

We didn't see much on that dive, and the thermocline had been uncomfortable because we were not wearing wetsuits, so I put on my 3 mm for the second dive.  This got delayed a bit due to a fuel shortage on one of the boats that had gone away for a looooong day trip.  But we didn't mind kicking back on the restful lanai at Freestyle, turtles broaching the shorebreak just off the sands of Royal Beach Hotel, and eventually we were back in the water for our second dive. This followed the same route as the first one, except we were by now at high tide, with some relief from the current, and we saw more animals.  We were just leaving the aquarium for the reef when the schooling fish overhead did an abrupt about face.  I looked around for the cause, though only Bobbi saw it and signaled shark with her hand at her forehead.  We continued on the reef to the south without seeing much, but this time we were able to turn to the east and make it as far as where the coral is coming back.  By then we were at half a tank to 150 bar so we turned and drifted back along the coral, where we saw the cuttlefish and eels that Glenn videoed.

Meanwhile I was leading back to the north and it was my good fortune to come right on top of a beefy blacktip reef shark.  He scampered alongside and ahead of me, Bobbi was a little behind and the boys behind her, so I was the only one to see it.  We continued north on the reef and then east back to the aquarium, and then went on into the sand at the back of the island without seeing anything much of note apart from big eyed puffer fish and lion fish, and the usual schooling tropicals.

Back on shore we had an off license beverage with Andy and reminisced about old times, very relaxing as the sun went down over the misty mountains and turned the sky over the blue-green sea from balmy blue to shades of orange and grey.

Certified Steve and Anna in beginning open water, and Roger as advanced open water, June 24-25, 2011 in Musandam

My logged dives #1053-1056

Another great weekend, what else to do when temperatures are in the 40’s in the UAE.  Water temperatures in Musandam can be only slightly less, in the warm 30’s near the surface, or a bracing 20’s, depending on which thermoclines you pass through.  Visibility varied in the thermoclines as well.  Sometimes the cold water brought clarity; other times the cold water was green-brownish with algae.

A whale shark was spotted on Friday off the east end of Lima Rock while we were there but not by us.  On Friday there were slightly rough seas. When we came up to Lima Rock on the south the swell was not pleasant for my novice divers Steve and Anna, on their o/w course on the eLearning package.  We had Dusty and Michelle with us, and Nicki to dive with Bobbi, plus Roger completing his advanced course with Peak Buoyancy diving.  Also we had three pleasant and experienced Arab divers who were agreeable to whatever we wanted or needed to do. 


I got in the water to test the current, not bad, but vis was poor, so I suggested we move to the north side where there would be shelter.  All other dive boats had reached the same conclusion so there were dozens of divers in the water when we went down there, including some BSAC people with mechanical scooters.  The scooters were annoying but effective.  It was they who spotted the whaleshark, and they said they found a pod of dolphins to boot.  I guess the scooters are just the thing for the currents at either end of Lima Rock, which I usually try to avoid with my students.

I was doing dive #2 with Steve and Anna which has a set of the basic skills in it.  When we got through those I led along the rocks and Anna discovered a huge honeycomb moray.  There were a lot of swim-throughs for Roger to practice his peak buoyancy skills in, and more morays and I can’t recall what else. It wasn’t a great dive, but a pleasant one, in decent vis.  When Steve and Roger ran low on air and we surfaced together at over 50 min into the dive, Bobbi, Nicki, Dusty, and Michelle were not yet on the boat. Anna and I still had 70 bar so we decided to go back down for another 15 min, extending our dive shallow, very pleasant and cooling.

For the second dive I suggested Ras Morovi, a good place for open water skills.  Steve and Anna had done a discover scuba course with me on June 11 (2 dives) and had completed modules 2 and 3 in the pool the night before and that morning, so according to PADI standards they were “qualified” to do just one more dive on their course that day, and the first dive on Lima Rock was technically their 2^nd PADI O/W course dive.  Thanks to the flexible skills system we could continue diving a second dive that day and record the skills they did against dive #2, although this was their 4^th dive in their logbooks.

We had lunch while being buzzed by wasps, sitting ducks for them on an open boat in the small bay in Ras Morovi.  It was nice to escape them by getting in the water for surface work.  We worked on compass headings, cramp removal, and snorkel regulator exchanges and then found a rope attached to a fish pot on the bottom in 8 meters of water that I thought would do nicely for a controlled emergency swimming ascent.  With those skills out of the way we went over to the wall and headed down to the sand.  We found a nice outcrop and Anna led us west from there and then returned us to the east to approximately the right spot, given there was a some current pushing us south.

We proceeded on a very pleasant fun dive.  I know the site quite well. If you follow the wall you come to a flat spot where you can go left and come up the tongue on the other side or keep going and circumnavigate a submerged hill.  I had briefed everyone to check their compasses to understand where they were headed, since if you keep the reef on your left, you don’t notice otherwise when you are rounding the hill or coming up the other side, going from a southerly to northerly heading. In our case when we reached the saddle we had a current preventing our further movement south so I led us over the saddle and down the other side.

Here we came onto brilliantly dancing squids and their counterpart cuttlefish. We also saw morays during the dive, and I can’t remember what else. Maybe Steve or Anna can leave a comment here if I’m leaving anything out.  We surfaced in the channel, the boat collected us, and whisked us back to port.

Anna and Steve and I refreshed in the pool that evening, finishing our last two confined water dives in plenty of time for communal dinner. Over beverages afterwards, Ivor pulled out a guitar and showed us more of his talents.   I’ll need to practice for the next time if we’re going to start that nonsense.  Steve played a mean Red Hot Chili Peppers song that used to be covered by Voodoo Hedgehogs.  Nicki produced a platter full of smelly cheeses but many of us avoided that because we had sampled the night before and we all had awakened groggy with headaches, presumably from the cheese.

With the pool work out of the way we had a relaxed start on Saturday morning.  I got Steve and Anna to do their swim tests, but that was all there was to do before heading down to the boat.  We were booked with Ivor the divor today.  Sea conditions were flat, finally, for a change, it would be a good day for the near side of Lima Rock.

The dive started on an excellent note.  We put in to clear water and were just easing over the edge when we found ourselves confronted by two large eagle rays coming right at us.  The lead one looked almost like a manta as he curled his wings on approach, then noticed us, and warped in muscular contraction to turn suddenly and speed to open water.  I watched their shadows circle in the distant water and disappear.

Unfortunately there was a dhow anchored there at just that moment discharging at least 30 divers aboard, and they caught up with us in the direction we were about to go, so I didn’t go to the east as I’d thought but went back to the west toward the middle of the island. I hoped to avoid currents as well.  We saw lots of fish here, particularly bat fish, and fusiliers, snappers, parrotfish, angelfish, damsels, jacks in midwater and morays in the rocks.  Nicky and Bobbi had moved on so it was only Roger and I and Steve and Anna. Suddenly I saw another eagle ray cross just ahead of us and head to sea.  I noticed rocks there we could hover over so we went there and all my group hovered comfortably, not seeing the ray again, but surrounded by biomassive schools of fish.

As we neared the west end of the island the current picked up and I decided to try and avoid that so I reversed our direction and to conserve air led higher up the rocks, 9 meters or so.  I was hoping to return to calm water but perhaps there had been a current all along, unnoticed, and now we seemed to be swimming incessantly into it.  This was wasting breath and tiring us, so I changed my mind again and decided to take them with the current on around the island.

Using hand signals I tried to get the three of them into position for the quickening current.  I couldn’t tell them in words, but I wanted us all together, low down where I was, and next to the reef.  Venturing into open water would be anathema here.  They did well. They weren’t sure what was coming, but when we were caught in the current they followed me well.  We started getting knocked about a bit as we came to the edge of the island and the critical moment was to turn a sharp right and get into shelter out of the current and start heading up the back side of the island.  My divers were right behind me.

We found a last honeycomb moray back there, and a large crayfish, but we surfaced on the opposite side of the island where the boat would be looking for us.  Nearby there was the crack in the rock with a keyhole passage to the other side that I’ve often seen but never really visited.  It had surge in it but it was gentler than it looked and wouldn’t really smash us on its ceiling.  I entered and the guys followed.  We passed through this beguilingly aquamarine passage and on the other side encountered the swirling current we’d just left, ready to sweep us clear of the island. Anna was not with us so I pointed the three of us back into the gap and we reentered and swam through to where Anna was waiting for us, hesitant because of the surge. Later we found that Bobbi and Nicky had used this passage to scuba to the north side and thereby avoid the worst of the current at the end of the island.

The boat eventually picked us up on the north side and once we’d recovered Bobbi and Nicki, we headed for the shelter of Ras Lima for a calm-water lunch.  The wasps were not so bad here. Steve and Anna were but one dive away from completion of their o/w course.  This dive would be at Lulu Island, which is interesting because we always put in from the shelter of the first island off the mainland and then swim underwater to the EAST to arrive at the second island.  Steve and Anna had tank and weight belt removal and replacement at the surface, tired diver tows, and then Steve could demo his compass skills by leading us to the east to the underwater island.

All worked like a charm and we arrived at the island after the easterly heading right at the sweet spot.  I led us to the north along the wall and on around the island from there to come south on its far side. We saw lots of morays here, sometimes surrounded by lion fish. It was interesting but the vis was murky with algae and the thermoclines here were the coldest yet.  As we turned into the current I hoped for barracuda but there were none.  Heading back west now it was time to bail to the other side of the island but the current was against us for getting over there.  I tested it, made headway against it, and figured I could get us where it would dissipate.  This worked well, my divers followed again despite conditions marginally poor for beginners.  However when I finally found shelter from the current on the west side I was surprised to see we had arrived back at the sweet spot we had reached by going east from where we descended.

So we rounded the island again, slightly higher this time to avoid the chilliest of the water. We continued to the point where we again confronted the current and basically got boxed in there and surfaced. 

Congratulations to the newly certified divers Steve and Anna, and to Roger for completing his advanced open water.

Photos from Steve Elwood's Facebook photostream

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.

May 27-29, 2011 UAE East Coast - Dibba and Khor Fakkan

My logged dives #1045-1048

Godelieve and Rossane wanted to dive with Bobbi and I this weekend. Chris had booked his Nomad hostel out completely to a large French group and there was no room at the inn for us this weekend, nor space on his dive boats going to Musandam, and Godelieve had never been to Khor Fakkan, so Bobbi and I decided to revisit our favorite dive sites there and see how the fishes had survived the triple whammies of Cyclone Gonu, the months-long red tide epidemics, and more recently the spate of hotel and harbor constructions taking place all along the east coast of the UAE.

It's still a beautiful area, relaxing, moves to a rhythm all its own, and all your own if you make it so. Our rhythm is to sleep to a normal hour on Friday, our first weekend day off, which for us means waking up when the sun rises and lying around till the early sunlight tells us it's 5:30 or 6:00, then getting up and checking email, watching the news on TV while packing our dive gear and clothes for the weekend, fetching the car from overnight parking across the road, loading it up and being away by 8:30 for an 11:30 arrival in Dibba. Lulu is our first stop there, the new hypermarket that has become the focal point of Dibba cuisine. There we could get tasty tiny round pizzas for a dollar apiece, spicy chicken and prawn, watermellon and grapes for a pittance, cold fresh juices, and still arrive at the dive center at noon for their 12:30 dive.

Which turned out in typical Freestyle rhythm to be an after 1 pm dive, but ma'alesh, we had little else to do that day than kit up and wait and get on the boats, and then into the water for an hour's cool relaxation, then back on shore, repeat, add water, relax.

We were told we should have been there last weekend. Everyone was telling us vis had been 20 meters, plenty of animals around, ideal conditions. For our first dive we put in on the right side mooring south east of the island and set our course west in slack current to meander among the coral bommies in shallow water near the island. Surge was a problem and vis was disappointing, but we still enjoyed schools of fish, a lone batfish under a rock, shoals of snappers and jacks criss crossing one another as we dropped into the aquarium, big lumbering porcupine fish moving in close out of curiosity, parrotfish, fusiliers, etc.

From the aquarium I headed back west toward the loud clacking which intensified as we moved in over the coral rubble where the beautiful reef used to be with its sharks and devil rays, undoubtedly the best diving I ever did in the UAE, and certainly the most consistently best including there and Musandam. But that was back when Terry was alive. Now it's sad that Terry and the reef as it was are both gone.

But the reef is bouncing back in one place, if you follow it south from near the aquarium and if you can find where it turns east (hard to do in bad vis, just possible on our noon dive today) you come upon a patch of purple raspberry coral that's pretty like it used to be. But at noon today there were no sharks or turtles on it. When I found it I circled it looking for critters, but apart from healthy reef fish, nothing caught our attention. Eventually we reversed and retraced over the barren parts, and then our time was up and we surfaced.

The 3 pm dive, which got going at around 4 (good to see that some traditions are honored ;-), was not as easy as the first. We had planned to go around to the back side of the island on this dive but when we arrived at the south east corner mooring, conditions had changed and there was a stiff current that would prevent us getting to the back side that way. The current was so bad that when Godelieve and Rossane entered the water they got carried astern and would not have been able to reach us at the bow line except that I yelled for a line to be thrown to them, and to his credit Terry's son Andy had one tied to a buoy and tossed it astern and recovered our divers. Bobbi meantime had descended to await us out of the surface current, and shortly we joined her by pulling ourselves down the rope against the current.

We retraced our steps from morning but this time had to fin toward our right in order to avoid being swept off course. We passed the same coral, with some effort to keep our path through it (the batfish was still there :-). Vis had got worse so at the aquarium it wasn't as attractive as earlier but here at least we were in the lee of the island and had some relief from the current, so were were able to find our way to the back side that way. We entered though thermoclines of bracingly cold water. I was wearing just lycra and a rash vest, Bobbi had on her shorty, and we were cold. At depth, just 12-13 meters, we went out a little into the sand but not so far where there would be rays because the current went against us when we left the shelter of the wall of boulders. We found morays in the wall but turned back when the current started to push us back even there.

We were picking our way back over these boulders when I saw a flash of grey and black streak and realized a black tip reef shark was passing. I wheeled after it, and Rossana just 12 years old, was right at my shoulder trying to keep up with it. Recharged now, we resumed our heading back to the aquarium, but Godelieve had put weight in her pocket and it had slipped out. I saw her and Rossana suface, nothing we could do, so Bobbi and I carried on and saw a second shark as we were coming back on the aquarium. Pushing up against our allotted hour we passed over the clacking reef rubble and I saw a third shark right about where it should be. Bobbi missed that one, and our time was now up, but we surfaced thinking that a mundane and almost unpleasant dive had been rendered almost exciting simply with the appearance of our favorite inhabitants of our once favorite reef.

Back on shore Andy and his staff were offering beer and making the motions of preparing barbeque, but the Royal Beach Hotel where the shop is prefers to keep prices high (800 for a single bedroom) and endure less than full occupancy rather than offer dive packages that would allow divers to stay on the premises, so it's hard to accept hospitality from the dive shop when we have to not only drive into Dibba, but check into our accommodation there as well. Two bedrooms at Seaside Apts where we stay (not by the sea, they always remind us, when we call there), with kitchen with microwave for heating up the interesting Indian dishes we can buy at Lulu's, is only 330 in May, or 82.50 each for four people. I hope Andy can restore the social scene at Freestyle though. We would like to have stayed with them, but logistically it was too difficult, with Godelieve having to cook special pasta to feed Rosanna, and everyone being tired and not wishing to drive on UAE roads under the influence.

Before we departed we learned that their Musandam trip that day had encountered 2 whalesharks (they're back!) but we had arranged to dive Inchcape 2 and Martini Rock next day with Divers Down. We had selected that over a trip with Brian and Tatsiana at Neptune Divers, who were going to Musandam on Saturday, but we were going to Khor Fakkan.

So no more about that (but checking old dive logs, lots of whaleshark sightings in May and June, this one in 2003: http://prosites-vstevens.homestead.com/files/divelogs/dives2003/486-487.htm; and these just last year for example:

• http://vancesdiveblogs.blogspot.com/2010/05/ho-hum-another-whale-shark-dibba.html)
• http://vancesdiveblogs.blogspot.com/2010/06/6-whale-sharks-on-al-marsa-liveaboard.html

Anyway, we turned up at Divers Down well before we needed to be there. They were just setting up shop at the Miramar, on the same beach as the Meridien Al Aqah, from where Al Boom sends boats daily to the sites were were planning to dive. Must say Divers Down agreed to my exact requests for dive sites, which was why we chose them, and the boat was ours apart from an open water course being run from it, whose divers were not diving the same dives we were. But we still had to share those sites with the hoards from Al Boom's boats.

The dives were nice, though we were going through motions of previous dives Bobbi and I had done dozens of times before, but like everything else in the UAE, the dives were not like before. The Inchape 2 is the wreck in 22 meters near Martini Rock. It's got a lot of animals on it, writhing with morays, and surely much else, though most of the life on it today was human. We had planned a dive as in the old days. Descend on the wreck and for Rosanna who had no computer, understand from the wheel that she could spend 30 min max at 22 meters, then ten minutes at 16, and then exhaust the tank for as long as it takes at 12 (the dive would be 37 minutes NDL at 22 meters if diving on tables). In the event we had circumnavigated the wreck in the sand, done a tour of the decks, and even investigated the holds with overhead escape access, acquainting ourselves with most of the morays in the process, in the first 20 min of the dive, at which point we headed off on phase 2, a 240 degree compass course in the sand about 5 min to the wall of boulders. The plan here was to find jawfish in the sand just short of those boulders. There were none that we could find. There were more morays in the rocks, but when we turned the corner into the bay to the north of the wall, the rust and blue corals were there, but nothing much to write home about. Nice dive, but not like in the past.

We motored over to Martini where bananas, watermellon, and oranges were laid out for us and we enjoyed a surface interval in warm but overcast May conditions. Our dive on Martini rock was again cold though. Too cold. The purple and white soft corals were there, and very beautiful. Morays were plentiful. But not much else. I scoured the rocks for scorpion fish. They used to be everywhere on this dive. We used to see turtles and honeycomb morays. On this dive today, we encountered mostly Al Boom divers and reef fish. It was pretty but pretty cold too. We're waiting now on the reports from Musandam of whale shark sightings :-(