Yesterday evening I had applied for the Specialty course Deep Diving.
I never take a camera when doing educational dives, so no pics, sorry
Read the book, but could not make the e-Learning work. Will have to do it after the dives.
Took the morning boat, meet at the dive center at 7:30, pickup truck to the pier, get everybody on the boat, and off we go.
We are heading for Chumpon Pinnacle, one of my favorites here, but the Captain says the sea is too choppy, and strong currents at the surface and underwater.
The boat Captains communicate via Radio, he heard only bad news from a dive boat already at Chumpon Pinnacle. So, where to go, we are bound for 40 Meters deep
(do the safety stop at 40 m and inflate the BCD ... 🤢 🚀 hahaha, Dan and PJ, hint, hint, elbow, elbow)
We decide for the dive site Satakut Wreck, between Nang Yuan and Koh Tao. This is the next deepest, if you swim to the stern and lie flat on the sand you can reach 31.3, dig a hole and put your computer there to make it 31.5 meters. So we did, without the hole in the sand...
I was shocked by the visibility, after diving in the Similans, but we found the Satakut, I almost banged my head into it. Our instructor seemed pretty interested in the wreck, it felt more like a wreck dive, we played a bit with buoyancy in the turret, penetrated in the bow and some sort of cargo room on the deck. Had to swim back to the boat at the surface some 50 to 70 meters against the current. I can do some surface swimming, ask Dan, but this one exhausted me quite a bit.
Second dive is White Rock, bad visibility in the deep around 24 meters, my instructor decides to go into the shallows around 14 meters after 15 minutes, with much better light and less snow in the water. I see 5 or 6 blue spotted stingrays, some coral bommys look like christmas tree farms, so many of these colorful and fancy worms live there. Average depth after 60 minutes dive is 13.4 meters
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| Christmastree worms |
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| The blue spotted Stingray |
Later on land we do the final exam in the restaurant, both passed with 100% rate.
I am a certified Deep Diver now and may go down to 40 meters.
If I want to and my ear allows. The left ear gets hard to equalize, obviously the Eustachian tube is full of mucus. I drink a lot of water and keep cleaning my nose with selfmade NaCl solution (Freshwater and salt) to dissolve that.
I book a two-tank fun dive for friday and set my name on the list for the courses Navigation and also Buoyancy, clean my nose, hang out at my bungalow, transfer my logged dives from paper to the digital database at mySSI, charge batteries, lubricate O-rings, do some laundry, stuff like that.
Always finishing off the days at Fishbowl Beach Bar for the Live Music.
Leo has started his Open Water Course today, paperwork, introduction video, snorkeling on the house reef. He feels fine after snorkeling, that's good, he is comfortable in the water, the first requirement for learning to dive
DAY 18 Thursday, March 30
Leo has his first scuba dive, shallow confined on the house reef. No pool here, only ocean. I got my certifications here as well, and I have never dived in a pool in three years.
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| First time with a SCUBA tank |
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| First time with a SCUBA tank |
I keep transfering dives to the database, it's 32 all together, this takes some time.
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| Office work, bookkeeping, ya know |
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| at the office until late |
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| One of the few beautiful sunsets this time |
Also transfer photos from the cards to the laptop, the Canon and the GoPro work fine, but some of the iPhone pictures don't show up on the laptop. I e-mail some of the more important ones to myself from iPhone to laptop. Nice user experience, Apple...
I will take the Canon with me more often
Leo comes from his his first regulator breathing experience, happy. now does homework with the two girls in his group, Rebecca and Annika. good boy. I am so happy he likes it
See you under water
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