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| Liz aboard Raggamuffin |
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| Whitehaven Beach |
Raggamuffin
With only having one week to explore,we had to decide between sailing around the Whitsundays or diving on the Great Barrer Reef . So in our usual style we did both! The sailing trip was on the ex World Champion maxi yacht 'Raggamuffin'. A full day sailing from Shute Harbour to the famous Whitehaven Beach. It was particularly pleasant, lounging on the deck being served drinks and occasionally winding a bit of rigging. We sailed into Whitehaven Beach for lunch. Dave swam to shore from the boat whilst everyone else was transported by launch! On the beach we had a delicious lunch even with some wildlife interest. A snake slithered through the lunching sailors and an iguana tried to attack the bin! After a few hours swimming in the warm waters we reboarded the boat and meandered our way back to the harbour!
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| Oceania Liveaboard Dive Boat |
Oceania
The next stage of our trip was a three day three night adventure aboard 'Oceania' liveaboard diveboat. We went straight from the yacht to the dive boat and set off for the outer Great Barrier Reef. We had signed up to do our advanced course so as soon as we were checked into our cabin it was time to meet our fellow classmates.
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| Our Cabin |
We drove through the night and awoke 120km from the mainland with the reef on our doorstep. This trip consisted of a total of 10 dives. The first two were for orientation and pleasure, then we perfected our buoyancy in the next dive by hovering and floating through hoops. Then it was time for the night dive. This involved striding off the back of the boat into the inky black sea armed only with a torch and a fluorescent stick on our tanks. Underwater becomes more surreal, as when you look around you can't see other divers, only their torch beams. It is quite disorientating to be underwater at night, and judging depth and distance is quite tricky. Luckily we didn't see any sharks! The next day we started with a deep dive. This involved careful dive planning, then decending to a depth of about 28m and checking to see if you suffer from nitrogen narcosis.
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| In deep water! |
Nitrogen narcocis is when the build up of nitrogen in the divers body causes them to display symptoms similar to drunkenness, which is not desirable at those depths - you hear stories of divers laughing so much they spit out their regulator and forget to breathe! Bogus! Luckily both of us were unaffected! It is bizarrre being that deep as the colours change e.g. red looks black! Sadly though not many fish live that deep so it is worth swimming up closer to the surface where the colours are vibrant and the fish plentyful.
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| Reef |
After diving deep, perfecting our buoyancy, and diving at night we then had to become underwater naturalists (not naturists!) and navigators to complete our advanced course. There was quite a lot of theory to get through as well but we passed with flying colours and really enjoyed it too! Our group was great - all very friendly and we were all at a similar level which helped! We were also lucky to have a great instuctor, Steve. He made quite a few jokes and liked tricking us which was most amusing. We felt particularly conned when at 28m he pulled a tomato out of his pocket and showed how much it had shrunk. We were all stunned by the remarkable pressure at that depth that could shrink a beef tomato into a cherry tomato. When at the surface, Steve showed us the tomato again, it was still really small, but upon closer inspection it turned out to be a radish!! Doh!
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| Dave downunder! |
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| Out at Sea |
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| Sea Anenome |
What a trip, ten dives later, we have become much more confident underwater, seen loads of different types of coral and big shoals of fish, and had great food and a laugh with our new dive buddies. To top it all off, once we returned to land we all went out on the town.
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| Liz |
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| The passsengers, from various classes |
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| The Crew |
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