Comments:

Our second dive in the Straits of Hormuz but our first from Khasab, instigated by John Barrington, sort of his swan song since he's leaving the UAE. So he had us up to his place in Sharja on Wed night, gave us a Fosters and a warm bed to sleep in (so warm we couldn't sleep) and fixed us a hearty cholesterol rich breakfast in the morning, waiting for us when he got us up at 5, and fired his potato gun for us with a resounding bang in the a.m. to start us on our trip. What a dude.

We met Martin at the Khasab Hotel and by around 10:30 we made a move to get to the harbor and on the speedboat. By 11:00 we were cruising past the dhows out of the harbor with the cliffs on our right. The cliffs of the Musandam coastline look like they were formed with a fissure that just cracked clean at some point in time leaving miles of mountains along the coast looking normally sloping down from their peaks, but ending in an abrupt drop where the fissure had been. The whole coastline looked sheared clean off, with its strata exposed as if it had happened yesterday, even piles of rubble with huge squared boulders attesting to recent collapses (some time in the million years jus past). It's rare to see such a dramatic coastline. Dolphins frolicked against this backdrop.

At about half an hour it all fell to pieces. We came to the end of the safe current zone and the less fit in our group were out of air. Martin had wanted us to stay together and was loathe to leave us to the fickle currents, which could turn vertical if we weren't careful. He seemed to want us all up, but I had 100 bar as did Bobbi, and Dusty almost as much. After a 5 min lull in which some of us clung to rocks and some organized their ascent, including Martin, there remained us three plus another trio. We lacked a leader, but I moved close to the rocks and found a current that wasn't too bad. When someone else saw I wasn't hanging on to something, he followed and then the rest came along one by one.

We ended the dive moving cautiously just under the surface coming on occasional coral heads with big angel fish and bright orange rust, but except for a turtle everyone but us drifted right over (Dusty saw it; I had to turn back) the dive was not very eventful. 45 min into it the other trio called it quits. We still had over 50 and could have stayed down another 5 (no time limit had in fact been set), but we decided we'd come up more or less where the boat was picking up the other divers. It was a nice dive despite the poor vis, but not colorful because of that, and not really up to expectations.

Surface interval duration actual: 1:50

Comments:

The second dive was, one of my best in these waters since the last time I was at Hormuz. We entered the water in a southerly wind that swept the boat ahead of the divers so that late entry people had to be transported back to where the divers were drifting. Eventually we assembled and descended together and after a slight delay on the bottom for reassembly there, Martin finned into the gloom below, taking us to below the depth of our first dive, which worried Bobbi (whereas I didn't notice at the time). Eventually Martin came on a rock under which was a large bull ray rippling its skirts, undecided at whether to stay or leave as the divers gathered at the entrance to its lair, wheeling in indecision. It was rescued by the appearance of a blacktip on the reef below, which was probably when Dusty slipped down to 25 meters. The blacktip was moving along the reef but somehow managed to stay gratifyingly in view and come close enough for us to see its markings clearly, grey-white with a black striation along its side, and the black tips of its fins. Rather than scurry out of site, it wheeled around us and poked UP the reef, so we could chase it along the radius of its movements. When it disappeared in the green curtain of limited vis, Martin moved us off in the other direction, and soon came on a school of very large barracuda which seemed willing to wait for the other divers until someone started clacking (not me), and they spooked and sped off. It was just after that that we encountered a strong head current rounding the point and had to spend many long minutes painstakingly pawing our way into it. Martin seemed to offer the option of turning back but signaled instead that we should force our way though it, accompanied by a sign of two fingers indicating it was only a short distance. It was, but by the time some had squeezed through it they had depleted their air in exertion and anxiety. Dusty did very well but got down to just over 50 so when we hit the coral gardens with its huge angel fish and knob coral heads, and hundreds of maninis (sgt. Majors) Mom was pointing to Dusty's gauges. Martin had this time told us when we reached that spot we'd be in calm water and could do as we liked in our buddy groups. I let Dusty get down to 40, and he was fine relaxing among the fish, but when someone spotted a turtle and we sped after it, descending slightly, Dusty decided he'd better surface. I still had 80 bar and Bobbi about the same, so we went back down and found another of those bull rays in the sand and rubble slope. By then all the other divers were on the boat, so we were the last aboard after another 10 minutes of diving. Great dive.