Main Homepage: http://www.vancestevens.com
More Scuba: Back to Vance's Scuba Page | Dive Log main page

Vance's Personal Dive Log for 1999

Vance Stevens, P.A.D.I. Open Water SCUBA Instructor #64181

Logs from 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006

These dives all logged since July 91 (not including unlogged dives since certification in 1966) 

Tue, Jan 19 1999

Abu Dhabi Dive 75; dives logged since July 1991 = 268

dive entity: ADSAC

place: Pinnacles

buddies: Jim Darwisher and a 19-year old named James

present: Alan and Sarah Gawith

vis: abysmal 1-2 meters, give or take a few centis

sea conditions: rough going out, windy, just protected at the Pinnacles, offshore ergo white horses but not too much chop

depth: 15 meters

time: 45 min

6 kilos with a 3 mil body glove wetsuit

Saw next to nothing, not true, a number of morays, grey and green, some lobsters. But the vis made it hard to keep 3 divers together, kept losing Jim or James. Jim thumbed me up right at 45 min. maybe a minute later, just as I was heading around an interesting rock.

Wed, Jan 20 1999

Dive 76; dives logged since July 1991 = 269

dive entity: ADSAC

place: Dibba Rock

buddies: Bobbi and James

present: Alan Gawith boat handling, and Debby and mate in the water

vis: much improved over previous day, a few meters

sea conditions: fairly smooth, also improving, though wind whipped up by noon

depth: 20 meters

time: 45 min

6 kilos with a 3 mil body glove wetsuit

Dropped through the gap at Dibba Rock with huge barracuda lurking nicely, close enough to almost touch, and still enough too. Turned left and where the rocks met the sand, found a small mottled ray hidden away under a rock, tail barely visible, lots of morays and lobster (crayfish, technically). Later on found a pipe fish, and Bobbi came on a flounder which we all stroked, soft and pudgy. The dive could have had better vis, but the baraccuda were a treat, big and lurking and hovering close by the beginning and end of the dive.

I led this dive, out 20 min, and back to the barracuda spot and into the shallows against the current. Due to the effort, air depleted in my fellow divers, and James was showing me his depth gauge right at 50 bar. But we were by then at 3 or 4 meters and there was some chance of seeing turtle in that spot, so I signaled him 5 more minutes. He accepted this and came out with 40 bar 4 min. later. Back on the boat, he said "fifty" when they took his air out. This practice of assiduously questioning divers for the purpose of getting them out of the water at set benchmarks common sense and level of experience notwithstanding invitably leads to lying, as it does in Queensland, where there is a law against going below 30 meters, so people commonly lie about their depth. I prefer the PADI way, 50 bar is a signal that you should be completing your dive, and you stay in the water as long as you have air and table time unless there is a reason for coming out at a set time that has been agreed to beforehand.

Thu, Jan 21 1999

Dives 77, 78; dives logged since July 1991 = 271

dive entity: Oman Dive Federation

place: Fahal Island

dive sites: shallow reef, Bill's bumps

buddies: Bobbi

present: 8 other bsac'ers led by Dave Teasdale

vis: quite good, 7 to 10 meters at shallow reef, 5 to 7 at the bumps

sea conditions: fairly smooth,

depth: 30 meters 1st dive, 22 the second

time: 35 min 1st, 40 min 2nd

new wetsuit combo: thick farmer John with 3 mil Cressida top

8 kilos 1st dive was barely ok for a deep dive; 9 kilos the second not adequate for shallows

1st dive superb, memorable for walls of purple, white coral, teeming with fish. Bobbi and I headed down to 30 meters and saw on the bottom one of those huge black, mottled rays. The reefs were teeming with fish, the water was deep, and the vis was good. This dive made the weekend worthwhile.

2nd - Nice dive, saw several honeycomb morays in decent vis, one very large and small pair jutting out. A green moray or two, an electric eel which Dave Teasdale pointed out to us. At some point on the dive I was fooling with buoyancy, because I was wearing a farmer john I'd never worn before, and I sank suddenly and blew bubbles out my reg and displaced a scorpion fish. Bobbi said I just blew it off a rock (as I was about to collide with it). At the same moment I jammed my thumb on an urchin. Maybe I should take a buoyancy control course (or give one).

Sat, Mar 27, 1999

Dive 79; dives logged since July 1991 = 272

dive entity: Pro Divers

place: Kuredu, Maldives

dive sites: Karafushiwara Korner

buddies: Bobbi; Dive leader, the Dive Nazi

present: 6 others, 2 dive masters

vis: excellent, maybe 20 meters

sea conditions: smooth,

wetsuit combo: thin lycra with long-sleeve 3 mil top

6 kilos weight, 4 on belt and two in pocket - took pocket weights out and was fine at 12 meters

planned profile:

24 meters for 25 min, N - 16 meters for 15 min, P - 12 meters for 25 min - Z

actual profile:

10:12 down to 24 meters for 15 min

10:25 up to 16 meters for 15 min; at some point here, dropped back to 24 for 2 min to view eagle rays

10:40 up to 12 meters for 29 min (57 min)

11:09 up to 5 meters for 3 min safety stop, out at 11:12

This dive was about like a wall in the Cook Islands or Philippines, marginally more interesting. Went down on top of a big green moray at the top of the wall. Lots of triggers: clown triggers, blue triggers who hide in rocks, big huge rainbow triggers. At one point a Napoleon wrasse happened by, big, got up close enough to clearly see reticulate markings. At least one big tuna wandered along, maybe a couple more, some triveli. The 2 eagle rays in formation at 30 meters or so were a kick, but dropping down to see them provoked a lecture from one of the divemaster back on the boat. I maintained that I had left a large enough window in my dived to planned profile to allow for spontaneity, but he cited the rules, which of course there is no answer to, rules being rules, inflexible. That and the fact that he was also critical of the amount of weight Bobbi had sort of left a sour feeling after the dive, like it hadn't gone very well when in fact it had.

I might mention that our first day in the Maldives had had a few glitches. First the plane out of Colombo was delayed an hour. In Colombo I tried to sort out my onward bookings with the Air Lanka people who handed my ticket back and said, do it in Male. When I got to Male airport, there was of course no way to do what could have easily been arranged in Colombo, no staff on hand at Male airport, Friday, day off. Plus, there was no boat to take us to Kuredu (possibly due to the hour delay in arrival), but the agent said we could fly, at no cost, all had been arranged (this turned out to be true). At a table in the shade outside the arrivals hall we were brought two coca colas and after they had been opened, charged $8 for them. The air taxi flight to Kuredu was fine, the pilot passing low over basking pilot whales, but on arrival we were told the dive center was closed for lunch until 2:30. When I went there then I was told to dive with them we would have to have an orientation dive with an instructor on the house reef, but that this was at 2:00 and we had just missed it. And as this was very much a rule-governed dive shop, there was no way I was going to get an orientation dive that day and I would have to come back next day for one, nor could I just take a tank and go on the reef with myself and family without that orientation dive. But I could come back later that afternoon and talk to the manager, Kimmo Hagmann, the only person with authority to waive these rules. I returned at various times as instructed and finally found Kimmo in the tea shop. By that time I had been discussing with staff the possibility on going for an all-day dive trip the next day and was to ask Kimmo for his permission for us to go on this particular outing. As I was asking him, he said, ah, this is about whether you can bring your child along as a snorkeler? He seemed to have already been briefed on our situation. Fine, yes you can do that, he said. So we ended the day at least with the prospect of going on an all-day dive trip the next day.

But when we had arrived in the morning, having set alarms and got ourselves out of bed before we were ready, we found we weren't listed on the all-day boat trip at the dive center. As we hadn't done that orientation dive, Kimmo had apparently had second thoughts and decided at some point that morning or the night before that we couldn't go. His staff, doing as instructed when dealing with pax, claimed they had to show us how to get in and out of their boat; plus there was all this paperwork we had to do. And the boat leaves in 7 minutes, they were saying. I pleaded our case as best we could. I had my current, active teaching status instructor card, and Bobbi was an advanced diver with over 80 dives and liveaboard experience. I told them we already knew how to get in and out of boats, and what was the paper work, a liability form? But no amount of credential or claim on our part was going to change their minds. They had heard it all before, and their rules were fixed. It was pretty easy for them to stall us past the point when their boat would leave and all would be mooted.

At the time I was hugely disappointed, to spend megathousands of bucks to get to this island and find that the dive shop is set up for pax not people and as a pax you fit squarely in the rules and regulations, which can't be broken, but also as a pax you don't rate being informed the night before that they have changed their minds about your plans for the next day. Dusty was the most disappointed because this left him with nothing to do when he had been looking forward to an outing. At least, the dive pros yielded on the orientation dive and, after the necessary paperwork (3 min), to placate us even allowed us to join in on one of their boat dives at 9:30. And everything was fine, nice dive, as described above, until we got back on the boat and found that we had upset the cart once again by breaking our dive profile (yes, they had been watching us carefully) and by going in overweighted (which could have been sorted out beforehand had we done that orientation dive). The suggestion to Bobbi that she was overweight was accurate, but caused her to have problems later, and the egotistical dive leader we came to call the Dive Nazi should probably have left well enough alone rather than bother Bobbi about this rather minor aspect of her diving.

But the worst was that night at dinner. Our table companion had gone on the dive we had been denied and reported fantastic conditions, lots of sharks, tuna, turtles. I can tell you I didn't sleep well that night, with the realization that we had been somewhat arbitrarily diverted to the baby pool rather than "allowed" to participate in the exact kind of diving we'd come all that way for. In my 30 odd years of diving, it's the first time I have ever been refused permission to participate in the kind of diving I had requested when the dive boat was leaving with space available. Most places would accept credentials like ours as evidence of ability to participate in something as simple as an all-day boat trip, and certainly our logbooks were full of ample evidence of diving under a huge variety of conditions in numerous locales throughout the world. But they made up their minds about us without looking in our logbooks. In hindsight I can see their point. They knew the conditions at the dive site, and they may have seen me as an overbearing diver with an attitude problem and a desire to meet my own dive objectives while failing to recognize the limitations in my dive partner which they could possibly see where I was blinded.

In any event, it happens that you can arrive at a place and be prevented by the people you've chosen to take you diving from doing what you came to do, people who are the professionals, but whether they are acting more in the interests of your diving safety or their convenience, who's to say? And the problem in the Maldives is, what are you going to do about it, fly to another island? I guess the lesson is, don't get in that situation. Don't go to a place where you have to pay a lot of money and dedicate your limited vacation time without reaching an understanding with the people beforehand who you are giving the money to. If diving the Malidives, it's probably essential that you do that. It's not a place where you can go to a competing dive shop down the street if you aren't happy that you and the pros you have selected see eye to eye on their methods and everone's perceptions of your ability level and diving goals. And if there is a mis-match then the problem is compounded because you ARE diving with these people for the duration of your stay on their island. If you don't hit it off then you don't say hi to each other when you meet at the bar, and when you come together on the dive boats, things are professional, but not copacetic.

Pro Divers at Kuredu would be appeal to divers who don't mind being programmed. They could be appropriate to divers who were weak at diving and who WANT to be in the capable hands of a professional who keeps them safely within their limits. It would also be good for experienced divers who have time to go through the program and to convince their minders that they deserve to swim with the big fish, in which case you will probably be given the opportunity. But for independent divers with limited vacation time, I don't know if I'd recommend Pro Divers in Kuredu. They just aren't geared to quickly get to know the short-term diver. They have too many people coming to the island every day. They don't make it a point on arrival to find out if you want to dive in the first place, and if so inform you how you can go about that most efficiently. Their introductory dives, which they really insist you do, no matter who you are, only happen twice a day, so if you miss it your first day (as we did, by half an hour), your second day is spent on checkout procedures. In other words, it takes time to work your way in, not a problem if you're spending a lot of time there, but a big problem if you aren't. Other criticisms are that, as concerned as they are about not taking divers without thorough orientation to their system, they don't encourage buddy checks but instead tend to rush divers into the water, and I never saw any oxygen on any of their boats despite distance from decompression facilities. Also they don't carry water on their boats for divers, even on all-day trips in 30 degree heat. Instead, all day boat trippers are set to scrounging for personal water before the boat departs, and the bottle caps are marked with a room number to discourage divers from drinking each other's water (one option is to buy water from the bars - could this be the reason?). Another hassle is that tipping of boat handlers is encouraged, despite the fact that guests are admonished to keep all valuables in the safe, so if you do that, you don't have any money on you, since you don't need any on Kuredu except for tips. Guests are charged for each boat ride, but the hotel must be pocketing it, or why would you have to tip the seamen? And lunch on an all day trip is $12 for salad, some fish, a sandwich, banana and coffee/tea. Why not provide water? I don't know, why not go somewhere else and go diving.

Sat, Mar 27, 1999

Dive 80; dives logged since July 1991 = 273

dive entity: Pro Divers

place: Kuredu, Maldives

dive sites: not sure

buddies: Bobbi ; Dive leader, the Norwegian guy

present: about a dozen divers

vis: good, 15 meters

sea conditions: smooth,

wetsuit combo: thin lycra with long-sleeve 3 mil top

5 kilos weight,

planned profile:

22 meters for first part of dive, leading to N - 16 meters for 15 min, P - 12 meters for 25 min - Z

actual profile: about what we'd planned

dive time: over an hour

We headed down a wall, not much current. Started at 22 meters and gradually worked up, since not much there. A couple of tuna passed on two occasions coming at us, and a black sting ray going our direction. At the end of the dive there was a pink scorpion fish sitting in a crevice. The dive was pretty but not exciting.

Sun, Mar 28, 1999

Dive 81; dives logged since July 1991 = 274

dive entity: Pro Divers

place: Kuredu, Maldives

dive sites: Maa Giri (Flower reef)

buddies: Bobbi ; Dive leader, the Norwegian guy

present: about 8 other divers

vis: good, 15 meters

sea conditions: smooth,

wetsuit combo: thin lycra with long-sleeve 3 mil top

5 kilos weight, bobbi had 4 and did fine

planned profile:

same as first dive the day before

actual profile: about what we'd planned, exceeded initial time at depth

10:13 in, 10:42 came up to 12 due to 4 min. over depth time, 11:10 started 3 min at 5 meters

dive time: 57 min.

Not a very interesting dive. Lots of grunts. We saw a black ray at start of dive. The divemaster found a green moray and hovered over it, filming. While he was doing that, Bobbi found an octopus we observed for a while. As all divers seemed rooted to one spot, we moved off into the current, found an eagle ray swimming across the reef. Some sweet lips with mouths wide getting cleaned by wrass. Pretty dive, but hovering was the skill needed most.

Sun, Mar 28, 1999

Dive 82; dives logged since July 1991 = 275

dive entity: Pro Divers

place: Kuredu, Maldives

dive sites: Express

buddies: Bobbi; Dive leader, the Dive Nazi

present: half a dozen other divers

vis: good, 15 meters, 20 or 25 around the corner

sea conditions: smooth

wetsuit combo: thin lycra with long-sleeve 3 mil top

4 kilos weight, bobbi had 4 and did fine

planned profile:

Don't recall exactly, about 22 meters with a gradual ascent, hour long dive, 4 to 5 apprx

The dive started quite nicely, we were in a channel with current and there were a lot of fish out in the gloam. Funny I don't remember a lot about this dive. There was a napoleon wrasse poking about near the beginning. Bobbi remembers seeing eagle rays. We had to pull ourselves around the corner in stiff current but once we'd got past that, we entered the lee and floated up through our multilevel stops. Near the reef top we saw a white tip shark cruising by, our first shark on this Maldives trip. I recall hovering for a long time in front of a clown trigger fish, pretty from a distance, nasty looking up close. He was scarfing up coral.

Mon, Mar 29, 1999

Dives 83 & 84; dives logged since July 1991 = 277

dive entity: Pro Divers

place: Kuredu, Maldives

dive sites: crossed the channel on an all-day trip

buddies: Bobbi on 1st dive; 2nd buddy was Dive leader, some young girl with blue toenails and a ring in her navel who'd worked on Boracay

present: 4 other divers

vis: ok on first dive, 15 meters, good on second, 20 or 25

sea conditions: smooth to slight chop

wetsuit combo: thin lycra with long-sleeve 3 mil top

4 kilos weight on first dive, bobbi had 4 and surfaced prematurely; I took 5 kilos my second dive

planned profile:

First: 30 meters for 19 min; 20 meters for 7 min, and etc, but I was up after little time at 12 meters

2nd: in as A diver, did 26 meters for 20 min; 16 meters for 20 min, and 12 meters for 25 min.

First dive was dynamite start. Plan was to drop in at shoulder and get below current which would sweep us into channel. Then we'd go our 19 min at 30 meters and move up wherever we were and finish profile. The channel was full of all kinds of creatures: sharks, tuna, turtles, eagle rays, sitings all the time. Wherever you looked, a shark or two cruising underneath, a ray winging overhead, a turtle diving clumsily, huge tuna moving among the sharks. It was like being in an underwater game park. Underwater, we were finning at 30 meters trying to hold ourselves down under the current to avoid being swept over the shelf and into the channel, and finning was difficult due to the current affects not always working with us. Air was coming difficult at this depth in these conditions and Bobbi was getting nervous and starting to bump into my fins and clutch at me, causing me to break rhythm and have to expend energy to pull her along. At about that point, I couldn't get air. I was breathing but nothing would come. I recognized the symptoms because the same thing had happened only a few months back. I reached my mouth and was not surprised to find that no reg was there, only my mouthpiece. Perhaps it had broken off after having snagged on some coral, maybe Bobbi had pulled it loose, or maybe it just fell apart by itself. So I grabbed my octopus and resolved the problem, but I'd taken in a little water and was choking on it. Still I was managing this and getting Bobbi to go for the reef where she could pull herself along without my assist. She had signalled she was down to 50 bar. A minute later I noticed that we were right at our 19 minutes, so I signalled the dive leader that we would be moving up the shelf. As we headed that way, Bobbi started ascending into the blue above rather than following along the shelf. The tide effects were sweeping us into the channel, which was not a problem, but depth control was. Both of us had gone in light on weight, having trimmed ourselves to 4 kilos each in relaxing situations the day before. Now, with the difficulty of keeping stable in the current and in my case the reg failure, both of us were stressed to a degree to which we had taken in more oxygen than in normal conditions, and both of us were tending to rise more than normal without counterweight. Bobbi reached a point where she was unable to control her ascent. Later she said her mask had come off and flooded her contacts and she couldn't see. She speculates that in the confusion she may have grabbed her snorkel thinking it was her deflater and pulled her mask loose. If so, this would be a good reason to keep the snorkel in the knife straps, as the bsac people do. In any event, she was on the surface in no time, and once there, she headed for the boat nearby. Meanwhile, I was up around 9 meters and struggled to get back down to 12. As the others came up on their ascents, I had trouble keeping down to 5 and had to fin head down to control it. The dive leader handed me a kilo of weight, but even then I was struggling to counteract the affects of my own extra breathing until I calmed down. I was ok on air, and eventually I was drifting in the current with the dive leader and one other diver who was completing her safety stop. In all of this, I noticed rays and a turtle on the seabed far below, and I wish the dive had gone more smoothly as I think we would have seen any more.

As for Bobbi, we were a little concerned about her, as the dive leader had been a minute into decompression according to her computer (she said later) at the time we had started our ascent. Bobbi claimed she had got down to 32 meters during the dive, which would have put her out of the safety zone for a direct ascent to the surface at 18 meters per minute. Her rate of ascent was probably about that since we were all calling her back and gesturing for her to dump as we watched her rise, and she seemed to be aware of her ascent, just unable to prevent it. One factor that might have helped was that she wasn't the only person to have had a problem on the dive. One of the German guys hadn't been able to get down at all. He said he had taken water on the ascent and he'd given up trying to catch us up, since the descent itself had required a fin to the bottom angling to the shelf to avoid being caught in that in-current. Bobbi had done that fine, but this other guy had aborted and we had waited for him at around 28 meters for several minutes. His buddy (his wife or girlfriend) was with us and didn't know what to do. We went ahead with our dive, but that few minutes spent at that depth probably kept Bobbi in the no-decompression zone when the "accident" occurred.

We chilled out on an "uninhabited" island, totally isolated from civilization except for boatloads of locals from the town of 4000 on the nearby island out for their picnic, kids splashing happily in the cove, shebab arriving in boats singing and chanting in unison, dumping suds in the ocean from their washing up. Bobbi had by then sworn off diving, starting with the upcoming dive, but dive leader was by then in no mood for the risk of another channel crossing and decided to take us for a dull dive on one of the "outreefs" pretty similar any other reef where there is no current and everyone drifts slowly along admiring all the small fish. There were two small napoleon wrasse, several morays, thousands of trigger fish all along the reef wall, not much else but coral and the usual reef fish. A couple of biggies wandered by in the gloam, but nothing incredibly special. I guess it was the kind of dive that makes you not all that sorry you're leaving the Maldives.

I'm glad personally that we finally got to do that high-powered dive. For my own part, I could have done all my dives like that one. But the toll on Bobbi's interest in diving was possibly terminal, and Dusty's dive career has probably been set back a year or two after watching his mom emerge so shaken. For Bobbi it was probably best we had been reigned in by the dive center and sent out on dives in their "easy" and "medium" categories. She at least got in a couple of days of doable diving, though even she was not all that excited by it. My impression of the Maldives after the experience is that there are certainly places in the channels that will knock your socks off, just as there are thousands of lackluster reefs where you might as well be diving in the Philippines, Thailand, or Indonesia, savoring the pleasures of the local culture during surface intervals as opposed to the sterility of the big resorts, and paying a fraction of the price. The problem with the Maldives is that you can easily end up dive after dive on the easy reefs and so enjoy no real advantage of having gone there. On the other hand, based on my observations of other divers in the unpredictable conditions in the channels, you really need to be an independent, experienced diver, confident in your ability to handle emergencies, before you attempt the channel dives.

April 22, 1999

Dive 85; dives logged since July 1991 = 278

dive entity: ADSAC

place: Abu Dhabi

dive sites: Old Cement Barge

buddies: Some young feller Padi certified

present: Jon Sneideras and Penny, a Latin couple

vis: not good, not bad

sea conditions: smooth

wetsuit combo: thin lycra with long-sleeve 3 mil top

5 kilos weight

planned profile:The usual adsac 45 min, the ocb is at 6 to 9 meters

I signed on as asst. dive marshal and made notes

In advance, call for weather report

- make sure you are cleared to have a key to the equipment room

- have a phone list handy in case you have to call for this clearance

Start a dive log sheet with divers' names

Notify club of boat name, dm, adm, departure and eta, and dive location

Find the boat with the most fuel, check that it has

- fuel

- echo sounder and gps

- first aid, oxygen

- shot line and weight

- an anchor and 20 meters of line

- documentation, tool kit, keys,

- dive flag, water, fire extinguisher

To start the engines, keys in stbd and port, dead man locks in, battery switched to both, fuel pump bulbs hard

The dive wasn't terrific, but not a total waste of time. No rays, only one barracuda, a couple of sweet lips, bat fish. Vis was only a few meters, and swimming off the boat, had to return on compass, hardly a shadow marking the spot.

May 21, 1999

Dives 86-87; dives logged since July 1991 = 280

dive entity: Sun Divers

place: Jazira Beach, Gantoot, Abu Dhabi

dive sites: Jebel Ali wreck and another old barge wreck

buddies: Horst from the Musandam trip on first dive, Jean Turner on second

present: Germans

vis: not good, not bad

sea conditions: some waves, strong currents

water temp: 29 degrees C

wetsuit combo: thin lycra with long-sleeve 3 mil top, abandoned top on 2nd dive

weight: 6 kilos on first dive, 4 on 2nd

planned profile:first dive, 50 min at 21 meters, then next and hour at 10

Dive one, 22 km north of Gantoot, SunWr1 on my GPS -

Stephan went to the site on GPS and I guess found the wreck with a depth sounder, dropped anchor, and drifted, so he had to go in to find it snorkeling and call the boat over. I'm paired with Horst and a young German lady. Horst and I first in the water, swept quickly aft, and hauled ourselves to the anchor line via a tow line thoughtfully tossed after us. I recall waiting 5 min. for the lady at the anchor, boat crashing down on us in the waves, and being sucked under it by the current. Finally the lady appears and we start pulling ourselves down the line like pennants in a stiff wind. Barracuda milled about as the wreck came into view, and one of those fish not shark look like shark careened away revealing dorsal fin all down the back. Fortunately the current was not as bad at 20 meters, though finning against it was a job as we circled the wreck Big long barracuda eventually buggered off, bat fish hung about, and at one point a sea snake came along to greet the divers. It was an ok dive.

Second dive took us in a slightly south east direction till we were 9 km from the launch site. By now, the wind is whipping up, and vis is low, and we saw the anchor drift past flopping in the sand and realized the boat was moving with the current. We found the wreck in the gloom and kept circling it finding almost nothing until we discovered the pretty white nudibranchs with black kafeeya checks on them, and orange bits arranged there, wavy processes at one end. There were lots of them but you had to be looking for them. That was about it for that wreck. After an hour we surfaced.

Jean treated me to the dive, but Sun divers charges 100 dirhams a dive, twice the going rate. They do take you a ways out, but ...

May 28, 1999

Dives 88-89; dives logged since July 1991 = 282

dive entity: ADSAC

place: Khor Fakkan

dive sites: Martini Rock and Hole in the Wall

buddies: Silly Miss P

present: Maddy and Matte and Jim and Al

vis: decent

sea conditions: decent

water temp: 29 degrees C or warmer with chilly thermoclines

wetsuit combo: thin lycra with long-sleeve 3 mil top

weight: 6 kilos on first dive

planned profile:

We'd stayed at the villa hoping to go to Musandam but the previous users of the BSAC boat had left the power on and the wires were frazzled, boat inoperative. So I called Mhmd at 7 Seas who obliged with a boat and driver for our crew. 1st stop M Rock. Popped down to 20 meters or so on first dive off Martini Rock. The trigger-fish were restless , corals in bloom, and pipe fish at depth. M Rock was a brilliant dive, though now, some weeks later, can't remember all we saw. Nor at Hole in the Wall, which was not all that great, a bit murky from the palace contstruction nearby.

Friday June 11, diving with ADSAC in Musandam

Divers 90 and 91; dives logged since July 1991 = 284

dive entity: ADSAC

place: Musandam

dive sites: Stack, and headland side of Liwa Rock

Trainees: Scott Benson doing 2 Advanced dives (Deep and Multilevel)

present: Jim Darbishire and 2 femme friends

vis: decent

sea conditions: calm

water temp: 29 degrees C or warmer

wetsuit combo: thin lycra with long-sleeve 3 mil top, abandoned latter for 2nd dive and rest of summer

weight: 6 kilos on first dive, 4 on second

planned profile: 26meters, 20 min (27 min NDL); 16 meters 20 min (25 min NDL); 12 m/30min

Time/depth of first dive: 9:26 down to 26 meters, 9:56 up, 30 min at 26 meters

Skills at depth: deep dive, compared depth gauges, cognitive task, 3 min safety stop

Time/depth of second dive: don't recall, but plan was 21 meters 30 min then up to next level

Skills at depth: Scott planned and executed a multilevel dive, 3 min safety stop on pretty rocks

First dive too short, but saw lots of big fish, including huge barracuda, and lovely coral. 2nd dive, there was a ray. Went into 2nd dive in stiff outgoing tidal current which f'd our dive but had pretty much gone by the time Jim and femmes went down. Tide changed, boat swung into rocks, and I had to move boat and do a p/u, then drive home, moor for first time ever.

These dives all logged since July 91 (not including unlogged dives since certification in 1966)
Jump to index at top of page