Saturday, 15 May 2010
Headed down to brekkie to be faced by a sea of Perth Scuba divers in their club t-shirts. It looks like a package holiday now. We had a boring Western/Asian brekkie and then after the ton of luggage was loaded we boarded our boat transfer to Borneo Divers in Mabul. There was actually a separate boat for all the luggage – I think Scott and I are the only ones who did not bring a full complement of dive gear, let’s hope that wasn’t a mistake. We then boarded one of the three boats taking out the divers – this is it, what we have come for and what we have been waiting for.
We checked into the hotel and had a briefing of what to do and all the logistics. Our room is a cabin that is divided into two, so we have a bedroom and bathroom with a deck and the same is duplicated on the other side (we are on the Left). The room is airconditions and has a ceiling fan and lots of windows, so I am hoping it will be cool. The only weird thing is that the room does not have any window screens, so good job we brought the Rid. Our neighbours in our chalet are Nat and Gabe.
We then unpacked our gear and headed straight to the dive shop on the jetty to organise our hire gear which was already packed in a crate, so we kitted up (minus cameras) and boarded our boat with our fellow dive crew and dive masters for our orientation dive. This dive is to ensure that we have the correct weights and haven’t forgotten anything. We headed to Ray Reef and dropped down into the warm (32 degrees) water for a maximum dive of 22.3m. Strange thing to realise is that the outside air temperature and the water temperature are the same. This dive as a drift dive, so along with the backward roll off the boat, we are in new territory. You swim a little bit into the current, then let it drag you through the hanging walls etc not exactly strenuous but there is just so much to see you feel like your head is on a swivel stick. There were turtles, fish, more fish, corals, more fish, urchins, wished I know what the real names of the fish were. I was seriously underweighted which didn’t seem like too much of a problem, until I started using up my air, so I got lighter and lighter, I did get a good look around at the deeper depths, but as soon as I started to head up for my safety stop, Scott had to hang onto me to ensure I didn’t go rocketing to the surface – not a very professional look on my first dive.
We headed back to the jetty for our surface interval and then back out for a dive off the jetty itself (11 metres, 32 degrees) and trust me there is more than enough to see there, you certainly don’t have to go far. Again there were turtles, so many different types of fish, corals etc.
After we finished we got back, had a quick rest and headed to dinner which was a large buffet style set-up with quite a few choices (mainly meat with some salad and a hot veggie dish). After dinner there was a talk on photography, but mainly aimed at those with the big SLR set-ups ($15k benchmark), hard to put into practice when you have a little point and shoot, but we are using this whole trip as a learning experience and to see what our next step will be in the world of underwater photography. Of course it had been a long day so we didn’t party on and had an early night. It was raining, so all the clothes we had washed were now rewashed by the elements.