There was a very early dive (6am?) to see hammerhead sharks. Imthi advised against as the visibility was too poor but naturally the Japanese were mad for it. On theother hand, breakfast was at 7.30 so we had to be up anyway. Helen noticed from [reading] the book that the knowledge reviews were missing. Imthi tried to suggest that we just do the in-chapter questions (which have the answers below!) but we convinced him to find a copy [of the book] on a resort and copy the knowledge reviews. He has to do something for his money! This is becoming quite like Cliff, of DTS, suggested: you pay your money for secondhand books that you share and don't keep. Not the best system in the world.
At the lunchtime dive we do the underwater navigation exercises. These consist of following a square pattern, swimming away and back along a straight line and counting fin kicks over a fixed distance. It's all a bit of a farce. Helen was a bit nervous about the whole affair so I promised to set things up easily. The idea was that I would do the first two sides of the square, then Helen the last two. Helen having to make sure she did the equivalent of my ten fin kicks. Underwater the current was too strong outside the main reef so we went into a narrow channel. Ten fin kicks were to become six [to fit in the space]. To keep things simple for Helen we were to use 0, 90, 180 and 270 degrees on the compass and move clockwise round the square. That meant that [when underwater, on the scene] I had to quickly calculate what angle to start at such that we didn't swim into a rock.
Everything went quite well, in the end, though we did sink a few metres -- clearly terrain following! Six fin kicks doesn't take you very far so you could just look up and swim but I guess that would look pretty obvious and by the strange way of such things you actually obsess with the compass often to the detriment of your head when you hit something you've not seen. Swimming forward and back is again pretty easy, the only complication being Helen swam out and I back so we had to count fin kicks. I don't think anyone was particularly worried if we ended up back where we started -- there was a slight current and an obvious surge to and fro -- more the principle of the thing. Counting fin kicks along a fixed length seemed pretty pointless (the idea being to know how far you travel per kick [which potentially changes based on the conditions]) though it was interesting to note how the surge affects you. Surge shouldn't matter as it should cancel [itself] out over distance but it's odd to be taking several fin kicks and not budge, then in half a kick cover a third of the target distance. On the other hand, throughout these exercises I did start breathing per fin kick when I was counting them which wastes a huge amount of air. Clearly my brain can't count and breathe at the same time, they must be synchronous.
We popped onto Bandos, one of the resort islands for a quick wander. Useful for everyone bar Helen and I as we're on two islands next week. If Bandos (two and four times the size of our islands) is anything to go by then a) we won't be diving and b) we won't be doing anything else, either -- all too expensive! I don't hold out much hope for Helen getting her hair products on the islands.
We park up [anchor] near to the new island they're building [as you do] only 200m from where we were last Saturday.
Blue Shark Two, anchored at N4.21628 E73.53331 Elev. 60m!
A quick visit to the Soleil, the sister boat of the Blue Shark Two. The Japanese seemed to go primarily for the jacuzzi -- [the offer of] which never quite translated into English. We just had a nose [about].
Copyright 2002 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.