Dive Club Liveaboard

Liveaboard Trip

6 Sept - 8 Sept 2019

* this is a particularly long one, so if you have time give it read, but if not no worries:) Enjoy!

Friday

This was a 2 day 3 night trip on a two deck boat named the Kalinda exploring the Great Barrier Reef! The adventure began friday night when we had to meet the boat downtown at 7:30pm to load on everyone and all our dive gear. The captain, Dan, gave us all a briefing of the boat and the rules we needed to abide by. Afterward, Curtis who was in charge of the trip, gave us a rundown of the weekends schedule and what time we needed to be ready the next day… which was 7am. We departed the dock at 10:30pm to make the 6 hour treck out to our first destination… Wheeler Cay! 

There were a couple of different groups of people on the boat. First and foremost, the crew of 3 that did everything on the boat whether manning it, mechanics, cooking, any an everything! They were amazing and I could not have been more appreciative of all the work they did! The second group was the dive club leaders, all who put in 110% making sure everything ran smoothly, everyone was prepared for the days activities, helping with gear set up, and so much more! The second group were the dive master trainees, all from different parts of the world and levels of experience. Personally, they were the most interesting group to talk to for me because among them I met a lad named Charlie. He is my new favorite person because he did his first masters doing research on Humpback Whales and worked in whale watching!! He’s been giving me some great advice and at the same time reminding me how optimistic I still am in the environmental field, for which many become pessimistic in. The next group were the FUN divers! Those lucky ducks who were already advanced certified or even some who were already divemasters and were able to just have fun and enjoy the weekend! Not to say I wasn’t, but my group was spending a good part of our free time reading our advanced open water books making sure we were prepared for each of our dives. 

My instructor on the far left and my fellow advanced divers (minus Dale). 

Marta (blue) was from Italy, Alaina (red) was from Maine, Gabs (navy) was from Miami, Mtarti (black) was from Bali, and Iselin (white) was from Norway. 

Saturday

We woke up to the stunning site of the sun rising over the Pacific Ocean. At 8:30am we were all suited up and ready to go for our first dive. For everyone of our dives, we had a divemaster trainee (DMT) tag along pulling up the back of our group. My instructor, Marta, wanted to practice buoyancy with us on this dive so she had our DMT bring a hula hoop with weights. She set it up in the sand and had us swim through it with our face and stomach up, without knocking into it or getting caught in it. By luck or confidence I was the first to go and had no problem… but everyone else after me struggled… so I kind of just sat in the sand watching the fish go in and out of the coral haha. The currents in this area were just crazy pants strong, which was a first for me to experience.

STORY TIME… When we came up to the surface, we saw that the currents had moved us far away from the boat. So one of the crew members had to come get us with the dingy. He could only take 4 at a time, so he brought half of our group back to the main boat. In the mean time myself, Marta, Iselin, and Dale were just floating at the surface waiting for him to come back to get us. Right as he comes back to us the engine caputs. He spent a good 10 minutes trying to get it up and running again, but water had managed to get inside. SO, after floating in the water for a while we take off our gear and load it onto the boat and all jump in. We figure we can paddle back to the main boat with the two oars inside, but alas one of them was broken. Paddle with our fins perhaps? That only worked so much haha. SO what else can you do at this point… perhaps jump in and start kicking the boat from the back… YEP! Marta and I volunteered and honestly it wasn’t bad! I had my mask on, snorkel in, and fins on getting a great workout while looking at the beautiful coral below!!! 

Our second dive we worked on navigation. Marta brought down a compass to have us all practice with by going in a straight line back and forth and in a square, all while purely looking at the compass. We all did a good job and finished early, so we took the rest of the time to swim around and explore the reef. For this dive Charlie was our DMT. It was nice to be able to swim around unobstructed by a camera fully appreciating everything around me! Lunch was amazing!!! I couldn’t tell you specifically what it was, because that detail is a bit fuzzy at this point, but the food for the whole weekend was SO good! It’s a real shame to say that the meals I had on a boat were of far better quality than my regular meals at my dining hall. But hey, it’s making me creative with the meals I have and actually forcing me to try new foods (save your “horrays” for when I come home, you know who you are haha).

For the afternoon the boat got moved to a different part of the reef, but still just as stunning!! And this time it was our FUN dive and we could bring our cameras!! Remi was our DMT and he guided us around the reef with Marta bringing up the tale because she brought her camera too. In this area and the ones from the morning dives, I have never seen so much coral!!! They were HUGE reefs with beautiful and healthy coral! It was really one of those moments that just makes your heart flutter and raises your spirits that areas like these still do exist and are thriving! 

You will not see this Acropora in Florida:( so beautiful 

Our last dive of the day was a night dive! I’ve only done one night dive before, but it was in an enclosed space (Devils Den). What I always thought would be my fear diving in the open ocean at night was not knowing what was around me, but honestly it was just not seeing in general. The flash light I got was really dim anyways, so I was worried it was going to die on me. But thankfully the DMT that came with us this time, Jack, taped me on the shoulder when we were down there and switched lights with me because he had another on his camera set up. We worked on navigation again while we were down here, but I was the last one left and didn’t manage to go because an Epaulette Shark came by and sat down in the sand. Probably one of my favorite moments was before and after the dive when we had to swim a bit to get to the spot where we needed to descend. The sky was FULL of stars, more stars than I have ever seen because we were in the middle of the ocean and the only source of light was the boat lol. Absolutely stunning!!! 

Sunday 

It was a late night when we came back to the boat, because we had to finish reading up on deep water and wreck dives for sunday. And oh were we excited to find out in Curtis’ briefing that we needed to be ready to jump in the water at 6am!!! Now the wake up process… lemme tell you haha… first off I did not sleep at all, I woke up and it was dark outside and then about 10 min after I woke up Curtis screams that there’s a whale! I scrambled around my room in the dark for my glasses to go outside only to see him smiling and i’m like, where’s the whale… no response. So NOT cool to cry wolf on a whale, I was actually mad for a while about that! But little did I know I would actually be able to see one later in the day, which we’ll get to! 

Our site of the day was the SS Yongala, a shipwreck from 1915 that has become a hub for huge species and aggregations and a world famous dive site! It was a really interesting spot to see, but man is dive site seeing a really luck driven thing. So many of the other divers saw huge sting rays, a bull shark in the distance and eels. I saw none of those, but I did get to see a big grouper, a pufferfish and some cool pelagic fish. 

We did the early morning dive here and another one later in the morning. We needed to be done by a certain time, because we had to be back to the dock by 5pm, but we were so good on time that we got back at 3:30pm!! The rest of the day went as so… 

• Filled out my dive log book 
• Had more good meals and lots of fruit
• Talked to the girls in my group and other people on the boat
• Downloaded the pictures from my go pro
• Got a weird spell of an upset stomach
• Charlie spotted a whale, but I didn’t see it, so I proceeded to sit on the top deck looking. The next day I find out I got a really bad sunburn on my thighs from sitting up there wearing shorts lol. 
• Talking to the captain and we both spot something really weird in the water. First we both thought it was a diver that got lost, then we thought it was a dugong (the Pacific's version of a manatee) and then finally it came to the surface… two GIANT sea turtles “piggy back riding.” Dan looks over at me and asks, “you know what kind of turtles those were” and I say “happy turtles.” He got a kick out of that hahaha
• And then about 2 hours later i’m sitting in the kitchen when one of the fun divers comes down and says that Dan saw a spout. I literally bolted upstairs so fast because it was not a joke this time!!! And low and behold, we saw it again way way out in the distance!!! He was doing tail smacks on the water and I honestly broke down into tears immediately when I saw it with my own eyes! Charlie was standing next to me and he gave me a hug, because he knew how special of a moment this was for me!! 

• And basically the rest of the day didn’t matter because I was so giddy and happy that I saw a whale and watched it play around for I don’t even know how long, because time stopped and I was just mesmerized watching! 
• Once we got back to land though Marta presented us our Advanced Open Water certificates, which was so sweet! I also really wanted a big ice cream cone and that thing hit the spot!!! We caught the bus back to campus and I was in bed by 8:30pm after which I slept straight for 12 hours!

It was an amazing weekend that I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to do! And I was blessed to spend it with an amazing group of people!! Memories I will cherish forever and now I get to explore the ocean to new depths!! The adventure is only up from here!