We dived Thomas Reef and thanks to the lack of breeze, could just keep going around the back of the reef, and likewise we did the same on Jackson Reef, drifting from garden to garden and on around the back. The currents were really running too, so we could just hitch a ride and fly. I sooo thought we would see a shark at some point, but sadly no we were not graced with this bonus. We finished the day with a very gentle drift along Ras Ghamilla.

The next two days were spent diving in Ras Mohammed. The first day we dived, Jack fish Alley… several barracuda and a couple of turtles, The Alternatives.. lots of blue spotted rays and a pyjama slug and Ras Za’atar… some biiig giant trevallies out in the blue, and Shark and Yolande in the afternoon.

The second day was not so friendly. So… we did Jack Fish Alley again first, which again produced a lively reverse current and barracuda.

The plan was to do Shark and Yolande second, however there was a nasty South Easterly breeze which is the only direction that offers zero protection to most of Sharm. We opted to go for Ras Za’atar instead, as it was a little sheltered at the end of the dive. For lunch we stayed in the Marsa Bareika bay hiding from the winds.

In the afternoon we headed for Ras Ghozlani, however the swell had risen to a good couple of metres (OK nothing special for the UK but with our big, wooden boats, it is a nightmare for getting back on board). Regardless, I jumped in for the current check and saw… green!!! Nothing but green!!! I swam and swam looking for a bit of reef where I could get a visual reference, however it took ages until finally I could see dark, murky, sandy reef about 2m in front of me! Hmmm not so nice. Anyway, I dropped down looking for some clarity off the drop off maybe, swam out to one of the big pinnacles on the drop off and encountered a real dusk effect! In fact, there were no fish to see either… they probably thought night was about to fall so had all settled in for the night! Everything was green n murky (wow! quite a novelty but not fun for a group of 8 divers with only me as a guide)… still no clarity over the drop off, so I went back and up and ditched the dive. We tried a little further along, this time George jumped in to take a look, but.. no joy So, plan C try Ras Katy just to get the dive in maybe.

Well… as we headed back, we could see crashing waves up against the cliffs where we live, and it was at that moment that we got the call to bring the boat back in. No dive this afternoon. The swell was really picking up and the police wanted all the boats sheltered in Sharm el Maya by nightfall. We had an interesting half hour organising all our kit boxes to be transferred off the boat in a windy swell that seemed to throw the boat in all directions. Getting off the boat was another interesting moment too!

So were we due another downpour? No… thankfully we only got a few droplets.

The next day we were due to go to Dahab, which is notoriously windy. However while Sharm got battered a bit, we were blessed with flat seas. Note to self… if there is a SE wind and swell in Sharm… head to Dahab!

And now I have a day off.. ahhh relaaax. I am sure it will all kick off again tomorrow… well the wind is due to, even if I don’t hehe.

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Anyway, back to the diving. Our location today is Ras Mohammed and all was looking lovely and flat as we left the jetty.
Our first dive was to be Shark Observatory which is a site I don’t often dive, and every time I do, I wonder why we neglect it.
The site itself is very much a vertical wall of reef folding in and out, dotted with lots of very cool overhangs. It also happens to face the morning sunshine, so in the shallows hosts a frenzy of colourful soft corals. Even today with our hazy sun struggling feebly to shine through the grey blanket, we could still appreciate the glorious pinks and purples of the soft corals, as well as the tiny lime green knobs of coral that polka dot the walls from the top down to about 15M. The current was perfect, so we were able to drift along, barely finning, past gorgonian fans, a small turtle that overtook us (nothing like their landbased counterparts the tortoise there then) and just a whole load of fish and coral.
There is one particularly large gorgonian fan that is right by an overhang big enough to swim back under, which is very cool, although we do have to be careful, as the roof is covered in the tiny lime green knobs of coral which could easily be damaged by a clumsy tank.
As we surfaced the weather had seriously decided to show us a glimpse of winter, with a bit of a breeze picking up from the West, so we took shelter by the cliffs for lunch (only two dives today).
The second dive was to be Shark and Yolande Reefs, my favourite dive, and one that we have actually done three times this week. But with a series of three satellite reefs, and a main reef, not to mention plenty of changeable currents, this is a site that can be dived in sooo many different ways, meaning that no two dives here are ever the same.
We dropped in on Shark Reef today, right on the current’s split and right into a horde of fusiliers out in the blue. Hmm lovely.
The current was quite lively, so we hitched a ride across the front of the reef wall, before tucking in as we reached the sandy saddle that leads to the next reef.. Yolande. We tucked right in, sheltering from the now oncoming current, as we worked our way up towards the shallow main reef where we found a couple of huge friendly napoleon wrasse, and again hitched a ride with the current to drift along towards the wreck of the Yolande, or rather the contents of the wreck. This is the dive famous for its collection of toilets, baths and washbasins. Sat on the sand in front of the wreck, we found possibly the hugest scorpion fish I have ever seen, about the size of a decent grouper, then it turned into blue spotted ray turf, with about five of them hanging out on the sand along side the remains of the containers.
At the bath tubs, we took a left turn back on ourselves towards the Yolande Reef and found a couple of big fat moray eels, before spending the last chunk of our dive meandering around the garden on the front of the reef.
Not a bad day’s diving at all. Even if it was a bit shady, and by the end of the day, decidedly windy Brrr. Thankfully, as the day drew to a close, we could see a strip of sky blue appearing, just in sight beyond the clouds. Yes the sun is on its way back out. Woo Hoo.

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I have already taught my first course of the year, which turned into an Advanced course and since then, have been guiding, mostly in Ras Mohammed for some reason. Sharm is a little on the quiet side this week, so for the last couple of days I have only had between three and six divers! Lots of space to chill out on the boat. Today we were blessed with four dolphins (two couples I think) who circled us, dancing with each other, riding the bow of our boat. This sort of sight is not completely out of the ordinary, however these beauties stayed with us for about 45 minutes! Very very cool.

Shark and Yolande reefs were very cool too, with a very big napoleon wrasse hanging about each time we dived it over the last few days. He comes right up close to say hello, which sadly indicates, that maybe someone is feeding him, but it is still quite a spectacular sight when he comes right up to you and starts eyeballing you in the hope of the snack he is never going to get. The currents were just perfect too, enough to drift nicely but not so much that there is any hard work at all! Excellent.

Local has been pretty cool this week too… we have had a baby Oceanic White tip hanging around! He (or she) was in the gardens to start with, and first turned up at the back of our boat at lunchtime last week (again a little bit of a worry as someone might be throwing out food to cause this behaviour.. who knows). The baby has now moved location to the Temple and Ras Um Sid dive sites, where he has been spending the last few days.

And.. to top it all, we have been bizarrely experiencing a bit of a heatwave! The air temperatures have been up in the high twenties, if not thirty degrees. And the sea is still around 24ºC which is at least a degree higher than normal for this time of year. I know that doesn’t sound particularly drastic, but believe me, it feels it. How random that the Northern hemisphere is wrapped up in snow while we bask in lovely sunshine. I am sure the winds and clouds will make an appearance before the winter is out for sure. We won’t get away with it that easily for sure.

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The novelty was the random gate crasher… he walked in, said hello to everyone, helped himself to vodka and our food… asked after some random guy none of us knew and left about ten minutes later! Hehe… well I guess he had a giggle about it with his fellow crasher this morning.

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Christmas here in Sharm can be a little bit of a challenge. We have two aspects here, firstly we live in a country where Christmas is not traditionally celebrated, so work-wise it is bizarrely “business as usual” with many dive centres and shops open as normal. We also often find that some of the guests who come out at this time of year, actually want to avoid the whole Christmas scenario entirely. Of course many of our guests thankfully come out here for a unique celebration, and some to join us in our celebrations.

Needless to say, we all enjoy Christmas, so endeavour to do our utmost to celebrate it as best we can.

This year I was working on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, although the latter, I found myself doing a Discover Scuba Course meaning that I was done by lunchtime…

Christmas Eve was great fun, I was teaching a couple of friends of mine on a speciality course, who bizarrely I taught to dive on Christmas Day four years ago, when I was a relative newbie! We had a fun day, but what made it the most fun was the fact that at lunchtime, a baby shark turned up at the back of our boat!!! A baby white tip oceanic! How cool was that? There was a diver still on the ladder right by it, and he got a great look at the shark, until it got just a little too curious for his liking! I have never seen someone fly up a ladder quite that quickly. The shark hung around entertaining everyone for a good ten minutes or so, before heading off into the blue. We were on Middle Garden, a location where shark sightings are really not to be expected at all!

Then to make our day even better, a huge eagle ray turned up on our afternoon dive. It had a couple of remoras stuck to it, and was trying to shake them off, which was great to watch. Then after a couple of minutes, off he flew off, again into the blue. What a great day.

This was topped off with our Christmas party.. as a multinational group we celebrate both European and British Christmasses here, so Christmas Eve is our first “family” party. Each person had cooked something, George spicy roast potatoes and me bread sauce and steamed brussel sprouts… nothing was missed out, we had pigs in blankets (no pork in sight of course) a huge roast turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, roast and steamed veggies, bread sauce and not to forget the gravy.. hmmmm. And Santa was not missed out, Disco Dave donned the costume and dished out our secret santa gifts.. not sure that some of them were that secret by the end of the evening hehe.

Christmas Day was fun too. The morning bit wasn’t, as I had a seven o’clock pick up (ouch.. getting up at 6am after our Christmas party was a challenge) but once I had had a cuppa, all was fine. We had a few presents around our dinky tree, so hubbie and I opened them up together, then it was off to work for us both.

I had a group of three teenagers for a Discover Scuba Diving course. Well one was eleven, but he was as tall as me, so kind of counts as a teen in my book. All three did really well, and we had an awesome dive. I will not forget the 11 year old’s eyes lighting up when we found nemo nestled in an anenome towards the end of our dive. We also had a huge shoal of Spanish Mackerel swirling around in a baitball.. very cool stuff for all of us.

Once the dives were logged and certificates handed out, we were off for a quick Christmas nip in T2 our favourite bar in Sharm. There we wished our mate Monty a very Happy Christmas before heading off to our own Christmas dinner on our friends’ balcony overlooking the bay, bathed in glorious (and quite hot for this time of year) sunshine! By the end of the day, we had had more than enough food and wine for one day, and managed to have a particularly lovely Christmas.

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We had nine students between three instructors, so not a particularly busy day. Once briefings were done and kit set up, we separated the group between instructors and I took my three into the flat calm shallows. Being fairly early in the day, the visibility was fantastic. I guess, being winter there are a few less swimmers in the water too, so the sand was still nicely settled on the bottom.

So all kitted up, we practiced retrieving our regulators and breathing from them (whilst still stood up on the surface), all good there.. so we leant forward to put our faces in the water to breathe that way. Again all good there. All three of my students appeared quite calm and were breathing nice and slow, getting used to the sensation of bubbles around their faces. Nice one!

So… we knelt down on the bottom (still in water only chest deep). A bit of a floaty moment from one lady, so a couple of extra kilos popped in her pockets helped her out, and all was good. All three peeps were sat appearing nice n chilled out just breathing. So I gave it a couple of minutes to make sure they were good, all clear “ok” signals came back at me.

Next step was to demonstrate the first of a couple of very basic skills that we take our students through before we take them out on their swim with the fishes.

I signalled “all of you watch me” and began to demonstrate how to remove my regulator, pop it back in my mouth and clear it, when one of my students began frantically pointing to the surface. I shot to him, tried to get him to slow his breathing down, but no he wanted to go up, so up we stood and he said “No… it’s not for me” Wow! Where did that come from? All had been looking fine down there, he had shown no indication that he was anything less than perfectly happy. “No I want to get out, I don’t want to do it” Ok, so I explained that breathing slowly could help, and why not just try it one more time, to make sure. He could just sit there, not do any skills “NO.. I hate it, I felt claustrophobic” “no don’t want to do it” with such determination, that there was not a lot much else I could say. I don’t try to force anyone to do something they hate, and in reality scuba diving is not for everyone, but at the same time I do try to get people to give it a fair chance and have a good try. There is nothing worse than feeling that someone bottled out too soon and then regretted it later, but this chap was adamant he wasn’t going to do it. What a shame. So I called Samir our assistant who waits on the beach to help out in just this kind of situation, who came and helped my student to the shore and back to the dive centre.

And then there were two. All went fine, we completed the skills, had a little practice swim around and stood up for a quick chat.

Everyone had plenty of air, so off we went for our dive.

All went well until one of my students started really struggling with her mask.. it just didn’t sit right on her face so had a constant small leak, which she had been coping with fine until this point, so up she wanted to go. Hmm not ideal, we were still in confined water, but at a good three metres depth, so not the best for her ears.

Anyway up we went, and I offered my mask instead. I know I can cope with a leaky mask, and my mask was more likely to fit her small face. Of course by this stage, I had run out of spit, so hardly had anything with which to de-fog my new mask. So the inevitable happened. Once we were down my mask started to steam up.. bugger. So I kept flooding it to clear the steam every few minutes, but literally it would fog up on the breath I was using to clear the mask.. Oh no. I was struggling to see the reef and my students, let alone spot anything of interest in the distance. Hmmmm what to do? I had heard that if you take your mask off, lick the inside of the glass and replace it this works too… so I had nothing to lose. I took the mask off.. Oooh I can see better without my mask than with it!! Well it was a bit of a fumble, removing my reg, getting my mask close enough to my face in order to lick the inside of each lense.. but I did it.. and popped it back on.. cleared it, and yes it was ok… cool! For a few minutes, and then inevitably it began to fog up again.. doh! Anyway, as the remove, lick, replace thingy had worked a bit, I did it again, this time trying to really get a good lick around each bit of glass and this definitely helped a bit better.

Somehow we managed to do a full 45 minute dive like this, well I guess time passes quickly when you are busy hehe. We did get to see plenty of life still, and my students seemed completely unfased by the fact that their instructor had to keep whipping her mask off and licking it! All in a day’s work, I guess hehe.

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