So a great opportunity arose this week… the chance to go on a mini liveaboard to learn the ropes and some of the sites that we don’t get to visit on our normal day boats. “Fantastic” I thought, the chance to broaden my scope as a guide as well as get in some good diving and experience. Of course the night before we left, I was filled in on all the horror stories… tales of waking up at 3 am to hear the mooring lines snapping and having to chuck kit on, jump in and re-tie in the dark, of the boat getting a bit leaky and possibly sinking (I have heard of that happening for real… though not on one of our boats!) Suggestions of spooky midnight night dives on the Thistlegorm wreck too, kind of fired my imagination a touch. That was just the tip of the iceberg.
As it turned out, to my shame, I woke up feeling a little off-colour on day one… warned George… and by the time he was briefing the first dive I was in our cabin hurling up breakfast! Thankfully it only lasted the day, but considering, I had been wanting to do the trip to gain experience and knowledge, it meant that I missed out on quite a chunk of diving.
The planning of the dives went slightly out of the window due to the fact that our boat was in fact a turtle, masquerading as a dive boat! The cabins, saloon and crew were fantastic… but the owner was on board, who ruled his staff with an iron rod and would not allow them to use full steam. I think the worst moment was when one of our day boats flew past us on the way to the Thistlegorm wreck! One of the real selling points of doing a liveaboard is that you usually moor up on this remote wreck, giving you the rare chance to dive it at night as well as meaning that you are already there in order to jump in at the crack of dawn, hopefully getting the site to yourselves. This couldn’t happen, as the owner would not allow us to moor the boat there over night, in case bad weather built up (which, I must admit it, often can).
Having said all that, I did get the chance to build up on my experience and knowledge anyway… and added to that, we had a great group of divers, so all in all had a good few days.
The only down-side was that I missed the IDC party. We had 4 of our new divemasters on the course this time, all of whom passed really well from what I hear, and due to the number of our staff who seem to have popped off to Thailand, most of our newbies got the chance to get in a good week of working for the college.

OK so I have no excuse to have been a little quiet over the last month, I have been out of the water for the last week! But… I guess as a result I also didn’t have a particularly vast amount of stuff to talk about.
I do have a little warning to share with all you dive professionals out there though. And I guess those of you who are so keen on the sport that you just keep going, even when your body is telling you to stop.
As you can imagine, there is quite a bit of pressure (mostly self inflicted) on instructors and guides to keep diving and accepting all the work that comes your way. Well, I had been doing this for some time, really glad of any work that I have been offered. I knew I had come back after a couple of colds a little early, but I could still equalise, so thought nothing more of carrying on. Well, it kind of hit a head last week, when I got one week of work merging straight into another and my ears started actually hurting. They had been feeling muffled for some time, but I had carried on… ooops. Against all my better judgement and any advice that I give to other divers!
When I eventually did get around to seeing the doctor I was so sure that he would say that I was being very sensible, but because there was no major pain, I was not to worry.
How wrong was I? I was told in no uncertain terms that I had given myself a chronic barotrauma and that whilst there was no perforation at present, I ran the risk of messing my eardrum up completely if I didn’t take some time out straight away. Ooops!
The good news is that I followed the doctor’s advice and all is now back to normal. I should be in the water by Monday. He did give me a few tips though, which I will share here:
Chew sugarfree gum, not only exercising your eustacian tubes, the xylotol acts like a natural antibiotic.
Drink warm drinks
Eat lots of protein
Boost your vitamin C intake
All common sense things, granted, but if they can help another diver avoid damaging their ears, that can only be a good thing.