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OK so I’m no longer strictly on dry land (Currently in the Pool doing OW courses), but I have been having some fun with the internet. Not only have I found the MySpace site that all my old mates seem to be on! But I have also found an ace site YouTube!!! If you want to see anything that has ever been on TV or film, try looking there. You can see a bit of me in my previous life here too
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So what do you do in Sharm when you are not working? Good question. I could have joined a boat fun diving today on the Thistlegorm and am kind of regretting not going as we speak. Especially looking out at the conditions, flat calm, bright sunshine (although that almost always goes without saying). More than one day off and you do start looking for stuff to do. Of course if you are on holiday, there is plenty, we have quad biking, sand boarding, hangover recovery as well as the usual watersports such as snorkling, wake boarding water skiing etc.
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Well back to guiding again this week. This time we had quite a contrast of abilities on the boat, we had some with hundreds of dives, and some with less than ten, so the group was inevitably going to go separate ways the next day. It’s always a toughie that one, I have had divers with less than 10 dives who were sweet as in the water, and ones with over 100 dives struggling to get control. However at the end of the day, experience does generally rule the roost and my first reaction is not to take anyone inexperienced too far afield.
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Thankfully the winds eventually died down, much to the relief of my new bunch of students who’d heard talk of the cancelled diving and winds earlier, so were concerned about their course. In fact in total contrast, the seas are now glassy smooth, and looking out over the bay, it is sooo flat, I can see the Ras Mohammed cliffs reflected in the sea below them.
We had a good week in the end, resulting in three open water divers, one scuba diver and one who had whilst not mastering the whole caboodle, had certainly reached new heights (or rather depths) that she had never thought possible.
I also had my first fun dive in 10 months! Woo hoo! We did a little drift from Ras Bob to Nasrani which was totally awesome. This was the first time I had just jumped on a boat and been the only instructor fun diving, so just tagged along with the group doing my own thing, nice n slow, nice n shallow. I have decided to change the way I guide this dive forever, as it really is not worth going below 20m on this one at all, it is stunning in the shallows. And come safety stop time, I just hung around on the plateau of corals struck by the colours, pinks, purples, greens and blues just surrounding me at all angles, really very, very pretty. I must fun dive more often, as you get so distracted with looking for stuff for the guests to see, or checking for guests (!) that you can miss so much. The only downside was that I didn’t have the distraction of the guests to take my mind of the fact that I was dying for a pee!!!
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Well once again we have another windy day.
This time I was headed out to have my first day of fun diving in the last 10 months, typical. As we walked onto the jetty we could hear waves crashing against the little beach there, sloshing water up between the wooden slats to give us a nice soaking!
By the time the boat began lurching towards us, we were already beginning to have second thoughts. I had kind of come to the conclusion that this was not going to be a good day for my mum to chill out as a snorkler on the boat, and was beginning to think twice about the day’s diving for myself.
Then one of the larger boats lurched back pushed by the swell jolting the whole structure we were standing on. Suddenly the jetty itself began to feel more than a little vulnerable with heaving boats stacked either side, things were not looking too promising. Skippers were screaming at their crews and each other to let lines out or pull forward in attempts to prevent further collisions, but to no avail.
After a few more jolts from various boats, and Ali declaring that while he will go out for us, he was refusing to sign anything taking responsibility in these conditions.
The wind is coming in from the south bringing with it some weather, so on hearing this it was the guests themselves that made the call not to go out today. The thing is, when the wind is from the south here, there is no shelter for diving at all.
I can hear as I write the wind picking up once again having had sandstorms while we ate lunch (hmmm crunchy!) and… rare for Egypt it has just started to rain. That’s the second time this winter!
