Yes it was back to guiding this week, which was cool.

We had a good bunch of guests, one of whom was a bit of a fish magnet, so that was great. Whenever he was in my group, he spotted all the fish!!! I would be focusing on a nudibranch or trying to point out a scorpion fish hidden under a coral tree, when he would be pointing frantically out to the blue at a huge napoleon wrasse!!! Another dive, I was bimbling along, again looking for little stuff, when he grabbed my leg to show me three very big eagle rays gliding past!! Very cool stuff. To doubly confirm his status, when he went on a different trip to us, they only got to see a whale shark!!!! Wow!

Talking of whale sharks, we are not sure if it is a single one, or several, but they have been cropping up again in and around Ras Mohammed. Well the temperature has dropped and there is a bit of plankton around, so maybe they have come back from wherever they hid during the summer. I’m not about to complain, and am quite happy to have another whale shark fest this winter. Wouldn’t that be fantastic if this became a seasonal event???

The water has cooled off a bit, but it is only the guides that are complaining so far. The sea, after an initial drop, has warmed back up to around 25-26ºC, so it is only the wind chill that is really making anyone feel cold.

So it is the weekend now, and I actually have both days off, so that is a nice chance to relax a bit…. fix the drysuit (yes, it lasted a mere month before leaking like a drain yesterday!) and of course do all the usual home stuff that we all end up doing on our days off wherever we live… washing cleaning etc… even in paradise hehe.

So… yes the pool was cool, but thankfully they have now turned the heating on for winter, so it is once more a balmy 27ºC.

Our course was successful with all four students passing and I think enjoying their new sport.. hehe. Now see the bank balances drop as they buy kit… I remember all too well how distraught I was when I realised what an expensive hobby I had undertaken when I first learned to dive.

We had a bit of a traumatic week to start, as Boo the cat (yes of “kitten news” fame) decided to go walkabout for a couple of days. I was distraught as she had never gone missing before… well not for more than a couple of hours. This had been two days! Just as I had posted a facebook message to every single person I knew in Sharm, she walked in the door! Very hungry and strangely affectionate, but alive and apparently quite well. Grief, that was a scare! Well, she has been my little friend since she was born nearly three years ago and was brought to live on my balcony by her stray mum “Betty”.

After a nice weekend spent sorting out DiveBunnie Tee shirts, and watching the footie (OK that would be George.. not me) I am back in the classroom today, teaching Open Water.

Rumour has it that the pool is now a bit on the chilly side… Oooo we shall see how that goes down with the students.

So I didn’t quite make it to November in my wetsuit. Shame on me, although I wasn’t the first guide in Sharm to resort to a drysuit to keep warm. I think one or two others got in there ahead of me.

I made it to Halloween before I just had to swap over. I had even ended up having to see an osteopath because my back and neck had seized up through getting too cold. Can you believe that in a desert??

I must say that I am now toasty warm in my lovely drysuit, that is for the record, about to keep me from freezing for its fourth winter.

This morning we had fun and games on the jetty, which was a shame as this had been the first time so far this week where we had actually reached the jetty without delay and were anticipating the chance of doing three dives. Well, as we pulled up, I could see all the boats lurching from side to side in a rather nasty swell coming in from the East… Oooo not good.

All our guests were ushered back away from the checkpoint whilst the boat was called in, and then as soon as it was on the jetty, and final paperwork done, we were only then allowed to go out onto the jetty. Those of you who have been here before know it is a floating jetty, so hence the reluctance to let us wait on it, simply because it moves! And in swell, it moves a lot!

Anyway, we were on the boat and out on our way in record time, doing our final checks in the harbour away from the lurching platform. Sadly, despite all our speedy checks, we were still quite delayed by the event, and with the president in town, we had to drive 3miles out from the coastline, adding an extra hour to our journey. So… once again we had a two dive day.

Once we reached Tiran, amazingly conditions were fantastic!!! The swell had been coming in from the East, so as soon as we were in the shadow of Tiran island, the rolling swell and waves disappeared! In fact as it happened, Tiran was the only place in Sharm with nice conditions for diving… actually the Alternatives would have been nice as well.

Well after a lovely day, diving around half of Thomas Reef, and doing Jackson reef as a semi-drift dive with the reef to ourselves in the afternoon, we headed back on our lengthy detour to the jetty. Despite efforts of the skipper to cut the corner a little, we still got radioed by the police to “turn left” and stay out of the exclusion zone.

As we pulled up to moor, we saw the damage, which to be honest, should not have surprised us… a whole chunk of the jetty was completely detached from the rest. You could even see where a huge metal pole running through the concrete had been severed by the swell! It just goes to show the power of water. I must admit, at one point in the morning, I half expected them to close it down and cancel diving for the day. Kind of glad they didn’t, as we did have a lovely day in the end, rather surprisingly. Had the wind been only a few degrees to the North, we would have been pummeled by it all day. Oooo.