Ahhhh much better! I was on the beach today, and the viz was fantastic!!! Especially in the shallows, it was really nice n clear. Of course, I have since realised that this could be because the sunbathers just aren’t bothering to get in the water, seeing as the temperature has dropped somewhat. Don’t panic, it is still 25º in the water, and during the day the sun is still glorious, but you don’t get that urge these days to jump in, cool off and go for a swim so much! Hehe.

Of course once I had jumped in with my students and got them navigating a series of squares and various reciprocal headings, needless to say things got a bit cloudy! Hmmm. Still they all did very well, and we even saw an eagle ray on the first dive. Coool

Hmmm, well my wishes last week were not met. Now I know why some students who’ve trained in the UK haven’t had much swimming around. The instructors daren’t just in case they lose them!!! We just about managed to get open water dives one and two done, but with minimum time spent underwater, and not a huge amount of swimming around.. well on the first dive we had about one metre viz, if that! Oooo.

Thankfully things settled a little, and whilst the Red Sea College area was rougher on the surface than our area, the water was a little clearer. And… we left it as late as possible before jumping in, in the hope that things would flatten off. Well I wouldn’t exactly say that they “flattened” but it the waves did lessen slightly.

Thankfully the next day we were on the boat, so our students actually got a taster of what it is really like to dive in the Red Sea!

This week, I was back on a boat guiding. All good fun, and the sun is still shining, but the wind still kicking around!!! Bizarrely our instructors are kind of dressed from one extreme to the other at the mo. You have myself, and several others (including some of the guys, I hasten to add) all wrapped up in drysuits because of that pesky wind. And then you have the others still in shorties.. even rash vests and shorts!!! I was on the front of Yolande yesterday, and we had a couple of boats there, resulting in four of our groups of divers ending their dive on the garden (bit of a reverse current, no waaay could we get to the wreckage). Anyway, I had to chuckle to myself as I passed my fellow guide happy in shorts and a rash vest, then another colleague wrapped up in his drysuit, finally another in his shortie!

Despite these ponderings during my dive (you would have thought I had nothing better to do) we did have quite an eventful one. The currents were howling, bringing with them the usual hordes, so as well as the heaps of fish, we had a turtle (young boy) big free-swimming moray, the napoleon family, scorpion fish and crocodile fish. Most of which were actually on the Yolande garden all at the same time! (along with all our divers seeing as no one could get around the corner! hehe).

Unfortunately, after such a glorious dive, there had to be a payback, and it was the surface conditions… whilst we were under, the swell had picked up and we surfaced to big, swelly waves!!! Getting back on the boat was interesting, and I nearly got washed straight back off again! Got a couple of nice bruises to show for it.. ooo.

So yesterday we were to be teaching at the beach.. Oh it’s great I reassured my students, telling them they would definitely see fish, even on their first confined water session… Ooops. How could I have been so wrong!?
As we entered the water it was a bit on the swelly side, but not horrendous. However as we waded in, I couldn’t even see my feet (unheard of here in our fantastic, crystal clear waters) let alone any fish! I kept waiting to reach clearer water, and whilst it cleared a little, it was never good. We had a very cosy first session, with my students literally holding on to each other and me, to make sure that they were within sight at all times. We managed to get a few initial skills done, but the thought of actually swimming off was not really an option, so we scrapped the rest of the dive. I popped over to another confined area of the beach to see if it was any clearer there, however the angle of the wind meant that they actually had surf! Diving instructors were scrapping dives all over the place. I had to turn sideways to prevent myself being knocked over by the waves as I went to see if it was clearer!! Hmmm… maybe not… even if it was clearer.. there was too much swell! So it was back to the classroom for us and a slight change of plan for the next day (swimming pool please!).
So today we were in the pool… oooo nice and clear viz, but chilly brrr. Due to the ditching of stuff yesterday we had a lot to do. Thankfully my students were great, and everything got done ready for their open water dives tomorrow.
Lets’ hope the wind is a little friendlier this time.