Anyway, off we went on the first dive and skills out of the way we went off to have a look at some reef n fishes. Being first in the water meant the visibility was great and the early divers often get to see something special. And we weren’t disappointed, not long into the dive we spotted a young eagle ray passing by, then two more blue spotted rays on the Moevenpick Reef together with lots of puffer fish and the usual parrot fish, and right at the end we were met by a giant trevallie sidling around in the shallows. No doubt on the prowl for breakfast.

Our second dive we were blessed with a huge whip tail ray (rather like a feather tail ray without the feather), and another blue spotted ray. This dive we also got to see a huge malabar grouper (more like the size we normally get in Ras Mohammed) a free swimming yellow edged moray eel and right at the end, a small moses sole. Not bad for a qualifying dive.

And now I have an afternoon to myself, to entertain the cat. Who has taken to staying out much more at the moment.. the temperature is perfect for her outside, so she had best make the most of it before it gets too chilly for her at night.

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Our first dive was to be Jackson Reef, on which we had moored, right on top of the garden itself. In reality, this particular mooring is not always an ideal location, as the current can run quite fast here, and it doesn’t give you a whole lot of room to manoever. There are other lines along the reef, which today were full. Luckily there was very little in the way of current indeed, which is a little strange considering it is a full moon at the moment.

So, in we jumped, and swam on the surface towards the reef. Once tucked in safely, we dropped down, right beside a shoal of fusiliers all gathered in the blue under the boats! Beautiful. There were a couple of giant trevallies on a hunting mission, throwing the fusiliers into panic mode, so one minute they would all be sat, chilling in the breeze, then suddenly they would all shoot downwards like a blue rainstorm.

Whilst the visibility wasn’t quite the usual gin clear vis that we get in Tiran, it was still pretty glorious, and the hazy sunshine did decide to make an appearance during the dive, bringing to life the garden of colours in the shallows. As mentioned earlier, the current was most gentle, allowing us to amble out over the garden, taking in all the fish and corals. We saw big black and white snappers (named after the funky black and white juveniles) in the shallows, all noses into the mild current, hordes of red toothed trigger fish (named after their tiny red teeth), seargent majors, cornet fish, a baby napoleon wrasse, all sorts.

Due to our location, we kind of took a figure of eight route, gradually working our way back and forth up the reef, getting shallower and shallower. Until we finished our dive bathed in sunshine amongst the colours in the shallows.

Our second dive was Thomas Reef, another of my favourites. This was to be a drift dive, although the current was soo mild we had to fin… that wasn’t the plan! Anyway, once again we dropped down into another shoal of fusiliers! This time they were so densely packed we were surrounded by electric blue, fish blind! And again a couple of hefty trevallies were on the hunt. We swam against the current into this shoal for some time, it was soo pretty. And the garden on this part of the reef is also quite lovely. It gets the sunshine at this time of day, so again the colours were out in force, despite the day being a little on the dull side.

Eventually I thought we had better turn around and follow in the same direction as the other divers on the boat (not much fun for the skipper if we all surfaced dotted around the reef). We were doing a shallow dive, so whilst we swam out a little into the blue to look over the canyon, we didn’t spend much time there before returning into the reef again.

I thought it would be quite good to spend as much time as I could on the sunny side of the reef, so doubled back a bit, so we could enjoy the front of the reef, where we don’t normally get to look when on a deeper dive. Some cool tuna passed us by, and again the trevallies sauntered past in their little gang. The wind had died down, so it was ok for us to head around the North side, so round we turned and headed towards the North corner of the reef where again you can get gatherings of fish in the currents.

Once our time was done, it was up to the shallows for us, for our safety stop and to head back to the surface.

Time for lunch. Hmmm. That was officially my days’ work done (ok minus the logistics side at the end of the day, organising the transfers of our guests’ kit, collecting lunch money, ordering tanks etc).

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So on we went, videos one, two and three watched, and knowledge sessions done in the morning, followed by sorting out the kit and getting some grub (not necessarily in order of priority there!). Then it was into the water for the afternoon.

My guy was very keen, as his girlfriend already dives (although in my experience, this very often is not a good reason to learn to dive) and turned out to be great. I ran the first water sessions a bit like a Discover Scuba, doing the first confined session, and then heading out to Open Water Dive One… a great way to get to look at the fish and coral very early on. And as we were doing the confined work in a bouyed off area in the shallows, it really wasn’t much of a transition to go back in and just swim out a bit further to see some stuff. Very cool.

My student turned out to be great! He had natural neutral buoyancy on the first dive! Very relaxed in the water, we went on and had a great dive, saw blue spotted rays and fond Nemo, all the usual bits n bobs that we find off the beach.

Well after the dive, we even had time for a couple of the confined surface skills and to watch another video! As my student was streaking ahead of things I suggested we might even be able to finish the course early, but only if he was up for it.

Day two was more confined water sessions, which again went really well. The only skill he had to repeat was the CESA (and that one can be a bit of a toughie the first time around). And we still had plenty of time for lots of swimming around to fine tune his buoyancy. We finished all the skills that morning, so changed tanks and went in for Open Water Dive number two. Great stuff! The afternoon was spent back in the classroom finishing off the knowledge sections and doing the exam. A healthy 90% pass there, so we were able to go on a boat for our last day of the course.

Final day, we just had the last two Open Water dives to do, with their respective skills, and another Open Water Diver joins the throng.

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So we had a bit of a last minute, throw the caution to the wind (we can’t afford it, but let’s go anyway) trip to see family in the States and now we are back in Sharm, after what I must say was a much needed break. We had a great time walking around the streets of New Canaan (picture perfect Connecticut town) as well as of course around New York itself… lots of walking to be done there!

And now we are back to work. They started us off easy with beach work on the Monday, and I am now teaching an Open Water course… just one student, who so far seems to be fairly fish-like, so I don’t envisage many problems there. A good start to being back.

And a biiig aspect of this going well was the fact that I am toasty toasty warm on the dives. Two reasons for this.. It has actually warmed back up a bit. There has been no wind for a few days, so the water is settled. The chilly thermoclines of two weeks ago have all blended to make a nice 28ºC off the beach… hmm lovely n warm. The second reason is that I have finally got a decent wetsuit! Woo Hoo! My last one sadly didn’t even last 18months (bearing in mind that I only wear a full suit for about three months of the year) so I was not really impressed with that make. So whilst in the big apple, I went shopping to a little place called Leisure Pro in Manhattan (18th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenue… just south of the Flat Iron Building, to be precise). Well I must say they were great… I had seen a Scubapro suit on offer on their site and whilst the price in the shop had since gone up a notch, they still honoured the offer I had seen the previous week… very good service.

Anyway, cut a long story short, I was wearing that together with a nice Merino lined hooded vest (bought from the same place), and I was more toasty than I have ever been in the water! And that is without actually putting the hood up! I even had to add a bit of water to cool me down halfway through the dive. OK the water as I’ve mentioned does seem to have warmed up a touch, but seriously two weeks ago I was so cold in the water I was beginning to think that it would be dry suit time this month, and that really would have been embarrassing.

Just in case you are interested, the hood is made by Pinnacle and the merino really does keep you warm, and the suit is a Scubapro Everflex 5mm wetsuit. The suit is sooo stretch and soft and really easy to get into (a real plus when teaching and guiding), let’s hope it endures the bashing it gets as a day to day wetsuit for the next few weeks. Both have also been made specifically to fit women, and whilst they are a teeny bit big for me, you have to bear in mind, I am only 5′2″ and a UK size 6-8, so it is always a challenge to find stuff that fits.

That’s one happy DiveBunnie here

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I will say, today I did notice the temperature change a bit this week! Brrr. It is only a degree cooler, but at this time of year, that degree makes a difference. I ended up wearing pretty much all the neoprene that I had in my dive box! Could barely move for rubber hehe.

As our guests wanted to eat in Dahab town, we decided to dive the Blue Hole first. We also had quite a large group with us, so were hoping to catch it a little quieter doing the dives this way around. I am not entirely sure if that worked, as a group from another centre somehow managed to sneak in  between Hassan’s group and mine… cheeky! But understandable, there is nothing less fun than standing around in full kit, waiting while others get in the water.

Well, once we were finally in, we headed down the chute that is known as “The Bells”. I still love this bit of the dive, heading down head first into this little crack in the reef… and under the arch at 26m. The wall was glorious as ever, and we got to see the pink anenome with resident clown fish. Sadly on this dive I didn’t get to see a turtle, but apparently there was one hanging around. What I did find was a very cool scorpion fish. He was bright white like a skeleton, and sat atop the lip of the coral garden as you swim over the edge and into the Blue Hole (apparently a bit of a regular there, so I hear). While we were in the area, we bumped into Jilly, Jimmy, Leigh, Neil and the deep team with all their tanks, setting up for a dive to the bottom of the hole. Jilly was going to video it all, with a max depth of 120M.. Ooooh. Jilly was also going to be wearing her “shee pee” contraption about which you will be able to read on DiveBunnie, once she has the time to sit down and actually write it all. That will be a definite “must read” !

Our second dive was on the Canyon, and again with the scorpion fish, I found two more, again at the end of the dive sat at the entrance to the lagoon. The lagoon was totally glorious as a rather large shoal of tiny silversides had taken residence and were swarming around like a baitball in the 3m of water that is there. A very cool sight. I just sat and watched as they swirled around our heads probably thinking our bubbles were predators.

As planned, lunch was in Dahab town, so I opted for the grilled fish, hmmm and succumbed to buying a little handmade anklet from one of the girlies there. Well it was in my colours, pink n turquoise. This was much to the annoyance of the first girl who had approached me, but who hadn’t had one in the right colours. Oh I think I started a fight

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We lucked out by arriving a little early on the Jetty and finding the police in a strangely generous mood, they allowed me to jump on the boat ahead of the other guests and Annette, to check everything was in order. This meant that we set off dead on 7am, which put us ahead of the game before we had even begun.

We opted to head straight out for the wreck, giving us a nice couple of hours in which we could have breakfast, set up our kit and have a chit chat. A bit swelly in this side of Shark and Yolande, as soon as we turned the corner, heading up the gulf of Suez, things settled down and flattened out a bit.. great stuff.

The Dunraven was awesome! There was just enough current, very little swell as we jumped in, and pretty great visibility for this area. We did the usual wreck part of the dive, taking time to meander up the old wooden hull, finding goat fish and looking at cool corals on the way, took a moment to check out the pistons and gas valves around the two boilers, looked at the mast and rigging before heading out once more into the blue. A quick sneak through the bow area, where we found some rather large batfish lurking in the shadows, and then it was out and up to the shallows for a little browse along the reef to look for stone fish. Unfortunately they have all had a bit of a shuffle around of late, and whilst Annette found some for her guys… I failed!!! Oh no! Ah well, we still had a glorious dive, with lots of pretty pretty coral in the shallows. I loved the shoaling butterfly fish, which you don’t often see. Very cute.

Our second dive was on the Alternatives. We did a drift and whilst I usually get fed up with sandy plateau and head back to the pinnacles in the shallows where you get guaranteed prettiness, this time we were determined to find ourselves a leopard shark. So out we stayed in a very cool drift, gliding above the sandy plateau, surrounded with fusiliers. Very nice. And our efforts were rewarded. It was actually our videographer Sven, who came up trumps. He was hanging waaaay off the reef, Nettie was in the middle, and I was closeish to the reef with our guests. Suddenly I spot Nettie in the haze (it can get a bit milky here) frantically waving to come out to her… so a quick signal to the guests and off I swim… fully expecting 8 divers to follow me. On arriving 50m away over the sand I only have 3! Doh! So back I swim to fetch the rest, frantically signally “shark” to each buddy team as I reach and pass them… once I have gathered them all… back I swim again at high speed, in order to make sure everyone gets there, sees the shark and gets back again. By this time I was shattered.. hehe… had to undo my suit, stop and catch some really big breaths. Phew that was a work out! I wasn’t cold on that dive, that is for sure.

The shark was beautiful, he was a decent size, a couple of metres I would say, and had been sitting on the bottom quite chilled out when we found him. Once everyone had taken a look, Sven dropped down to get his close up shot, and of course this was sharky’s cue to gracefully up and sidle off with a flick of the tail… hmmm lovely.

Our next dive was on Shark and Yolande Reefs, always well known for their currents, often chopping and changing, together with up and down streams just for good measure. Never a dull moment on this dive. And today was certainly not going to let us down.

As soon as we dropped in, we knew we were in for a fun ride.. the current was flying. All the snappers facing into it right where we landed.

We flew around the front of Shark Reef in seconds.. then tucked in on the side of the reef for shelter as we wanted to get right to the back to look for the baby green turtle that Bryn had videoed a few weeks ago:

Watch it here

It was a bit of a trek across the fair flying current, but it was worth it, just to see a little bundle of cuteness that was shuffling about underneath a little overhang. Finning into the current so we could keep still, we spent a good few minutes watching her munch some coral, shuffle about, scratch her shell, going about her baby turtle business. Eventually we had to stop the finning, give in to the flow and sail down over the wreckage of the Yolande… toilets, bathtubs, wash basins and everything. What a lovely dive to end our day.

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