The first couple of days I was teaching a Scuba Diver course which is always a bit of a busy one. We generally have two days in which to complete the course (obviously more if needed), so there isn’t really a huge amount of time for chilling out on this one. We have roughly 3/4 of the Open Water Course to complete in only 1/2 the time.

So we did the first stage rather like a Discover Scuba Dive. As we have a confined area on our beach already, this is perfect, for allowing people to get a look at a few fish on day one. And it usually works, after just a few of the skills completed, we surface, de-brief the confined dive, and brief the dive before heading off for a little dive around the reefs there. And much can be seen. We are often treated to a fly by by one of our resident eagle rays, as well as getting the chance to pop over to the shallow end of what we call the Movenpick Reef where 9 times out of 10, we will find a blue spotted ray chilling out on the sand. Very nice for a first Open Water dive. It also gives our students the chance to practice their swimming around right away, which is great.

Day two, we had some more skills to complete in the shallows, quite nice for students to have a passing parrot fish to watch while their buddy is getting their fin pivots right.

Finally, we get to complete our Open Water Dive two in the Werner Lau area, where we find a teeny tiny baby lionfish and get to take a peek at the eel garden there. The eels are quite shy, so we have to creep up on them on the sly in order to stop them from shrinking back into their holes in the sand hehe.

On the safety stop, we get a bundle of bat fish hanging around by the Lido pier before ending our dive and heading back to the dive centre, two more Scuba Divers to add to the list.. woo hoo. And a nice couple of days’ diving to boot.

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A couple of weeks ago, we headed off to dive the famous, or should I say infamous Thistlegorm wreck.

Sank in 1941 during World War Two, this is a stunning wreck, and due to it’s location is suitable for advanced recreational divers, which suits us great. It is sits almost upright on a sandy bottom, is over 126M long, 17M wide, and is packed with stuff.. tanks, trucks, bombs, motorbikes, wellies, hospital beds, all sorts. It is also covered in corals and heaving with fish life, so even if you aren’t a fan of metal, there is something for everyone here. As you may know, it is an early start, being four hours’ trip each way from Sharm. So we were on the boat before dawn, making our checks, and getting settled in for the journey.

The single biggest challenge of the day is the mooring up of the boat. The wreck sits in un-sheltered waters, at 30M and is prone to strong currents and rough surface conditions. I also knew that it was really my turn to tie the lines, as the last few trips have resulted in someone else doing the job. Hmmm… we had only just had a full moon, so that meant the currents will be running too… a double whammy.

If there are two guides on this trip we tend to both kit up, just in case there is a problem with tying the lines. And today was one of those days where this was a good plan.. if only to save us a little time. And to prevent one of us having to guide the dive after three bounce dives. I jumped in to tie fairly near what we thought was the front line of another boat. A strong current meant that I could only just about stay close to the other mooring line as I swam down pulling our rope with me. Oh Noooo! Worst case scenario… I had followed a line that led not down to the wreck itself, but to an anchor line sat on… nothing but sand.. doh! We had checked the boat on the surface, and it must have had two anchors out at its bow, which is a little unusual. Anyway, according to my training, I let go of my line and headed back up to the surface, planning to get our skipper to drop me by the other boat’s stern allowing me to drift down to the perfect spot onto which I could tie.

As it was, my fellow colleague was kitted up and ready to jump, so we dropped her in that spot, saving valuable minutes as she dropped and tied our bow line.

I then jumped in off our stern, dragging our second line with me and finned like mad to maintain my position in the water and not drift backwards! Yes the current was that strong that when I lifted my head, my reg would free flow, yet when I dropped my head, my mask would flood. All fun n games. Anyway, a good few scratches later, we were all tied up and ready to dive the wreck.

The first dive, we decided to take in the propellor and then head straight for entering the holds. This is not the usual route, however it would be nice an sheltered from the current, hopefully meaning that the tide would have ebbed slightly for the second dive, which we could then use to browse around the other cabins, rooms and the outside of the wreck. We saw all the usual. Tanks, trucks, wellies, motorbikes, bombs, guns…the lot. Of course we also saw, scorpion fish, crocodile fish, clown fish, huge shoals of fusiliers and a few tuna thrown in for good measure. A glorious dive was had all around.

True to form, after our surface interval, the current had eased slightly.. woo hoo! It usually only eases off for around 30mins before it changes direction and starts to howl the opposite way! So we had time to mosey around a bit, take in the captain’s cabin where you get a great mirror effect between the row of portholes that get reflected by the air gathered under the ceiling, and head to the bow and rope room. I love heading into the rope room and popping out of the hatch, surprising any divers gathering on the bow where we can then head over the edge, turn back and get a sense of perspective of this enormous wreck. With the steel hull plunging down below us to the sand, and the hulk of the wreck looming up in-front of us, it is quite a humbling moment. Finally we have a little time to browse the decks a little further before our deco limits start kicking in and we have to head for the lines. By now the current has regained its strength and we fly like flags on the rope as we make our safety stop.

Another successful (if slightly stressful) trip to the wreck. And as always, we felt pretty wrecked afterwards, so a much needed kip was had on our way back to the jetty… ZZZZzzzzz.

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“I don’t mind, if there’s something to see, let’s look at it”

“Do you want a specific plan, or shall we just bimble?”

“Bimble.”

“Do we have a max dive time?”

“Erm… shall we make it 70mins? Or thereabouts?”… and off we went.

It is quite rare to get to guide these reefs in such a chilled out way. Normally we use the beach for Dives 1 and 2 of Open Water, Scuba Reviews and Discover Scuba Diving, so generally training dives, limited to 12M (18 if we are lucky and get a Scuba Review), a max time of about 45mins, if we are lucky and usually a dive spent on our backs ensuring the divers are actually getting it right, not chilled out looking for the cool stuff.

First dive, we decided to enter the water by the Werner Lau area where the sandy bottom slopes a little steeper, allowing us to go a little deeper without too much swimming. We headed down the slope until we found a little reef sitting at about 27M. En-route we got our first glimpse of one of the resident eagle rays! Yay! A good start to our dive, and day.

We spent a bit of time pottering around the little reef there, finding clown fish, loads of lion fish, all sorts of life. One find I quite liked was a cluster of tiny squat shrimps gathered on a pizza anenome. A couple were so tiny they looked like ants (orange and white polka dotted ants hehe). We aimed to take in the eel garden too, but for some reason they had all hidden away that day, so we headed for the shallows and the bat fish gathering under the Lido platform. Dive time: 73 mins hehe.

The second dive started in the Red Sea College area and headed out to what we still call the Movenpick Reef named after the Movenpick Jollie Ville hotel, even though the hotel has long been called the Maritim Jollie Ville, old habits die hard I guess. So, once again we headed off from the shallows following the sandy plateau out towards the little baby reefs we have at about 5m just within the confined area. We headed a little deeper, over the sea grass before turning left and heading towards the artificial reef that has been created by the guys at the Red Sea College. This is a collection of metal structures that are actually growing their own little knobs of hard corals. Attempts have been made to transplant corals from the Million Hope here, which initially looked like being successful, however many of these have now died. Some of the fire coral survived though, and you can see it has actually wrapped itself around the metal bars which is very cool. I would love to see these in about twenty years time when they might have actually become covered with corals. Even now there is plenty of raspberry coral dotted about, and loads of fish use the figures as shelter. You will often find puffer fish hiding within, watching the world go by.

On we went, past the plains of sandy dunes to a big bowl area, in the middle of which sits the Movenpick reef. Past the reef, there is a sandbank over which I have never been able to head, simply because it would take too much time and air to go over there and be back to our starting point in time. So today we went up and over the bank.

There we found a big sea grass meadow. I have heard that a green turtle tends to hang around here, however we weren’t in luck this time. Never mind. What we did see though, was another lovely big eagle ray, which hung around for quite a while, circling us and burrowing it’s nose into the sand as it foraged for food. Very cool indeed. We just chilled out and watched. In this same area, I also found a kind of anenome that I have never seen here. We normally just get the normal tentacle type, bubble, string and pizza anenome. However this one was kind of like a pizza anenome with longer tentacles. It was quite large with petal like folds along the edges, very nice. And of course it had its resident clown fish defending their turf to the end hehe.

Looking at the time, I thought we ought to start heading back, taking in more of the coral reef, blue spotted rays, puffer fish, horned trunkfish along the way. The horned trunkfish proved most entertaining, as we watched it appearing quite chilled out until it started to blow into the sand. In order to stay still as it blew, its little fins had to fan like crazy, looking like it was in some kind of flapping frenzy. Hehe.. masks flooded as we found this very amusing, but… I guess you had to be there really… ahem.

So dive time: 78 mins, possibly one of my longest dives to date. The only two dives longer than that were 90 mins, one on my rescue course and one on my instructor course.

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We dived Thomas Reef and thanks to the lack of breeze, could just keep going around the back of the reef, and likewise we did the same on Jackson Reef, drifting from garden to garden and on around the back. The currents were really running too, so we could just hitch a ride and fly. I sooo thought we would see a shark at some point, but sadly no we were not graced with this bonus. We finished the day with a very gentle drift along Ras Ghamilla.

The next two days were spent diving in Ras Mohammed. The first day we dived, Jack fish Alley… several barracuda and a couple of turtles, The Alternatives.. lots of blue spotted rays and a pyjama slug and Ras Za’atar… some biiig giant trevallies out in the blue, and Shark and Yolande in the afternoon.

The second day was not so friendly. So… we did Jack Fish Alley again first, which again produced a lively reverse current and barracuda.

The plan was to do Shark and Yolande second, however there was a nasty South Easterly breeze which is the only direction that offers zero protection to most of Sharm. We opted to go for Ras Za’atar instead, as it was a little sheltered at the end of the dive. For lunch we stayed in the Marsa Bareika bay hiding from the winds.

In the afternoon we headed for Ras Ghozlani, however the swell had risen to a good couple of metres (OK nothing special for the UK but with our big, wooden boats, it is a nightmare for getting back on board). Regardless, I jumped in for the current check and saw… green!!! Nothing but green!!! I swam and swam looking for a bit of reef where I could get a visual reference, however it took ages until finally I could see dark, murky, sandy reef about 2m in front of me! Hmmm not so nice. Anyway, I dropped down looking for some clarity off the drop off maybe, swam out to one of the big pinnacles on the drop off and encountered a real dusk effect! In fact, there were no fish to see either… they probably thought night was about to fall so had all settled in for the night! Everything was green n murky (wow! quite a novelty but not fun for a group of 8 divers with only me as a guide)… still no clarity over the drop off, so I went back and up and ditched the dive. We tried a little further along, this time George jumped in to take a look, but.. no joy So, plan C try Ras Katy just to get the dive in maybe.

Well… as we headed back, we could see crashing waves up against the cliffs where we live, and it was at that moment that we got the call to bring the boat back in. No dive this afternoon. The swell was really picking up and the police wanted all the boats sheltered in Sharm el Maya by nightfall. We had an interesting half hour organising all our kit boxes to be transferred off the boat in a windy swell that seemed to throw the boat in all directions. Getting off the boat was another interesting moment too!

So were we due another downpour? No… thankfully we only got a few droplets.

The next day we were due to go to Dahab, which is notoriously windy. However while Sharm got battered a bit, we were blessed with flat seas. Note to self… if there is a SE wind and swell in Sharm… head to Dahab!

And now I have a day off.. ahhh relaaax. I am sure it will all kick off again tomorrow… well the wind is due to, even if I don’t hehe.

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