The Bunnie Blog
Living and Diving in Sharm el Sheikh
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So the other day we were up nice n early for a delightful day on the Dunnie… not the loo… the Dunraven wreck, which lies a couple of hours out of Sharm el Sheikh. Up before dawn, I was on the bus early to collect a guest from the Nabq area, always the downside of staying in that part of town, you will always find yourself first on the list to be picked up in the morning. So we were given the treat of watching the sun rise over Tiran island, as we made our way back towards downtown Sharm el Sheikh and the rest of the guests. Once on the boat, we ferried out over glassy waters, hmmm looked like a lovely day ahead. You wouldn’t believe that there was a strong wind forecast for the afternoon, but previous experience had told me that no matter how random the forecast seems, if it says the wind’s gonna pick up, it usually does. So we headed straight for the wreck first, just to make sure we were well and truly sheltered this side of Ras Mohammed before 2pm. On arriving at the wreck, briefing done I jumped in the flat, flat sea to check the current, and as often happens when the sea is like this, the current was flying… and in the opposite direction to normal. Ah well, maybe we won’t get to search out the stone fish today. The visibility was great too, it can get a little murky here, so it was a treat to be able to see the hull of the ship lying directly below me nice and clearly. We dropped down and headed out over the keel of the wreck, using its bulk for a bit of shelter from the current, and as I looked ahead I saw a glorious sight. There was a whole horde of jackfish shoaling by the propellor. It looked more like something we would expect to get on Shark and Yolande Reefs. As we approached we realised that as well as the jacks, there was a bundle of bat fish hanging around there too…. lovely! There is a blade of the prop missing which allows us to swim through the gap for a great photo opportunity, which today was an even better shot surrounded by the throng of jacks. Very cool. I always refer to this wreck as a bit of a starter wreck, as it is very spacious, with no scary tight spots and plenty of light shafting in through large cracks and gaps in the hull. We enter the wreck and make our way through the inside, checking out the prop shaft, the grain of wood inside the keel, the pistons, taps and boilers etc before coming out into a large shoal of goat fish and sweepers sheltering in the shade. Everyone cool, we head off to take a mosey through the bow of the ship… to be honest, this part is so broken down and compressed it can barely be considered an overhead environment, but it is still quite fun to take a peek inside and check out the life there before shallowing off and drifting along the reef. As I said the current was quite lively and running in the opposite direction to normal, so instead of heading out over the gently undulating porites mounds and looking for the resident stone fish (there are a few), we ended up gliding the other way along a glorious, coral encrusted reef wall that we don’t often get to check out. Once we were back on the boat, I noticed that our glass, almost syrupy like sea had developed a couple of teeny tiny ripples… yep, here we go, the forecast was going to be proved right. Our second dive was on Shark and Yolande Reefs where we had another great drift dive, taking in the colours of one of the top ten dive sites in the world… according to Jaques Cousteau. For me, it is my favourite dive, although I guess I haven’t dived quite as many places as our Jaques. This is the site famous for its collection of bathroom accessories… toilets, washbasins, bath tubs, even shower curtains and delightful 80’s style linoleum.. hmmm very tasteful designs there hehe. We were greeted by one of the rather large napoleon wrasses there, who hung around for a while eyeballing us with his googlie eye (possibly hoping for a snack… as sadly I do think people have been feeding him). There is also a rather large cornet fish that has taken to hanging around us, using us for shelter in order to shoot out and nab himself a bit of lunch on some poor unsuspecting little fish. He will sit right by a diver’s tank, with them completely unaware until the moment when they happen to turn around, and meet him literally eye to eye. Great stuff! Time for lunch. At ten to two, as we sat by Jack Fish Alley, all of a sudden up goes the wind and we get a blast of it coming in from the West (thankfully from behind the cliffs sheltering us… to an extent). Clouds build and we even get a few spots of rain! In a desert? Yes, we get a bit each year. Although this year we did get a bit more than our fair share last month, but that is a whole story of its own. Today’s “deluge” resulted in a few spatters on the back deck, so nothing to write home about really. The wind however was another story, and just like the forecast we were blasted for a good hour or so before it dropped slightly. Our last dive of the day was Jack Fish Alley and a very nice dive it was too. We dropped in by the “cave” which is actually a big crack in the reef, but great to swim through and take in some cool lighting effects. When the sun is out, it beams down in shafts ahead of you within the gloom, little spotlights dancing on the white sand. Turning left, there is glorious turquoise as you exit into the blue. We went to take a peek at the cleaner shrimp a little deeper and found a few barracuda hanging out on the satellite reef before drifting along the main reef for the last part of our dive. The sun had thankfully come back out by the time we dropped in the water, so it turned out to be a very nice dive. The wind returned to blow on and into the evening… yes another winter storm for us that night. Thankfully no rain this time. Although I did look out at about 4.30am to see all the dive boats heading for shelter in the Sharm el Maya bay, before heading back to sleep. Sadly 15mins later the large cruise ship, the Costa Europa that has been on the news this week hit the quay at Travco Port taking the lives of three crew members. To this day, it remains in port, having been intentionally listed to one side to enable repairs on its damaged hull.
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so I wasn’t going to force him to do something he didn’t like, and after a couple of attempts he got out. I then took the little girl on her own to our baby reef. Thankfully we have a little mound of coral that comes right up to the surface, and is heaving with fish. We saw seargent majors, biiig parrot fish, bat fish, butterfly fish, red sea banner fish, a moses sole and a couple of jackfish… even a tiny pipe fish. My little girl was giving me the signals before I got the chance to tell her which was which! A true fish. |
I can’t believe it, we are in the middle of April and things are definitely warming up, but still the water is a chilly 23ºC Brrrr.
The diving is definitely showing signs of burgeoning life. Any little pinnacle of coral is festooned with tiny baby anthias, which will be great in a few weeks when they all grow up. Roll on the next full moon when it all should explode into life! |
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So we thought we would head over the water for Christmas this year, and spend it with family in Connecticut… a small town called New Canaan to be precise, which sits about an hour away from New York.
The flight was ok, although 12 hours on a plane is quite a marathon, especially when the films aren’t the most recent, and one was in Egyptian (not so easy to understand that one hehe). Thankfully I had brought my Bench parkha full length coat, as when we finally escaped from the longest queue in the world and got through customs, we were greeted first by family and second by an arctic wind. And I mean ARCTIC! It was about -12ºC and felt colder due to the wind chill brrrrr! Snow was everywhere apart from the road itself, and the cold really took our breath away. Once in the car, we were nice n toasty and there is something to be said for American houses, they are really warm. All that wood I guess. |
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.
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