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(by Clive Bowen)
It’s February, my Meg’s arrived and I want to go diving-but who wants to go to Gildie with me in February when the water temperature’s between 2 and 3C?
Well, Steve, Arnold, Malcolm and Helen do so - thanks.
I dive with one of them at least once a week as I’ve got to get “dived up” on the Meg before going back out to Sharm to do my IANTD Mod 3-Trimix Rebreather course with Chris Hutchison again at the end of April.
The most important part of the dives is practising the various skills and getting to know what the rebreather’s telling you-and the only way to do that is spend time in the water with it.
Over the coming weeks, Gildie becomes almost a second home whilst Stoney gets dived quite a few times too-and before you know it, it’s time to go to Sharm.
We fly out on a Sunday morning from a busy Gatwick on a very cramped Monarch flight-though I shouldn’t complain as they’ve not charged us any excess baggage allowance and after an uneventful flight, land in Sharm 5 hours later. I get a taxi to take us to the Rossetta Hotel as it saves us doing the hotel rounds on the bus-which by the time the others arrive, we’ve already checked in, changed and are in the bar-good thinking or what!!
We’ve picked the Rossetta Hotel this time as it’s based next door to Tekstreme at Emperor Divers with whom we’re diving and it saves hanging around at the end of the day waiting for the bus-those that have been there will understand this.
On the way to the bar, we meet up with Chris my Instructor and 2 of his students who are doing the Meg user and Recreational Trimix course. We arrange to go for a Chinese in the restaurant next door to the hotel later that night.
After a really good meal, it’s off to bed ready for an 8am meet in the morning.
It’s the usual start down at Emperor Divers, form filling etc and then we’re on the bus to the harbour and on to the Kastan Sea. Chris is on his last day of Fredrik and Anne’s course today, so I get the opportunity to sort my gear out, get my weighting correct and dive with Helen. First stop is White Knights which has a sandy plateau at about 10-12mtrs where you can watch the sand eels pop up from their holes and wave about in the current. It’s a good first dive and we get 24mtrs for 43mins.
After lunch on the boat, it’s over to Far Garden for the second dive where I practice my skills and adjust my setup again with Helen keeping an eye on me-and we get a 64min dive.
Tuesday is the first day of my course where Chris and I are going to concentrate on the diving and the planning with the remainder of the skills I need to do at the end of the 4 dives. We decided yesterday that we’d be using the same gas for the whole of the week-thereby not complicating things more for us and the gas blenders. We’re going to use 100% O2 and a diluent of Trimix 10/50-10% oxygen and 50% helium- for the rebreather onboard gasses-and “team”gas for the offboards or side slungs. We’ll be using Trimix 18/35, with me carrying EANx50 and Chris carrying 100% O2 to aid decrompression should we need to bailout to open circuit. Absolute maximum depth planned for the week is 80mtrs-so based on that depth, the gasses will give us a bottom PPO2 of 0.9bar and an equivalent narcotic depth of 35mtrs at 80mtrs.
Our first dive is again at White Knights where we drop onto the sandy plateau and follow the canyon down to just above our maximum planned depth of 65mtrs.We swim along at 62mtrs for 20 minutes-it’s not very clear looking out into the blue, but once the eyes have adjusted, the visibility must exceed 50mtrs in front of us and vertically, we can see the surface! At this depth, most colours in the spectrum have been absorbed and we’re swimming in a blue-grey world-and then we come across a soft coral tree about 1.5mtrs high somehow gleaming white in this world from which, as we look upwards, we can see the wreck of the upturned day boat some 10-15mtrs above us. When we dived this wreck on the last course we came down onto it from above-now from below it takes on a different perspective. We rise up to the wreck and have a look around then start our ascent up the reef, starting our stops at 40mtrs then gradually rising up to 20mtrs whilst swimming back towards our entry point. By now we’re showing a decompression time of over 40mins so we’ve plenty of time catch the sights and do some skills. When we get back to the sandy plateau, we find a patch at 6mtrs and do the final skill for the day and that is to switch to open circuit 100% oxygen, inhale then switch back to the rebreather and exhale the O2 into the loop and watch the PPO2 on the handset rise-so we’re then using the rebreather as an oxygen rebreather. So at the end of the first dive, we’ve done 62mtrs for a 90min dive. Great!
For the afternoon dive, I dive with Helen at Middle to Far Garden following a group of open water divers and their guide for a very pretty dive with lots of fish.
Day 2 and we’re back at White Knights again-planning to do a similar dive to yesterday’s though only a 15min swim at depth before ascending diagonally up to the wreck and then back to the sandy plateau. We do 66mtrs for 88mins!
In the afternoon we dive with Fredrik and Anne, Chris’s previous students who are with us just diving today. We do a drift dive at Tower which again has loads of fish life and coral.
Day 3 and we’re off to the Straits of Tiran and Thomas Reef to dive a site that I’ve chosen and wanted to dive again after the last course-Thomas Canyon. With currents running at this site, the boat drops us off directly above the canyon which as we drop down towards it, just looks like a great big gash in the sea floor at 35mtrs.As we drop into the canyon, we descend further-the plan being to swim under its third arch. When I dived the canyon last time, we did the first arch at just under 50mtrs,then there’s a second arch at 54-56mtrs and a third arch at 70-72mtrs with the final one at 91mtrs!
Again, there’s not much colour at this depth but I feel OK thanks in part to my gas mix and the high helium percentage reducing the nitrogen narcosis below about 30mtrs.We get to the third arch about 10mins into the dive and swim under it-then look up through this gash into what looks like the bright blue sky above us and watch tuna hunting-quite a sight. We start heading back to the start of the canyon sticking to about 65mtrs for this swim. As we reach the end, there’s a shaft that we ascend to reach the coral plateau at 35mtrs again. From here we stick close to the coral wall and ascend as the current’s picked up and we’re now swimming into it. After launching the dsmb’s, we do our final decompression stops drifting and then it’s back on board. I can’t really describe that dive-just that it was fantastic and we do 72.9mtrs for 62mins!
We don’t do a second dive that day and just chill out on the boat. But it’s back to Chris’s room that evening for the few hours of the theory session.
It’s Friday already and we’ve got a day off as Chris is doing a Classic Kiss rebreather crossover course with Aaron from Tekstreme. They’re doing it off the beach-somewhere we’ve not dived from before so me, Helen, Fredrik and Anne go with him. It’s a bit of a hot walk after kitting up and trudging through the sand and it’s nice to get back into the cooling water (26C). We head out following a line of mooring buoys into the sand where we pass a large coral outcrop and then onto some seagrass where we watch mating/fighting lionfish-we can’t decide which-before heading back to the coral outcrop with its abundance of life where we spend most of the dive-about 70mins.After this dive, we head off into town for lunch.
Saturday and the last day of my course and the last of the 4 dives. We head off to Travco jetty as we’re diving Jackfish Alley in Ras Mohammed national park. We get there after 8am and the trollies taking our gear to the boats aren’t allowed to use the jetty after this time since they nudged a snorkeller into the water!!! After a bit of man and woman handling, the gear’s aboard and after a leap of faith onto the boat we’re away. But the other divers on board don’t want to dive this as they did it yesterday-so we plan it that when this group surfaces, we’ll go in and then when we surface they’ll be ready for their second dive before lunch and the third dive of the day. The group of 9 openwater divers get in and we’re ready kitted up when they start to appear on the surface. However, it takes nearly 30mins to get them all on board-by which time Chris and I are sweating rivers while Helen’s throwing buckets of water over us to stay cool and she enjoyed it too!
We finally get in and down to our planned depth. After a 20min swim, we arrive at the chimney-which looks just like that and up which we’re going to ascend. We stop at 35mtrs to do my last skill-a diluent flush from one of my offboard cylinders to bring the gas in the breathing loop of the rebreather down to a known PPO2 at that depth. As it’s fairly dark inside the chimney, Chris can see me dropping the PPO2 by looking at the HUD-heads up display- and when it reaches 0.8bar, we give each other the OK signal and begin the ascent and decompression on the very colourful reef. After 50mins, we deploy dsmb’s and begin to drift at 6mtrs where Chris is surrounded by a school of jacks!!
Back on board and we head off for lunch and then to Ras Ghazlani where I dive with Helen on possibly the most colourful, fish infested area I’ve dived in the Red Sea. On jumping in, we see a green turtle who swims very close to us, more clown fish in one area than we’ve ever seen, a guitar shark and lots, lots more. It’s a great dive and a great end to the week. It’s come around to quick-but I’m sure it won’t be the last time we go to Sharm-after all, there is the fourth arch at Thomas Canyon!!!