nitrogen addict

Monday, February 11, 2008

narced & nearly bent

another awesome weekend on Big Cat Reality =D
much better surface conditions this trip, so we werent stuck on Flinders all wkend. Gotham City! one of my fave dive sites, seriously.
viz the worst i've seen at moreton bay - about 8-10m most of the trip, with a low of 2m at Curtin Artificial Reef & about 3-5 at the Pines. best viz of the wkend was the 2nd dive at Gotham City - 10-12m.
fantastic diving with the boys - we all got a bit narced at gotham and someone kept shouting thru their regs. v funny to watch the boys climbing the pinnacles and pretending to hoist anchors.
hit several thermoclines at gotham, being a deep dive. temp dropped to 21deg at one point, & i kept moving up & down to feel the temp diff - u cld actually see the shimmering edge of the themocline, pretty cool
besides getting narced, i also nearly got bent. went into deco on several dives, 2 of them at gotham. 36m for 20+ minutes bottom time (not including ascent), dint do proper deco stops along the way. my comp was sending all sorts of alarms at me and finally decided to go into error mode on the second dive at gotham. not sure what tt means, since it was still working on the next dive, so i just ignored it. the others' comps were also flashing warnings but we wldn't miss the jock dive for the world so we all turned a blind eye.
so we all went for the last dive without our wetties. fortunately it was a shallow drift dive & the water was a toasty 26 degs. lots of stingrays (fortunately none of them pulled a Steve on me, if not i wldnt be here writing this) & a huge bullray, as well as a wobbegong under a rock.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

YY dived deep at 7:54 PM

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday, February 04, 2008

yeah, it's been months. frankly, i dun even noe why i bother
brissy's still as gr8 as ever - the diving's gotten heaps better too! i'm up to 126 dives now, having done 32 dives in Jan itself...
after the rains & cyclone weather of the past few wks, the water's been pretty much crap, with loads of rubbish being washed up every day. was at the tweed 2 wkends ago & viz was way down.
did the bunker trip at the start of january - a gr8 beginning to 2008! got to go for free, of course, with only 1 student (doing his specialties) to look after, which meant i cld relax & enjoy myself. being part of the dive crew on Big Cat certainly has its advantages - even the occasional missed dive on acct of surface supervision isnt too bad, really - a bit of rest from 5 dives a day. the weather on the 5day trip was calm & near perfect, until the last nite when the swells just became massive & i was drenched sleeping on the top deck.
then there was the wkend Big Cat trip, this time with a whole bunch of advanced/ specialty students, so the trip was rather rushed n very very busy for me. but i did manage to squeeze some dives in... even tho there were occasions i just wanted to throttle one of the students who was being such a whinging ass. i also lost my dive watch!!! but some of the divers found it on the next dive, which was gr8 luck!
2 more wks and sch starts. i'll be staying in brissy, having wrangled a transfer to UQ, on acct of the warmer weather & better diving here...
also just moved to my new place - tiny rm, but within walking distance of campus, which will save me loads of time & money.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

YY dived deep at 9:37 PM

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------