We were up and early to the dive centre before 7am. As
usual, they’d got us there prematurely and we had time to go for some breakfast
before we set off.
 |
| A nice day to be on the ocean |
Our dive guide for the day was a fellow Brit, Toby, from
Hemel Hempstead, Herts. The other divers
making up our group of six were two Danish guys having a break from the kids
for a day and an Italian couple who spoke limited English. We checked our equipment was all present and
correct and headed to the shore where we were transferred onto the most
garishly coloured pink and green ferry with the capacity for 120 people! I’m not kidding. So this is why today is costing a bit of
money. We had so much space it was
crazy. Simon and I lined up just some of
the spare life jackets on a bench each, laid our towels on top and, hey presto,
a comfy bed for the three-hour trip out to the dive site:
 |
| Plenty of space for all... |
The journey didn’t feel that long at all. I was watching the horizon for wildlife but
only managed to view several flying fish getting out of the way of the ferry. After a couple of hours, we set our equipment
up (haven’t had to do that for ourselves in a while, we’ll be turning into dive
snobs!) and had a group briefing so that we were ready to jump into the water
at slack tide on our arrival. We could
see a group of boats on the horizon already at the Hin Muang site, most of them
were liveaboard boats due to the distance we were off the coast. We jumped in and descended on a line to
15m. I wasn’t carrying enough weight, so
struggled to get under at first and the Italian lady was nervous, so it took a
long time for us to get down. The
beginning of the dive was in a colourful, beautiful bowl. There were fish flitting everywhere, smaller
ones being hunted by the larger ones!
The dive was meant to be along one side of a ridge and back down the
other. But, as soon as we tried going
one way, it was clear that there was a very strong current against us that
way. Toby signalled for us to turn
around and try the other way. Basically,
we ended up doing a mini-dive, just in the protected bowl area because of the strong
currents elsewhere. There was plenty to
see, but I was having to dive inverted a lot of the time to prevent myself from
floating upwards, so I wasn’t the most relaxed and everyone went through their
air more quickly than usual due to the added exertion of dealing with the
currents. A 38-minute dive time and
coming up with hardly any air left in your tank is not the best diving
practise!
 |
| There was plenty of fish life |
 |
| Clown anemone fish |
The video below is of some mussels attached to a buoy rope we were clinging onto whilst waiting to ascend
We had a break for lunch which was tasty curry and
rice. I think they’d made enough for the
full capacity of our ferry so there was plenty to go around! During the briefing for our second dive I was
looking at Toby when behind him a small whale suddenly breached out of the
water. By the time I’d shouted ‘Whale!’
it was gone again. Everyone heard the
splash, but I was the only one lucky enough to see the actual whale. We watched the surface for a few minutes, but
it never returned.
The second site, Hin Daeng, was around three pinnacles of
rock that were visible above the surface. Toby promised us that this would be
an easier, shallower dive along sloping reef and around a wall, keeping our
eyes scanning into the blue for potential big stuff. The Italian lady had
decided that the first dive was enough for her, which was a shame as this was a
much more relaxed experience. We were
under for over 50 minutes this time and saw lots of life, including a mantis
shrimp hiding. Toby used a pointy stick
to tease it into defending itself, so we all heard the ‘chink’ when it’s
pincers struck the metal:
We can’t
complain, it was a beautiful dive with lots of orange and purple colourful life BUT we were not visited by any manta rays or whale sharks as we had
hoped. If only these darn animals didn’t move around as much! The search
continues…..
 |
| Some interesting purple soft corals |
We all relaxed for the journey back. I kept a watchful eye on the horizon – we might still see something on the way back.
Another whale perhaps?!
Back at the resort at 5pm after a long day out, we paid up
and thanked the guys at Koh Hai divers for making the day happen for us. They could do no more for us than create a
trip for 6 on a massive ferry and cross their fingers!
We had our last dinner at the Fantasy resort (below) and called it a night after a long day on the ocean.
No comments:
Post a Comment