January 5 - Australia: Cairns
Work Schedules
Each week, Jon and I work 4 days on and 3 days off - but we each have one day on and off without each other. If that makes sense. At any rate, today was supposed to be my "lone" day off. Jon got up and went into the dive shop at 6:30, which we do every day because there's always the potential that they won't have enough passengers so they send some of the crew home instead. Of course, the opposite can also happen. And for the past few weeks of "peak season", the boats have been packed with passengers and so additional crew has been needed
Which explains why, at 6:45, Jon came back into the townhouse and called, "Heidi! They need to to work today!"
Dammit. I was going to curl up with a good book. All by myself.
So I packed up my stuff, had breakfast, and we made our ways to the dock. But Hideki - the Dive Supervisor of the day - had mercy on me and let me guide some dives instead of snorkeling or doing look-out.
Dive #1: Norman Reef - The Wild Side
Depth: 16 meters
Bottom Time: 35 minutes
Visibility: 20 meters
I had a group of 5 divers, most of which were relatively new divers. The only woman of the group was suffering from a cold and so had some problems equalizing on her descent. Everyone else got down to 13 meters with no problem, but she had to go up and down until her sinuses adjusted. Once, she called me to the surface with her so she could blow her nose. After the second failed attempt at a descent, I sent her back to the boat and took the rest of the group. I felt bad, but the other divers had been waiting 10 minutes for her and some of them were already half-way through their air. So the four of us continued on our dive. We saw some oriental sweet lips and some surgeon fish, but that's about all the excitement there was.
Dive #2: Saxon Reef - Reef Magic
Depth: 11 meters
Bottom Time: 42 minutes
Visibility: 15 meters
This was a much better dive than the previous one because I was able to talk the woman (Debbie) into snorkeling rather than diving again. So the group was only four and the whole dive went very smoothly. Well, smooth is a relative term. It was smooth if you don't count the fact that my o-ring exploded. Imagine what the water looks like when a submarine is hit underwater by a torpedo. That's what an underwater o-ring explosion looks like.
After we had descended to about 3 meters, my tank felt as though it suddenly blew up. Bubbles were pouring from the back like crazy. So I went to the surface and the blast from my tank caused the passengers on the boat to look out, alarmed. I knew it was the o-ring on the tank, and I didn't want anyone to panic. I dunked the back of my tank under water so the noise wasn't as fierce and began to unhook my BCD. When it was off my back, I turned around to turn off the air and laughed at myself. There were so many bubbles that it definitely did look like a submarine explosion. I quickly swam back to the boat, where the crew had a kit ready for me to swap. I put on my new tank and BCD and descended to where my group was waiting for me. The whole event probably took only 3 minutes, but it was definitely exciting. My first o-ring explosion!
The rest of the dive was great. We saw two whitetip reef shark and a hawksbill turtle at the end of the dive. Very exciting!
Cricket Lessons
During the two-hour trip back to Cairns, Jon got Burkie and Tom to explain the basics of cricket. Australia is ranked very highly on the "cricket charts" right now, so it's on the news every other minute. I don't think Jon is ready to convert from a hard-core American football fan, but he has an appreciation for the overall idea of cricket. Maybe we'll go see a match sometime.