January 15 - Australia: Cairns
Our IDC (Instructor Development Course) begins on January 29, so next week will be our last week of work. Burkie (whom I call “Boikie” in a heinous New York accent) has threatened to throw us off long before that. Secretly, he’ll miss us like crazy.
Lookout vs. Snorkeling
Jon lost our match of Rock-Paper-Scissors and so he had to take the snorkelers out today. (I’m not going to dwell on the fact that we consider snorkeling a “losing” position. We’ve become a bit warped.) This meant that I got to do lookout and stay dry. Of course, dry is a relative term when it's 37°C. There’s really no way to avoid sweating in this kind of heat. It was brutal up there on the top deck. The SPF30 lotion that’s on the boat isn’t the most “breathable” of lotions either. I might as well cover myself in a wet suit! The first site was incredibly hot, but the second site at least had a nice breeze coming off the reef.
Nightmare Passengers
We had about 30 people on the boat today, and almost all of the English-speaking passengers were nightmares. Somedays, it just works out like this. To begin with, they all managed to show up at the same time 20 minutes before departure. Normally, they fill up the 45 minutes before the boat leaves. But not today! So from 8:10-8:30, we were running into each other trying to get everyone's gear together.
We have a joke with Horst (who is German) about who is worse: stereotypical Germans or stereotypical Americans. Germans are usually unsmiling, dour, and unfriendly. Americans, on the other hand, are loud, high-maintenance, and nosy. Today, we got a taste of both stereotypes. Four of the people on board were from Germany and had full gear that they needed to set up. They were incredibly rude and not easy to please. After attempting to help them for five minutes, Jon was ready to throw them of the boat. One of them was an instructor, which made their attitude even worse as instructors are notoriously pompous. (Q: How can you tell if there's a scuba instructor in the room? A: Don't worry about it. They'll tell you almost immediately.--thanks to Judd for that joke)
The American nightmare was a man who, upon reading "Advice to Divers" fact sheet and disclaimer, decided he didn't like some of the exceptions that were listed. So he just crossed them off. When Horst reviewed the paperwork before we left Cairns, he had to tell this man that it was an all-or-nothing deal: either sign it and dive or don't. We Americans have a reputation for being lawsuit-happy. This is a reputation that I think is quite justified.
So once we got out of Cairns and finished the safety briefing, we made our way to the wheel house as we do on every trip. There were five us in there when Horst came in - a bit wide-eyed - and said, "Somebody lock the door!". We all laughed because we knew exactly what he was talking about.
But it all ended well. There was a couple from Brisbane on the boat and they hung out in the wheel house with us on the way back to Cairns. The man, Rob, was a wonderful cook and traded fish recipes with Burkie and Mark, who are avid spear fishers. The woman, Jane, had just published four children's books about "Tipper the Nipper" who is a surfing dog. They kept us all entertained and ended the day very nicely.
Washing The Boat
At the end of every day, we wash the port side of the boat because that's the side we park next to on the dock. But today, Burkie, Mark, and Horst decided we needed to wash the starboard side as well. So as we entered the dock, we parked "illegally" so we could get to the starboard paneling. This was a bit weird because the mooring lines are all set up for the port side. But we managed all right, and since our neighbors "The Day Tripper" were out for the evening we used their dock space. We bid the passengers "Good-bye" and then got to work quickly cleaning so we could turn the boat around.
Jon Cleaning Sea Quest
The sun was setting and there was an interesting cloud pattern over some of the mountains, so I climbed to the upper deck to snap a photo.
View of Cairns Port from the Upper Deck of Sea Quest
Now, if you're observant, then you've noticed the lovely clouds in the picture. But I'm sure that - instead - your attention was drawn to gorgeous yacht parked on the dock. This yacht The Ultimate has been there for a good month now and is HUGE!!! Those two satellite dishes are enough to power an entire cable network! Burkie "reckons" that it runs about $40million Aussie dollars.
By the way, no one "figures" or "thinks" here. Everyone "reckons". In the U.S., this is considered a word only rednecks use. But Jon and I have become quite used to it. I wonder how long it will take us to break that habit when we get back to the U.S.
We stopped by the grocery store on our way home, and cooked Chicken Mussuman with potatoes and onions. Jon was all excited because it started raining outside, but for a few minutes was only raining on one side of the house. (We're entertained by the little things.)