Our 3rd Wedding Anniversary – and how we nearly got lost at sea... -- Wednesday 24 June 2009

Enjoying the sunset on our third wedding anniversary


The reef was thiiiis big actually...that's just a small fraction of it


On the tender getting ready to head in for our last dive of the trip


Very cute and distinctive yellow box fish


A big thumbs up from me as we descend down on a dive


These are some nice reef shots



Happy Birthday Mom! :-) (Although I know by now it's belated)

As we relax on the boat and wait for lunch, I can reflect on Dive 1 and 2 of the day.

Dive 1 – Wonderland Wall

Was a decent dive – beautiful walls of coral, but not a lot of exciting fishie spotting.

Dive 2 – Wonderland Garden

Well, this dive was supposed to be promising – we were supposed to be able to see a bunch of cuttle fish, but things did not quite go as planned. We descended pretty quick, keeping an eye on the rope that was moored at the wall of the reef that we wanted to dive around, but then we made a wrong turn. We think we went down to deep and found a smaller wall groove that went out diagonally…and then the .5 strength current picked up pulling us in the wrong direction and was much deeper than were were told we’d be going… so… all of a sudden we realized we were not looking at much…and we were at 27 or 28 meters down…and way the hell off course. That’s when you have that moment when you look at each other with raised eye brows and make the conscious decision whether or not to panic. We chose not to, but it doesn’t mean that you don’t have a moment where you look to the top (and visibility wasn’t nearly as good so it’s hard to see the surface) and think…oh crap.

So, we came up a little faster than we should have, we did some of a safety stop, but not a long one, and popped up at the surface to figure out where on earth we were in relation to the boat. We were pretty darn far from the boat and the current was pretty strong, so we switched to snorkel, inflated our BC’s, held hands, and started kicking hard. We took a while to get back towards the boat, pretty strenuous swimming, but, we made it back to the line and decided to give it a go, descended once more, hoping and hoping we might see some cuttle fish…but no such luck. We swam around for about ten minutes and then headed up. The current was still quite strong – when we tried to swim up beside the rope it was only possible to swim up while holding the rope to guide us up. We climbed back on board – signed off on the dive profile, that yes we had gone deeper on our second dive than on our first, and then headed off to our room for a nice hot salt-free shower – and to let our adrenaline stop pumping quite as much.

We both love diving and 99% of the time it’s pretty effortless for us, very enjoyable and relaxing, exciting, and we usually don’t have problems…but that 1% of the time when something goes wrong – you realize that you do have training and you fall back on the trained instincts and “diving laws” you’ve been taught – which is why we could easily communicate and decide to go to the surface, etc.

So, for the first half of our anniversary we were tested – could we think through a semi-emergent issue together? Absolutely! We came through with flying colors – the day we got married I gave Daniel a card with a picture of about fifty different road signs on the front with a message inside that more or less said “where ever we go, let’s go it together” -- and I have to say even when we were fighting the current, trying to avoid using a safety sausage and calling for a pickup, it felt really good take a deep breath and to grab each other by the hand and kick like hell together…

Dive 3 – Rod’s Rock –

So this was a much better dive – although we (along with a whole pack of other divers) almost got lost again. In the process of finding our way to the bominies I spotted two beautiful bright yellow and blue nudibrancs and we all saw a pack of black tipped sharks. Then as we found our way we had a few other neat discoveries – along with several more families of clown fish in sea anemone villages, we also saw a black feather star swimming through the water – which Daniel caught on video, I spied a lion fish hanging out upside down under a coral ledge, and on the way back we saw the captain playing with a sea snake. (Which I managed to touch the tip of his tail, leaving me feeling very daring)… Then I spotted a map puffer fish and we saw two sea snakes mating just as we headed towards the rope. Just as I grabbed hold of the rope the current picked up big time and I held on tight to the rope and tried to get Daniel’s attention to swim hard and grab on too, he wasn’t looking and got pushed a ways. As we got to the top it swelled again and we really had to kick with might to make it to the ladder – it’s amazing how strong it can be and how much you can feel like you’re just swimming in place.

But all in all – it was a good one, I saw a bunch of neat things and got the excitement put back into me…sadly…there’s only one left 

Dive 4 – Driftin through Dynamite Pass

This was a great last dive – it was a drift dive between two reef ridges as the tide came in and the coral walls were just gorgeous. We saw some great fish, no cuttle, but some great other things and really enjoyed ourselves.

After everyone cleaned up after the last dive we had a big BBQ on the upperdeck with everyone and all enjoyed one last evening together. Daniel worked deals and got copies of lots of others pictures and the honeymooners were given a bucket of champagne – and since it was in fact our third anniversary, we were given a nice bottle of red wine to enjoy with our dinner. It was a great last night – everyone was really jelling and we had a lot of fun.

More to follow soon – as I tell you how many modes of transportation we took to get out of the Coral Sea and up to Daintree!