Our first open water sea dive

Finally we had decided to go for a dive in one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. It was really nerve racking the night before we left because it was going to be our first open water dive in the sea. Lots of thoughts were being put into this to see if it was worth doing and if we were brave enough to go. As you already know we are travelling with our friend Jo who is an experienced diver and I think she as caught the scuba diving bug and she was waiting for this moment since the day we left for Bangkok, so she was ready to go.

Right, the morning of the dive, it was 6:45am and we were getting up to have breakfast, get ready for the dive, and get on the boat that would be leaving at 7:30am. On the boat it was starting to get seriously nerve racking as we approached the dive site and were kitting up. The 1st dive was the better of the two but it still wasn’t an unbelievable dive, dad and I where buddies while Jo and Anna buddied up. Our dive master was a young guy called Duc. The dive was like an under water dessert it wasn’t the most beautiful dive in the world but still a great dive. As a junior diver (because I’m under 16) I’m only allowed legally to dive to eighteen metres, we mainly went up to a max. of sixteen. Our second dive didn’t have as much coral (but nor did the 1st but the 1st still had more) but was more scenic with rocks that went up and down all the time. Anna didn’t feel like diving this time so we went down without her. Dad is quite heavy on his air on finished on 40 odd bar every dive (bar being the measurement for the air) and he came up early on the first and third dive. Duc our dive master is great, he showed us lots of coral and other underwater stuff. We saw scorpion fish, Lion fish, angel fish and all sorts of soft and hard coral.

Our next dives were 2 days after the first dives. Anna didn’t join us on the second day so it was only dad, Jo, and me who went. While dad and I buddied up and dived with Duc and a bloke called James, Jo went down with an Italian couple and the dive instructor Christian. This dive wasn’t good at all! Dad had been under weighted so his buoyancy was every where and he couldn’t equalize his ears so he was going up and down all the time, because he was like this I stared to panic for him so we went up and let Duc and James continue on a deeper dive.

For the fourth dive, dad’s ears were too painful so he stayed on the boat. I therefore dived for the first time without any family members. I buddied with Jo and we went down with Duc. I felt more comfortable with Jo, as I knew her, I did not really want to dive with James. I ascended with dad watching on. The first part of the dive was a bit poor, the visibility was not too good, the colours were not there, and it was not very pretty. However as we moved on the coral improved, as did the colours and the fish. We saw an array of soft and hard coral. We were allowed to touch two types of soft coral; the first like a big ball with red soft coral growing to about an inch, we stroked this lovely soft coral, it felt like a mixture of silk and fleece. The second piece looked like a small tree coloured like a pastel yellow, and it stood on a rock on its own away from everything else. This had a nice soft touch to it like the other red coral. We stayed at a nice comfortable depth of around seven metres when the coral got seriously beautiful. There to big rocks that had moved together and formed a small one man tunnel - I’d heard of it before and felt it nervous about it but luckily when we got up to it I was fine - it was probably just over 2 lengths of me and it went quite dark and the water was almost hot. We went in one at a time with Duc at the front, me in the middle and Jo at the end. When we came out the Vis got surprisingly better and the coral was absolutely amazing. There was almost too much too see as I looked around in absolute disbelief as the fish swam around us!! As we approached a small canyon I spotted a little clown fish and as Anna had found out when she was snorkelling they are really playful, so I wiggled my finger near it and it swam round me and spiralled round my arm! It was amazing but as a swam on Jo saw it after me and tried to play with it but the clown fish just blanked her and swam back to his coral. It’s hard to write about this because it was so good. We swam over a rock that had flat hard coral and it was like the town in Finding Nemo it was great! Duc also found a cuttel fish with is like a squidy octipussy thing, so that was good. Sadly the dive came to an end as my air tank was slowly emptying so we came up after a stonking 50-minute dive, and saw a very anxious dad on the side of the boat. After the dive I couldn’t stop talking about the dive and Jo had diagnosed me with the Diving Bug that she as also got herself. This terrible Bug gets you addicted to diving.

So as I’m writing this as I’m diving

Unfortunately we couldn’t find a waterproof case for the laptop, so I won’t be able to publish this blog as the water has damaged the laptop! (I don’t think dad will be happy about that)


See you all soon

Joe