Watery Voles

Just back from our hols. More watery pursuits for us with lots of diving and swimming and general lazing around in nice hot places.

First week on a liveaboard is remembered here.

The second week we were at the Coraya Beach Resort just near Marsa Alarm airport in Egypt. This is a reasonably upmarket sort of hotel which we enjoyed a great deal. The staff were excellent, friendly and helpful without being over the top. The food was generally pretty good, although we noticed a little lack of variety by the end, but on the whole most enjoyable. We, luckily, didn’t take the advice of people on trip advisor to go fully inclusive. Basically, because we weren’t drinking loads due to the diving, the restrictions imposed by “fully” inclusive made it not worthwhile. We also found if you chatted to the staff for a bit, then tended to slip you free drinks anyway.

or diving we had to walk all the way around the bay (about 10 minutes) to the sister hotel on the other side which was far more family oriented. The dive shop was very well organised (by Germans) and there was a very creditable house reef which took care of our diving needs for the second week. Nitrox was free too, which was nice to see, although we didn’t make use of it because our itinerary was a very relaxed one.

The first week saw some problems on the boat which did detract from our enjoyment a little, but the second week was a blast and overall left us with great impressions of Egypt once again.

The Big Blue

The Red Sea is an ever receding memory as we return from our holiday to the normal world.

I have to say that all-in-all our diving exploits were a total success. I don’t know what it is about lobbing a big metal tank on your back, bunging a hosepipe in your mouth and jumping into large, fish-filled expanses of water, but I do seem to enjoy it enormously.

Of course, we were a little concerned about the other people we’d be sharing a boat with, since I’ve seen a number of instances where compressed air seems to have had very detrimental effects on the personality and social skills of divers, but we needn’t have feared since they were a great bunch, even if one had a penchant for diving in a dressing gown and there seemed to be an ongoing competition to dive in each other’s clothing – I kid you not.

The flight over was even more dreadful that I was expecting – what sort of airline charges you for food and then runs out of it? – and of course we were late. They also managed to tell us the wrong local time, so we spent the first day rather confused as everything seemed to be happening at the wrong times. But the boat was great, the diving was great and the food was great.

I had the usual technology hassles – my GPS crashed and wouldn’t turn off until the battery went flat, but luckily the dive sites are all on a map, so I should be able to plot our sites – which was the whole idea. My dive gear had a few hiccups and I broke a bit off at one point – although it actually seems to work better without it. The new underwater camera worked a treat, however.

Herself enjoyed it far more than she (or I) thought she would and we’re even talking about doing another one next year.

I shall be assembling the photos and writing some text in more detail, for those that are interested.

I also came back to find I have an interview on Thursday. Neat.

Holidays

I booked our holiday today.

After huge amounts of research and discussion, we finally had little choice because we're so restricted on when we can go. But we've booked on a liveaboard for a week in the Red Sea (poo-pooing this whole credit crunch nonsense and have a cheap holiday in the UK ... it certainly isn't cheap). I'm ridiculously excited about this already, even though it's weeks away because I get to unpack all my dive gear and check its all OK and hopefully even go for a dive or two in a local puddle - just to make sure everything is up to scratch, you understand.

Sometimes I forget just how much I enjoy diving. One of the best times of my life was doing my Divemaster training in Australia. I think it has the ideal combination of activity, technology, shiny bits of kit and water. I love to see the fish, but am rubbish at telling anyone what they are (much to my embarassment when I'm dive-leading).

The most exciting thing about this holiday is that we are stuck on a boat for 6 days with nothing to do but dive. This means doing several dives each day - which really gets your diving up to scratch. The last time I did that was in Australia. Even though we've managed to do some diving on most holidays, herself is not as keen as me and so we have to pace the diving and spend time sitting by the pool or playing table tennis or something. This time there will be little or none of that and I'm hoping that I can, and feel up to, doing the 4 dives a-day which represents the maximum ... although, maybe not every day.

The boat we've selected (see the pic) gets some very good reviews and sounds fantastic. All that remains now is to decide what bits of kit I simply must replace. Having been forced not to replace the main things, I'm sure I can still find a number of bits and bobs which will be absolutely essential to my enjoyment and full participation in the week. We also need to get herself a wetsuit. Oh, I can feel my credit card vibrating at the meer thought of it.

Weather and things airbourne

Time for a weather update.

Today it has been mostly sunny, but with clouds and rain at times. The weather station says it's going to rain, but the weather seems to have given up on this and has been pretty sunny all afternoon, but with the odd dark, black cloud making it look like the heavens are about to open - but they don't.
The wind is almost non-existant and the pressure is 994 millibars. The temperature outside is 27C

Well, I had to do that after all the effort of setting this weather station up.

The Red Arrows have been flighing around this afternoon. Basically a couple of hours of hearing them in the distance with a few very close and very low fly-bys which I totally failed to capture on camera. It was rather exciting. I also saw a helicopter landing this morning (the only link between these being that they were both in the air).

There was a brief panic this afternoon when I couldn't find my passport, but it was soon located in my ski jacket (guess the last time I went abroad).

Other than that, it's been fairly quiet today. Was going to book the holiday, but decided to wait until my credit card statement has been issued - see, I'm such a financial wizard.

Gear crisis

Following my last post about the need for dive gear, this has been a traumatic day.

Having honed my selection of new gear down to a few choices, I decided the time had also come to get a new battery fitted to my dive computer - well, in face the time was about a year ago as I found out when we went away diving and my computer didn't work. So, off I toddled to the local dive shop (toddling being a fine method of travel in my neck of the woods).

I've had said dive computer for many years and it's never needed a battery, so I didn't really know what to expect in terms of price. I do, however, know what I didn't expect and that was the healthy sum of £140 being required. This seems rather excessive, but apparently it's all very complicated and time consuming and you basically don't have any choice (you can't do it yourself because you need to replace the seals to make it water and pressure proof again). Add to this the fact that I needed a new screen protector and was also thinking of getting a nice computer interface for it that I'd seen on eBay and we're rapidly heading in the direction of 200 quid. The worst part of it being it's not new or shiny, just the same old computer I've had for years (albeit in an improved state of actually functioning).

Just as I was pondering all this, Carl in the dive shop informed me that instead of shelling out all this cash, I could, instead, shell out even more and upgrade to a suitably shiny new computer - with whizzy new features like microbubbles and IRDA interface. I did ponder this for several hours before ringing him back and going ahead with the new-for-old option.

So these events have put rather a dent in the budget for new kit - amounting to basically the cost of a new BCD. So I've made the hard decision to keep my existing kit - with all its weighty joy and instead just get a couple of new spangly things to celebrate our forthcoming trip. Bit of a change of tack, but then I didn't expect to be getting a new computer.

We have also agreed to book the hol - even though herself hasn't officially been granted the holiday yet. I shall (hopefully) be doing this in the very near future.

In need of gear

We have been contemplating holidays recently.

Due to a variety of reasons, we find ourselves with only one week to go away and the need to do something engaging, rather than just relaxing. This makes me immediately think of Scuba diving.

As soon as I start contemplating diving, I remember that after last year I vowed to buy some new gear, as the kit I have now is rather heavy and although works well, is difficult to get onto a plane to go anywhere. So I've been forced to search the internet for new and shiny diving equipment whilst working out just how much my current stuff is worth on eBay.

There is, as always, an awful lot of kit out there to be purchased and its not always obvious which is the best choice. I had some very definite goals when I bought my original set and although it does do what I wanted, there are a number of notable flaws - the weight of the whole thing being the most obvious.

It's interesting to note that technology has not really moved on a huge amount in the 5 years since I last researched such things. There are all kinds of technical breakthroughs, but nothing really big has changed at all. Even dive computers have simply been tweaked and enhanced rather than being dramatically overhauled. I think this is probably partly due to the natural conservitism that occurs when equipment is responsible for your life - quite reasonable really.

So, I'm starting to think that I won't get anything better, but it will be considerably lighter. I also want to keep things as simple as I can, since there is a tendancy to just bolt more and more kit on and end up looking like some kind of demented cyberman. I guess in this respect my own goals have changed since I am considerably more experienced now and have learnt (often the hard way) which things are important and which aren't.

It always strikes me as an irony that a sport such as diving, in which the goal is to be close to a whole different form of nature in a relaxing and tranquil environment needs so much stuff to actually achieve that. But then, maybe that's part of what I like about it.