Thar she blows

Another early start yesterday morning, so we could get down to the Tweed River near the top of the tide for the final day of the diving course. I got up at 4:30am and left the house while it was still dark.

We had a few other divers with us this time, a guy from Melbourne who already had his ticket, a guy on holidays from Dublin who only had to do his last dive to qualify, and Tanya, another instructor who was taking the other to guys down.

That made ten of us and the Aussies were still outnumbered. Terry, our instructor, is from England as are Dave, Laurie and I. Matt is from the US, and Tanya is a Newfie. That left just Alex, Will, and the guy from Melbourne as the token Aussies. Actually the joke was that Matt was the token yank, in case we needed to leave someone behind.

Once we arrived at the boat the trailer was unloaded, gear was assembled, we got into our wetsuits, loaded up the boat and headed down the river and out into open water.

This time of year the humpback whales are heading down the coast back to Antarctica and we saw a heap of them in the distance, blowing and sticking the occasional tail up in the air.

Cook Island is a nature reserve, so to avoid damage to it by anchors there are mooring bouys to tie up to. We tied up to one of them and started putting on our gear ready to enter the water.

Getting into the water was different to what we'd previously done. Before we'd either slid over the side then put our gear on, or we did a giant stride entry. This time we had to roll backwards into the water. You usually see divers do it from an inflatable boat where you're close to the water. The boat we were on had about a metre drop to the water.

My first entry was a bit of a shock. My mask half filled with water and the water was cold. I took the regulator out of my mouth and took a few deep breaths to compose myself, then put the snorkel in my mouth, signalled okay to Terry on the boat, then swam round to the mooring line where we were to assemble before descending together.

About twenty years ago I went diving off Mudjimba Island on the Sunshine Coast. When I first put my head underwater there and looked down the ten metres to the bottom, I was amazed. There was so much to see. When I looked down at Cook Island yesterday I realised this wasn't going to be the same. We've had a few storms and some northerly winds just lately and visibility was pretty bad.

We made the most of it anyway, practised a couple of skills on the bottom, got to see a turtle then did an ascent on our buddy's alternate air source. After that, we all went back down one at a time with Terry and did a CESA, a controlled emergency swimming ascent. This involves swimming to the surface while exhaling all the way up so your lungs don't overexpand with the lower water pressure.

Back in the boat we changed our tanks over and had a bit of a break. Because the visibility was so bad the boat was moved to a different mooring, where it would hopefully be a bit clearer. The entry into the water this time was a lot better, probably because I was already wet and because I'd already done it once.

Visibility here was even worse than the first dive and this time we had a bit of a surge to put up with as well. The plan was for Terry to take us aside in our buddy pairs while Tanya looked after the rest of the group, get us to take off our masks and replace them, then swim about ten metres away using compasses, turn around and swim back to Terry. Once all that was done, the rest of the dive would be a look around and we'd ascend to the surface as certified open water scuba divers.

Terry took Laurie and I aside, found a spot where we could kneel on the bottom, then got me to remove my mask and replace it. We were getting knocked around all over the place and once I'd got my mask back on and the water cleared out of it, Terry took us back to the main group, gave us the thumbs up sign, meaning ascend, and we all swam back to the surface.

It was the first time Terry had ever had to cancel a dive, but he said it was just too dangerous trying to keep an eye on a class in those conditions. So we all got back into the boat and headed back to the Tweed River.

It wasn't a total loss though. On the way back we came across a female whale with a couple of calves. One of them was breaching and fin slapping and just generally having a good time, so we stopped for a while to watch until they swam away.

Because we still have a few things to do before we qualify, we have to do the last two dives another time. This is at no extra cost incidentally, so it basically means we're getting six dives for the price of four. I must admit, despite the conditions yesterday, I still enjoyed myself. Maybe I'm one of those people that enjoys muck diving.

So one Sunday within the next few weeks we'll be heading off for another couple of dives. Hopefully we'll come back qualified.