28th October 2012

A day off for Jenny!

She has been hard at work conducting a 6 person Open Water Course, 2 of which were police officers from Rotherham.

Me, I have had my foot in front of a fan for 5 days now!  YAWN!!  It gave me time to catch up with UK work until last night where one of my UK pcs decided to blow up!! Oh well... it'll be fixed soon I hope. The state of my foot has improved slowly, but the toes are still double the size they should be.. Its drying out now, and today is the first day where I haven't had to lance it... so fingers crossed it will be good in a few days.

3 days to go and we head to Gili Trawangan, and hopefully some awesome dives... Its going to take 2 days to get there as the flight connections are rubbish... but its going to be a fun adventure!

x

23rd October 2012

A very HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Dell!  

It's been a grim day, rain, rain and more rain but that didnt stop me going diving this afternoon with Linda, who's doing a 6month eco internship and one of my protege's Emily to Junkyard to take photo's of the newest structure, the Windmill. 

Iona & Chloe, we donated 1000 baht to have you're names welded onto the structure and you have a piece of coral too which Simon and I will look after and monitor especially for you :-D

Simon in the meantime has been at home, resting his foot.  

20th October 2012

Sorry.... A lack of posts again... but we have been very busy bees!!

So I shall recap..

I continued 4 of the Open Water students into the Advanced course, and it coincided with a final trip for this year to Sail Rock! Finally I had a chance to get to see the Bull Sharks!!!

We headed out on a day that was super calm... it was a gorgeous day.

The first dive, I went around the pinnacle of the dive site, and no sharks :-(   However.... on the 2nd dive, I went off the dive site and got to see 2 of them for a brief couple of minutes... it was awesome!

Returning to the pinnacle.... we missed it and ended up diving in the middle of the blue for about 30 minutes.... oh well... it was worth it..!

The next day, it was time to finish off the new coral tranplant structure for Junkyard. Another long couple of long days of welding and cutting. But, it was finally ready to transplant.. We scheduled the deployment for the 19th.

A couple of days before deployment, we attended a Project Aware day for the island, trying to promote the eco stuff that goes on here.

 I got roped in at the last moment to do some presentations about mooring lines.

It went well, and a lot of awareness was raised that day. Hopefully the vibe continues into next year.!

Then it was time for the windmill deployment!

It was a precarious job, using the longtail to get the structure out to Junkyard, and then sliding it off, whilst trying to keep it afloat.... but somehow we managed it. Lots of video taken, so given some time, I can edit it.

Which leads us to last night, where I had been promising a couple of friends that I would make some veggie chilli... 6 people in the end... with me cooking on 2 tiny stoves with 1 saucepan and 1 frying pan... not easy!

They left around 10pm and Jen and I cosied up to a movie.... retiring early.  However, I was up most of the night with 2 really painful toes... It felt like they were going to explode... looks like I have foot rot!! With the water and weather, its pretty common... squeezing a ton of pus out helped relieve the pain...

So today, its off to the clinic for some medication... and no diving.. while Jen finishes the Windmill deployment.


xx

SD

11th October 2012

Si's just come home after finishing a 6 person Open water group and has collapsed on the sofa asleep after hardly any sleep, piles of UK work and coping with me  ;-)

I on the other had got up around 8am for an hour and then went back to bed, still feeling achey and conjested but feeling a whole lot better that yesterday, which is good.

Simons on an early finish today (4pm) as he did a late stint in the office till 8pm last night.

Plans for today are to tidy the house, sort the washing out.  Try and get out on the bike and do some excercise and sweat these bugs out of me so I can get back in the water.

Tonight, Simon's got his Open Water video showing around 7pm so we'll be down at Crystal bar cheering his students on.  Im sure Simon did something funny in the video, so it's always good to see :-D

9th October 2012

It's been a crazy week.  I helped out with a load of Chinese Open Waters.  Luckily I didnt have to do any of the acadmics and their English was limited but assisted on th confined and took 6 for the actual open water dives which was very interesting, seeing they only just got through their swims & floats.  The first 3 dives were breifed by Suki, our Chinese instructor but I decided to do the last and I think all n all, went pretty well. 

After expecting to take a couple of the Chinese for the Advanced course, I was given 4 lads of different nationalities which was good, all very good in the water, not all newly qualified :-D

Day 1 were had 3 dives, Navigation, Peak Performance Buoyancy & then a Night dive.  The 2nd day, there was a special trip on to Sail Rock, which I'd not been there for at least 18months, so I was very excited when the guys decided to upgrade.

A long journey but lunch was included and a double dive, so everyone was happy especially seeing 3 Bullshark  ..which were massive.  I was pretty nervious, they were very curious and stayed close to the reef edge.  I has all sorts of scenarios going through my head ;-D

The 2nd dive was much better, less people and just an adrenalin rush , just wish Simon was there with me to share the experience instead of teaching Rescue and being really busy with UK work.