Dive Instructor Journal

Wednesday, 20 March 2019

Tuesday, 19 March 2019

20th March 2019

You look so young & cute in this ;-D

So many funny faces we've pulled

The concern on Iona's face with the size of this

That was a great pizza

Lets get wet!!

Cheers Birthday girl!!

On the catwalk :-D

Dear Iona,

Wishing you a very Happy Birthday!!!

Thinking of you !

Love & hugs

Jenny & Simon

XOXOXOX

Saturday, 16 March 2019

Another Reef Check course has finished and 3 students can go out and survey reefs and contribute to citizen science. It took a little long than usually but we got there in the end :-D I managed to get all three students to last over an hour underwater, halving their air consumption. So I'm pretty pleased with that. They were good little divers and now I only have 1 remaining student who's going to do a 2 week Eco Internship with me, so it should be a productive couple of weeks :-D

Simon has yet again been teaching Self Reliant course, which has been nice as we've both been on the same boat :-D The visibility is improving slowly and it's very hot! A

Simon playing with my camera :-D

Dive Site Clean. Rope was the general debris

Creating a rope nursery

Rope Nursery in position

It's Birthday week!!!

A lot of very special family members with Birthday in March, including my handsome Simone :-D We wish we could celebrate with you all. We will be thinking of you and raising our glasses :-D

Wednesday, 6 March 2019

February 2019

February has gone in a flash!

I've been teaching a few specialties like Fish Identification, Dive Against Debris, been on a UV (ultra violet) night dive and have transplanted a few 'Adopt A Corals' for customer. Amongst that, I've been running ecobrick workshops, beach and dive site clean ups to name but a few. Also, what's been fun is that we've recently been doing step by step guides as to how to make recycle things ..check out our Eco Koh Tao facebook page. It was Simon's fun idea but it's been fun recycling and trying to come up with new idea's :-D

UV Night Dive

Adopt a Coral

Eco Brick Workshop

Dive Against Debris

Land Clean Up

Step by step guide

Cleaning our coral nurseries

Simon's been teaching a lot of 'Self Reliant' certifications which has kept him busy and out of trouble.
We've also been out on Cuthbert a few times using the sonar to try and find new dives sites but as the visibility hasn't been the best, it's been a little difficult and as we can't moor up as there are no mooring lines, we've been using the sonar to look at depth, volume of fish and I've been jumping in to see if I could see anything snorkeling, no joy as of yet. All very exciting though.

Today Simon's gone off on a fishing boat with a couple of the boys to try and salvage a very expensive anchor which has been snagged, halfway between here and the mainland. It belongs to one of the influential Thai families and they want to salvage the anchor which is very valuable and its at around 30/40 mtrs, ..so I hope all goes well. This is day 2. He's taken his go pro, so we should have some footage at some stage :-D

Thursday, 14 February 2019

14th February 2019

Wishing everyone a very Happy Valentines Day!!

Sending lots of love, anonymously to everyone ;-D

Happy Wedding Anniversary Mum & Dad

Thinking of you!

xxx

Monday, 21 January 2019

January 2019

Thank you again Rosie, Charles and the boys for putting up with us. We are very lucky to be able to such a loving family, so THANK YOU!

It was hard to leave, luckily we had a really early start and I was half asleep so didn't turn into a blubbering mess when saying goodbye to Rosie, who was up at 04:45am to make us cuppa. THANK YOU Rosie!!!

Our return journey was with Qatar Airways with a stop over at Oman and then onto Bangkok. The first leg was great, we managed to move seats and I was able to spread out and catch up on a few Zzzzz's ..the 2nd leg, Simon was sat next to a very odd chap, who battled for leg space, spilt his water all over Simon's leg and was just a pain, so we didn't get any sleep ..ho hum

Cuthbert paying full attention to the safety briefing

Me, snoozing :-D

We find that it getting harder to recover from the jet lag the older you get. So far it's taken 5 days to sort of get back into a normalish sleeping routine. Age, don't you just love it!! :-D
What has been good though, is the weather. It's only been in the mid to late 20's, so no too hot. Very pleasant compared to the UK :-D ...Sending lots of sunshine your way!!

Since being back we've only dived a couple of times and at Junkyard our artificial reef. Where we've been transplanting corals and assessing the storm damage. Surprisingly there has been very little, which is fortunate.

Tim & I transplanting coral

Nice healthy corals

Finally cycled up to the resevoir

I've been out on the bike for a couple of cycles now. We've both been out on the paddle boards. Boy is it difficult. Balance is key and mine is not that great! LOL It's a good workout and we're both enjoying doing it together. I'll have to get pictures to post. We've also been in the garden, sweeping up the leaves ready for a bonfire, cutting back the greenery which grows like crazy, cleaned the house from top to bottom and have done a shop...so feeling a lot more settled.

Our lovely family! Happy Birthday Rob!!

A belated HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Rob. We both hope you had a marvelous day!!

Tuesday, 8 January 2019

December 2018

I have been very lapse with the blog ..time goes far too quickly SO SORRY!!!

At the end of November, beginning of December I was out of the water due to an infection in my thigh. I think I may have picked something or it could have been an ingrown hair, I'm not sure.

During that time, I was supposed to be teaching ECO courses but as I was unable to dive. I could do all the academics but Simon had to come to my rescue and do all the water work for me. It was a real headache for Simon but it worked out well in the end. I don't know what I'd do without him.

Picture update of our adventures in December!