This particular weekend was one of the Dive 2000 weekends away in Jervis Bay, with us on Oceantrek.
A new deckie/cook in training, Karen, has decided to try working on Oceantrek to see if she likes it. She's travelled a bit and just gotten back from a 4 year holiday around the world with her husband, so she had lots of interesting tales to tell, including stories of how to hitch-hike across the Indian Ocean, a fire at sea and skippering a charter boat in Portugal.
Apart from a new person, Friday night was quite normal, vacuuming, raiding whatever food Carly the cook was preparing in the kitchen, and cleaning up birdshit so the boat looked clean and nice.
Only one small problem, the water maker is broken. While I'm trying to do my cleaning up chores, Mick hijacks me to help him remove the electric motor thingy from the shaft of the pump. A couple of bloody knuckles later for both of us, belting the shaft with a hammer and levering with two shifting spanners that kept slipping off and bashing our fists into the wooden seat we were using as a bench. Despite our efforts however, and finally extracting the winding thingy, another part didn't fit properly and we never successfully managed to fix it.
So the bad news is we are on water restrictions. We only have 1500 litres of water, fortunately we only have 13 customers. So we tell everyone that they can't have showers, and we just washup by hand instead of using the dishwasher....DOH!!
Saturday is a beautiful balmy spring day, in the middle of winter. Too funny. Well, eventually. At first it's cold and clear and beautiful, and I really don't want to get out of my bunk. I've had a cold night's sleep and get up and put on as many clothes as I can find. After we get brekkie ready though, the sun starts to warm me up and we move out for our first dive of the day while the customers sit and enjoy their brekkie of bacon, eggs and muffins and chatter about the weekend ahead.
The weather is kind to us today, light offshore winds and small seas, so we head out in front of Bowen Island for our first dive. We anchor just north of the gap between Bowen and the mainland, and I get frustrated in my attempts to take an arty farty photo with my poor old sony camera. The water looks nice and clear, and the customers are all soon in and finning down into the depths. Curtains of air bubbling up as the sun penetrates the surface. Idyllic.
One of Australia's leading underwater phototographers is on the boat this weekend, Kevin Deacon. Everytime this guy opens his mouth, I try and listen. OK, if I am lucky and remember one third of what he ever says, I will be a great photographer one day. we talk about some digital cameras I'm interested in buying, and he gives me some very good advice. Now I'm champing at the bit to buy my new camera.
Our next dive is with the seals down at Steamers. The wind is shifting peculiarly, and though we have anchored well, we are hanging wierdly in the current, and it's a bit of an extra swim for the customers to play with the stinky seals. Poor Kevin jumps in, and instantly his drysuit floods. Bugger that for a joke he says, I'm freezing and I'm getting out. Not long after we find that the zipper in his drysuit, for when boys have to have a wee break in between dives, is wide open. Oops. He's never checked it used it ever, but last week hired his suit out and the customer must have unzipped it. I bet he checks it from now on...
Soon all the divers are back and buzzing with excitement. The seals have all put on a show and everyone is soon swapping stories and showing pictures from their digital cameras. One of the regular Dive 2000 visitors, Richard, has a particularly nice shot of a seal that either is trying to give him a kiss, or eat his camera.
We stop for lunch at a mooring on the Western side of Bowen Island, and after washing up and filling tanks, Mattie motors over, picks me up, and we're off around the front of Bowen Island for a dive off his new diveboat. Sweet!
The water is lovely and clear. Admittedly we don't see a huge variety of underwater critters. Which is very surprising for this dive spot. Though it's called Weedy Valley for a reason. You are almost guaranteed to see a few weedy sea dragons, and it's not long before we see a seedy wee dragon swimming around. Some sea perch, old wives, and some port jackson sharks who are uncharacteristly active. Mattie is a master at finding small things, and oh, I've just realised, where's your damned camera Matt? Mine has a busted housing, but his does not. Soon he finds us a little spider crab. Cool little critter.
Though I have a nice high nitrox mix, which should give me a long bottom time, unfortunately I don't have a nitrox computer, and all too soon, after only 20 mins, my computer says it's time to go up. Part way up the anchor, we head off to the stern where Mattie's shotline hangs down to 15 metres. From here, looking up, we can see the boat, the surface, it's clear, the sun is shining down and we make air rings, like smoke rings, but much much cooler, to amuse ourselves. Up we go for a safety stop and out we get.
Back to Oceantrek to drop me off so I can get back to work, and I'm buzzing. Having a great time. Mick drives Oceantrek around to where Mattie and I have just dived, and we push everyone in for a dive to see if they like it as much as Mattie and me.
They do, and another session of giggling divers swapping tall stories and showing each other pictures as we motor back inside Bowen Island for the night dive. Nature treats us to a lovely sunset over the water, then the divers jump in. Impatiently I herd them in. No beers for me until all the nitrox fills have been done. "Get in, get in, you're cutting into my drinking time!" Fortunately, after a big day, they are all getting a little cold, and soon they're all up and I'm filling tanks while they get ready for dinner. As they get out the call rings out, "Shark, shark!" A baby port jackson shark, that could fit in my hand, has swum up, probably not long out of the egg, to our light, to be greeted into the world. Soon the shouts of "look out! He's coming for you!" Ring out.
The night is not without drama though. Richard has some pains and wierd symptoms, not a diving injury, but it's worrying all the same. Lyn, the other half of the boat ownership, and an ex nurse, is not happy. Next thing you know, Mick and I are bundling Richard into the tender and heading to Murray's Beach boatramp to meet the ambulance. Forty minutes later we're back at the boat, and, Lyn presents me with a set of tracksuit pants that have just come out of the dryer. I'm in heaven. Soon I thaw out, but the party is over, and everyone has gone to bed.
All too soon it is Sunday morning. Only it's Sunday morning 3:00am, and I hear thump thump. My first thought is that the tender is bashing up against the boat, but with this wind? What's going on. Up I get and I find that the wind has shifted to the west, a lot, we're getting bumped by the waves, not a huge problem, but it's a lee shore. If the mooring rope breaks, we're on Bowen Island. So I wake the skipper and Mick and Lyn get up, we start up, and we motor across the bay. I crawl back into my bunk. Lyn tells me the moon is just rising and it looks really cool. "Great! I yell." I wonder if she can hear me through the covers.
All too soon it is Sunday morning again, only this time the sun is up, so I get up. Karen and Carly take great delight in telling me that I look a little tired. We set the tables for breakfast and I head for my first nana nap of the day. I have more planned...
We head out for our first dive of the day, outside the bay, a little to the North, at a dive site called, "The Whorehouse". I kid you not. Imagine a big table tennis table, about 30 metres square, a big rock, drop it on a bunch of other rocks, so you can swim around from "room" to "room" and peer in on the others swimming around on their merry way in the other "rooms". The earliest name I know of this site is "Ronnie's Cathedral". Every dive operation tends to have their own name for the different sites, but you can guess what was on Mick's mind when he named this one...
First we motor past and throw in a weight with a line and a buoy attached. We're not anchoring here, we're just motoring past again, telling everyone to pretend they are parachutists, pushing them off, and drifting around to wait for them to get up.
Anyway, they have fun, we pick them all up, and now, for the Pièce de résistance.
We head South a bit for our next dive. The divesite is called big drop. I have no idea if we get there or not, and I doubt any of the divers found it. I am on the back deck stuffing around and hear Waz on the radio, he's out again on Avalon, driving for Deep Six. He's calling up the dolphin and whale watch guys. He's seen a coupla whales. Hmm, interesting, I kinda prick up an ear while doing whatever I'm doing. We're not likely to see them, but you never know.
Next thing I hear, and I shit you not, Orcas, Killer Whales, in the bay at Target Beach. So we're talking about going in to see them on the way back, oh, divers still in the water? Stuff 'em, we'll come back later or something. They got all the dives they paid for...
Ok ok so we sit there waiting for the divers to get the hell out of the water, next thing we are told, the Orcas are coming out of the bay, to us. Binos out scanning the water, heh, not that hard, just look near the entourage of accompanying whale and dolphin watch boats, and a few little boats.
Someone asks me how often I have seen Orcas, counting now? One! Lyn has been working on diveboats in and around Jervis Bay for 25 years, she's seen this now twice. A group of divers is coming up, they have their surface marker up, a big big male and his partner swim past so close, we were waiting for the red safety sausage marker to disappear under the water. They never even saw the Orcas go past...
I've seen whales, i've seen dolphins, but a big fat Orca, the tall fin of the male, the puff of water around spraying as it breathed, the clown black and white colours, it was just magical.
Thinking we'd seen it all we headed back into the bay, to find that there was another pod hanging around Target Beach still. We came in to see them swimming out, hugging the northern rocky cliffline, hunting perhaps. The little pod of girl Orcas meeting up with the two big boys and heading out of the bay North.
Weekends like this, pure gold...
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