12. Living aboard the Lady Denok

Very brief bit of WiFi on the on-board computer!

We woke up on the morning collection for our trip with more bags that should really be considered acceptable after we’d both separated our dive gear into yet more bags. Popped up to the roof top bar for breakfast, which itself was an extremely unappetising plate of weird shrivelled sausage, which probably wasn’t actually pork and accompaniments but it was all made worth it by the delicious tea and incredible view! We then waited out on the street with all of our luggage for our pick up (it took a fleet of 4 nice but tiny ladies from the hotel, who did several trips, to carry the bags down the flight of stairs to the entrance. We weren’t expecting them to take them but they had them whipped away as we checked out then I suspect deeply regretted their service endeavours. Some one in a ‘crew’ t-shirt arrived to tell us the car was round the corner and we’d walk down the road and wait for it. We obviously immediately trusted him thanks to his ‘uniform’ so off we all went. Once at the corner, he was on the phone fairly aggressively conversing with someone…. Which rather than our kidnappers, turned out to be some of the other boat crew. It seems the car was elsewhere still collecting so he summoned help. A fleet of more men also wearing ‘crew’ T-shirts turned up, each took a bag and off we all went in procession to the port.

Once aboard the boat, via a smaller, aging speedboat, we met our crew and boat mates for the week. It’s a really good bunch of people from a number of places around the world in addition to Indonesia: USA, Singapore, Netherlands, China, Australia and New Zealand. Thankfully, the common language and all conversations take place in English (or American / Australian at times for when some of them talk about where they’ve ‘dove’ before (they mean dived, not the white birds!), what we’re doing this arvo and how to stop the faucet (they mean tap) from changing randomly between hot and cold in the after-dive shower! (There is no way to stop that so it’s like a game of chance between a light scolding and cold down to get the salt water off!).

The diving has been incredible - as it was billed to be! It’s world class diving here and some incredible reefs and life. Within our first few dives, we’d hung out with black tip and white tip reef sharks, massive napoleon wrasse and giant rays, not to mention an abundance of reef fish, fantastic corals and plenty of other beauties. There are also MANY of the most terrifying fish in the sea (titan trigger fish) here although so far, they have been remarkably well behaved and have busied themselves just ripping the heart out of some poor defenceless creature or other rather than mounting any on-human attack. Occasionally they will also shred a bit of coral down to sand, just for fun.

Some dives had some fairly significant current, which isn’t really my favourite although I am getting better at it. We got reef hooks for some dives …. It took me a while to get the hang of it (not an intended pun…which may not be one anyone would actually get anyway!). When there is a bit of insignificant current in the water, you can usually swim with/against it as needed, once it gets too strong to swim against, you have to just float along with it, find a position in the water that is comfortable and then get whooshed along as the reef passes underneath you. This is called a drift dive. At the times, the current can really pick up and the drift dive becomes one where you absolutely fly through the water, whizzing by everything. It can be trickier to hold a position and keep basic control. Usually the currents will be stronger the further away from the reef you are so you have to try and fly along close to the reef, but not so close that you’re touching / kicking it! Going too far away from the reef can mean the currents become more predictable and could whoosh you down or quickly to the surface. In some places, there are also what they call ‘washing machine’ currents. The name really does describe what happens. If you find yourself whooshed into one of those, try and kick back to the reef. If you can’t find it or are in the ‘blue’ (we learnt about that in a previous thrilled instalment), kick up to the surface and fill up your air jacket if you need help going up. Inflate your surface marker buoy (or boo-ee to the Americans) and a boat will come and rescue you!

Sometimes on a moderate drift, you might need to grab a rock (ideally not coral, sea urchin or poisonous stone fish pretending to be a rock) and hold on briefly or steady yourself to take a photo of something or look at a little critter. And then there’s a reef hook. This is when you are on a drift dive when you are flying along. It need to stop, you have to get your hook, identify a piece of solid / well connected rock, hook securely into it then you’re attached. The hook is connected to a piece of rope a couple of metres long and the other end is connected to you. Once the hook is secure, the rope unravels and you fly to an abrupt stop, suspended a couple of meters from the reef being buffeted by current and watching what ever it is that it’s worth hooking in for to stop. In general, you’d only do this for really good stuff like manta rays, sunfish or big sharks! So far, all we’ve done is reef hook practice and a couple of goes at experiencing what it’s like. I won’t be disappointed if we don’t use them again! Once you’ve finished looking and want to carry on, the fun of kicking hard against current and heaving you urself back down the line to get to the hook to unhook takes place. Only unhook once you’re ready and in position as as soon as you’re free, you’ll u fly away in the current! Today we did a drift at ‘Manta Point’ but the current was ok enough that we just held onto rocks and the mantas cruised by 😍.

All is going well and I'm having a great time - going to send this quickly while there's a tiny bit of signal ......