Mark's Stuff

Well I guess it should be fairly obvious.. you shouldn’t drive it upside down! We came across this unfortunate scene just outside The Rip at Port Phillip Heads en route to dive the Rotomahana. We’re unsure exactly how it happened, but suspect it was the driver trying to pull the anchor up while it was attached to the stern of the boat. Add to that an oversized 250HP outboard on the back, and the owner is lucky that the boat was eventually righted and towed to shore. We offered some assistance by way of a couple of divers suiting up and jumping in to try and free the anchor line, but eventually let the water police (nice jetskis, eh?) and port authorities take care of it, and we headed off to the Rotomahana.

The SS Rotomahana lies in about 40m of water, and although there is not much left of her, she still boasts two massive boilers which make for a cruisey little swim through, and there’s still quite a bit of the deck structure remaining, albeit rather broken up. And of course abundant fishlife. But at 40m, and Justin and I not diving with a deco mix, we had about 20 minutes bottom time, a 10 minute ascent to 6m, and a further half hour of thumb twiddling at the shot-line washing off deco obligations.

After the Rotomahana, next stop was a quick drop-off at Portsea for a fill, while Ocean Diver headed back to Sorrento to pick up some more passengers for Anchor Wall and he Arches. The wind and swell picked up a bit so after Anchor Wall we couldn’t head back outside the heads. The alternative was a rather slow scallop drift just off Rye. Having never had the urge to take a photo of a scallop before, I took this pic which shows quite nicely how this stingaree and scallop have buried themselves for camouflage from natural predators. Like divers.

And as usual, a few more pics in my Melbourne Diving gallery.

This Queen’s Birthday Weekend I headed up to Mt. Gambier to finish off my last required dive for my CDAA Deep Cavern certification, which I completed in Little Blue on Friday morning. On Saturday Jake and Ellen took me on a guided tour of Piccaninnie Ponds, which was a treat after fudging around in the 1m visibility of Little Blue. Jake and I dropped into Ewen’s Ponds after that, but unfortunately on the tail end of about 20 other divers, so the water was a little stirred up.

My weekend finished on Monday morning at Kilsby’s, with this trip’s second awesome dive at that hole in the middle of a sheep paddock. I tagged my camera along for a couple of the dives, but my photos just don’t do the dives justice. Definately more practice required at this sort of photography. And maybe another strobe wouldn’t hurt either!

After only about 18 months of trying to get a on a course I’ve finally managed to find a time where my schedule matches the course schedule, and I’ve started my CDAA Deep Cavern course. After three evenings going through theory and practising some line work in the shop, yesterday was the first pool session with instructor Jane from A.B. Ocean Divers.

Kira, Ed and myself spent the better part of two hours running line between milk crates sitting on the bottom of the pool, whilst Jane did her best at task loading us, including simulated OOA scenarios, simulated zero vis (blindfolds over masks and taking off masks), crossed lines and loose lines.

As this was the first time any of us had dived together, and we didn’t really get much time to discuss communication beforehand, there was some confusion going on, but for the most part I think we managed ok. It also didn’t help things out when our sequence was changed for every exercise. Certainly something to be discussed at length before getting wet at Mt. Gambier next weekend!

I definitely have to say that the GUE Fundamentals course I did last year went a long way to preparing me to be a lot more comfortable and confident with what the rest of this course is no doubt going to bring.

This year’s Cup Weekend dive trip with Ocean Divers was to Jervis Bay just south of Sydney, for three nights aboard Ocean Trek. I managed to squeeze onto the trip at the last minute due to a cancellation (sorry you couldn’t be there with us, Pam). There were a total of 10 dives scheduled, but due to some pretty bad weather, we couldn’t get any dives in on Monday morning.

We did see plenty of Wobbegongs and Port Jacksons (below), as well as a number of cuttlefish and a couple of morays amongst other fishlife. The weather was also kind enough to let us into Spider Cave as the last dive on Sunday, but surge stopped us from getting too far. Pics of the weekend are in my Jervis Bay gallery.

Even though to winds were squalling and the waves pounding outside the heads, Mick and Lyn managed to find a quite spot inside the bay for us to anchor on Sunday night.

On Monday there wasn’t much to do other than sight seeing at the local museum or national park, so a few of us opted for a walk to the cliffs above where we were diving over the previous couple of days, and I took the opportunity to photograph some plantlife.