19th October 2006
Last diving day! Only two dives today.
Morning, we geared up for GPS point, hoping to see big things.
We jumped, by the time I was descending, I looked at Froggie and Hubby down there and realized something was not really right when I saw them fining head down instead of usual easy dropping kind of descend. I quickly turned my position to head down too and found out my speculation was right, the current was blowing hard. It was almost impossible but finally, I grabbed the bottom. So I proceed to climb the rock horizontal toward Hubby. I tried to keep my pace, everyone was moving forward, there was no way one could turn back to check the behind, the water would go into the mask and the risk of having things ripped off the face was greater if we tried too. I saw Hubby reached the end of the slope where there was a drop-off. From the corner of my eyes, I saw Cynthia behind me. We tried to climb to the drop off while I saw Hubby disappeared behind that, hoping to get some relief behind the wall, but we couldn’t move an inch, the current was getting stronger and we had to make sure it wouldn’t rip off the mask and the reg. Having a company, both of us decided to stay, I also aborted all my plan to go to the drop off once I saw Hubby and Froggie bubble was flying to the left, then they parked on our far left.
We waited, and finally, we heard Made banging his signal behind us. Krincing krincing. So all of them were sweep in circular motion back to where we came from. He asked us to go down into a small-secluded area in between rocks near him. So me and Cynthia let go, and when we were near him, we grabbed some rock. It was a relief to see everyone intact and safe. Then we let go our grip and let the current drifted us. After a while, we met the other group. Although we didn’t see hammerhead, we saw a lot of big school of fish and some small thing like orang utan crab, zebra crab or adam crab in sea urchin (one of the spoiled pic!&$#), many huge hermit, and I also saw the flatworm mimic banded batfish juvenile hiding under the rock, so did spiny lobster.
We hung around a rock at the end of the dive. When we cleared our safety stop, the ang-moh group was gone. Made instructed us to hold hand together. So, five of us, hand to hand, let go our grip to the rock, and soon, the current flew us to the blue. When we were hanging there, we had no idea it was that strong! Good initiative to hold hands together, otherwise, we would be separated on the surface.
I should have wondered why the cook served us pisang goreng in the morning, for the energy to fight current! I should have been more suspicious …
No dingy picked us up as it was busy with other group. We were drifted and finally, the big boat itself came to us. We had new way, climbed from the side stair of the boat, the stair we used to hang around, now we know its purpose. We climbed from the side, and walked to the back to put our gear. The other group was just climbed to the boat from behind and surprised to see us walking full gear from nowhere.
Second dive Sebastian decided to give us easy dive, after the ripping crazy first dive. We went to Tandok Rasa, on the North of Gili Banta.
As if to say goodbye, one medium sized manta came to check us up, just minutes before we surfaced, while we were on our safety stop. It only dropped awhile, so we continued our safety stop and then it came back again. So, very close to Cynthia and me. I suddenly couldn’t see anything from my camera’s LCD, so I just pointed at it direction and took video. Then, thinking ‘How if I couldn’t catch it? I switched back to still images and captured few pose before it bumped to Made and flew away. Nice goodbye though!
So last dive of the trip. We took out our gears and washed them in the back, then dissembled it and dried it everywhere on the boat. Everyone was busy.
After that we relaxed, it was the last night on boat. We were sitting on the boat side watching small jellyfish swam by. The boat reached Sape jetty around noon and parked there. After collecting tips for all the crew, some of them took dingy to the city, maybe preparing for other trip. The vessel would be busy continuously until December. We watch the sunset to, the boats, big boat, small boat, fisherman boat passed by.
Just like every night, we could see amazing starry night. There were so many stars visible from the vessel; I saw many falling stars also.
We packed when the sun went down; most of our things were dried. We had early night.
Last diving day! Only two dives today.
Morning, we geared up for GPS point, hoping to see big things.
We jumped, by the time I was descending, I looked at Froggie and Hubby down there and realized something was not really right when I saw them fining head down instead of usual easy dropping kind of descend. I quickly turned my position to head down too and found out my speculation was right, the current was blowing hard. It was almost impossible but finally, I grabbed the bottom. So I proceed to climb the rock horizontal toward Hubby. I tried to keep my pace, everyone was moving forward, there was no way one could turn back to check the behind, the water would go into the mask and the risk of having things ripped off the face was greater if we tried too. I saw Hubby reached the end of the slope where there was a drop-off. From the corner of my eyes, I saw Cynthia behind me. We tried to climb to the drop off while I saw Hubby disappeared behind that, hoping to get some relief behind the wall, but we couldn’t move an inch, the current was getting stronger and we had to make sure it wouldn’t rip off the mask and the reg. Having a company, both of us decided to stay, I also aborted all my plan to go to the drop off once I saw Hubby and Froggie bubble was flying to the left, then they parked on our far left.
We waited, and finally, we heard Made banging his signal behind us. Krincing krincing. So all of them were sweep in circular motion back to where we came from. He asked us to go down into a small-secluded area in between rocks near him. So me and Cynthia let go, and when we were near him, we grabbed some rock. It was a relief to see everyone intact and safe. Then we let go our grip and let the current drifted us. After a while, we met the other group. Although we didn’t see hammerhead, we saw a lot of big school of fish and some small thing like orang utan crab, zebra crab or adam crab in sea urchin (one of the spoiled pic!&$#), many huge hermit, and I also saw the flatworm mimic banded batfish juvenile hiding under the rock, so did spiny lobster.
We hung around a rock at the end of the dive. When we cleared our safety stop, the ang-moh group was gone. Made instructed us to hold hand together. So, five of us, hand to hand, let go our grip to the rock, and soon, the current flew us to the blue. When we were hanging there, we had no idea it was that strong! Good initiative to hold hands together, otherwise, we would be separated on the surface.
I should have wondered why the cook served us pisang goreng in the morning, for the energy to fight current! I should have been more suspicious …
No dingy picked us up as it was busy with other group. We were drifted and finally, the big boat itself came to us. We had new way, climbed from the side stair of the boat, the stair we used to hang around, now we know its purpose. We climbed from the side, and walked to the back to put our gear. The other group was just climbed to the boat from behind and surprised to see us walking full gear from nowhere.
Second dive Sebastian decided to give us easy dive, after the ripping crazy first dive. We went to Tandok Rasa, on the North of Gili Banta.
As if to say goodbye, one medium sized manta came to check us up, just minutes before we surfaced, while we were on our safety stop. It only dropped awhile, so we continued our safety stop and then it came back again. So, very close to Cynthia and me. I suddenly couldn’t see anything from my camera’s LCD, so I just pointed at it direction and took video. Then, thinking ‘How if I couldn’t catch it? I switched back to still images and captured few pose before it bumped to Made and flew away. Nice goodbye though!
So last dive of the trip. We took out our gears and washed them in the back, then dissembled it and dried it everywhere on the boat. Everyone was busy.
After that we relaxed, it was the last night on boat. We were sitting on the boat side watching small jellyfish swam by. The boat reached Sape jetty around noon and parked there. After collecting tips for all the crew, some of them took dingy to the city, maybe preparing for other trip. The vessel would be busy continuously until December. We watch the sunset to, the boats, big boat, small boat, fisherman boat passed by.
Just like every night, we could see amazing starry night. There were so many stars visible from the vessel; I saw many falling stars also.
We packed when the sun went down; most of our things were dried. We had early night.
posted by aping at 2:52 AM
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