2. The north side is the hot side

Here I am, back aboard the Lady Denok live aboard for 9 nights cruising and diving around Raja Ampat. The first part of our trip is in central RA and taking in reefs, jetties and manta spots. My fellow boat mates are 10 other divers from America, USA, French and one other Brit, who now lives in Australia. They’re a really nice bunch and good dive buddies and company so all is well. I’ve run through my best French phrases with Veronique (she didn’t know where the library was, politely listened and looked a little bemused while I said I played football and liked to watch the TV and looked positively confused when I said I had one sister who is 13 and that I was 15 years old. Good old French GCSE). Now we converse in English!

So far, diving has been 4x a day with the morning dive around 6.45am then spread throughout the day with intervals to eat, drink delicious tea and have naps. I did the night dive the first day but it mainly served to remind me of why I’m not such a fan of nightdiving as it really is terribly dark and I’ve got a very small amount of interest in poking my torch into little holes to see what lives in there. Far from being ‘mild’, the current also picked up during our night dive and started to whoosh us along so mostly we had to spend the time frantically trying to check what reef, rocks or coral showed in the torch lights just before we were about to be whooshed into and so needed to try and avoid. While there is a slightly higher risk or losing your group in these conditions, we’re all lit up like Christmas trees with torches, flashers, camera lights etc hung about our persons so it’s easy enough to stay close at least!

Prior to each dive, we get a brief to explain roughly the dive plan and what to expect in terms of route, direction, current etc. It took me longer than it should have to realise that rather than the current always going in the opposite direction to what they expected it was actually that my directions and compass were letting me down. It wasn’t really my fault though - it’s because the sun here is in a different place! We are just into the southern hemisphere so the sun, during the hot middle part of the day, is in the north. You have to remember to start with that premise and then do your ‘naught elephants squirt water’ routine to make sure you know where east and west are! Then, I’ve found that the reef is on the side you’re expecting and the current is also travelling in the direction the brief suggested it would be!

Each day, we follow the same pattern and we are treated to all sorts of wonders including these melanistic mantas (appear mostly black on top and underneath), cuttle fish, schooling barracuda and big eye trevally (the silver fish), more nudis, including one laying eggs (the yellow bands underneath the black and yellow nudi), nemos and also a scorpion fish who’d forgotten how to swim! I saw a bigger reef fish find / kill a smaller reef fish which then attracted in the reef sharks who circled and then swooped in to steal his dinner! There was also a pretty yellow Christmas tree worm (some who received an excellent Christmas card this year might recognise that one!) The weather has been mostly hot and quite humid with the odd downpour and yesterday a brief thunder storm that meant we had to delay our dive until the conditions improved for the little boat ride out to the dive site that we do each dive. It was a perfect opportunity for an extra cup of tea! I’ve taken to drinking mine out of my Solent Maths Hub lidded cup - I think that means that rather than being on holiday and off work, I should actually be getting paid for this time under an ‘international marketing campaign!