September 15th, 2009

A day late with the update it seems. I either forgot, or was too  lazy yesterday, you pick:P

Anyway, this time, I've got a few pictures from the Whale Watching trip. Not pictures I've taken myself, but pictures taken by a classmate, Kasper Madsen. My mobile/camera ran out of power, so couldn't really take any pictures. I'll see if I can get hold of some more later. So, here're the pictures:

These pictures aren't really that great (sorry Kasper, even if I know you're not reading this^^), but at least they show a couple of whales. So, yea, the whale watching trip was pretty good. Except the fact that we had to get up pretty early, but at least got some food on the ship. I can't remember the exact time that we left, but we were home at about 14. We saw lots of whales, even if we had to go pretty far out to see them. We saw whales chasing each other, swimming under the boat, waving, "jumping", smashing their tails into the water, and we even saw a small group of whales with a calf as well. The captain told us we were lucky... I guess they say that to all groups they take whale watching. A few people got seasick as well. Even some of those that had taken pills. I felt fine though. Never had trouble with seasickness, sailing is fun:P
So, as everybody who goes on whale watching has been told, and as most people who's heard of whale watching knows, you're supposed to wave/jump/yell/whatever when whales are close, to keep them interested. I guess it's to make them do tricks... when you look at all those people on the boat waving and yelling at the whales... I'm not sure who's making who do tricks. It worked though. Our boat yelled the loudest, so we drew a group of whales from another whale watching boat, to our own boat. It still seems ridiculous to me, but heck, it was fun anyway.
I don't really know what there's left to tell you about the whale watching. It was a pretty cool experience, but it was kind of what I expected, and nothing spectacular really happened, but whale watching is one of the things you have to do if you're in Hervey Bay in the whale season

Next topic, scuba diving.
It's awesome. As I mentioned last time, we finally got in touch with Steve and got our Open Water Dives planned last week. So, last weekend we went diving. We were split in two teams. One that went diving early both days, and one that went late both days. The first day the early team started at Boat Harbour at 0600, which meant we had to get up at around 0500... on a Saturday... and yea, I was on that team. I chose it myself, though. I wanted to get it over with, 'cause to be honest... I was pretty nervous. I've never really liked being that far down in water, I generally hate being in open water with the bottom far below me, and further to the beach. So yea, I wanted to get it over with. It wasn't what I expected though. It was awesome. Simply awesome.
So, 6.00 at Boat Harbour, Steve shows up half an hour later. We were quite bummed, 'cause that meant we could have slept another 30 minutes. 30 minutes mean a lot at that time of the day. We went out in a both with Steve, his wife, and (I guess) a friend of his. His wife would stay in the boat, to keep an eye on everything, and the rest would get in the water. Two instructors, 6 students. Getting the gear on went pretty smoothly. We were a little slow, but it didn't matter that much. Steve told us what we were going to do at the bottom, then we paired up and did our buddy checks, and then we jumped in the water.
Surface temperature was 22°C, so the water wasn't so bad, and we wore wetsuits anyway. Mathis and I were the first under. We pulled ourselves down by the anchor, equalized every meter or so, as we'd been taught. Now, the water in Hervey Bay isn't exactly clear (we had about 10m vision, which is pretty okay I guess), but we were still able to see a ton of fish and corals. They weren't exactly colourful, but that was because of the depth (at 13m the colour red is pretty hard to see). The place for our first two dives was called The Goori. It's a shipwreck. I'm not sure how close/far away from Boat Harbour it is, and it doesn't really matter. We were at the bottom for about 30min. Then we had to get back up, change tanks, and get back down again (we really need to work on our breathing (read: me), ad we use up waaaay too much air). Both times we were at the bottom that day, we did some of the stuff we had done in the pool as well. Most of it was a lot easier in the ocean than in the pool. Mostly 'cause you had a lot more room to do whatever you needed to do. We also spent some time just swimming around the wreck, and we did some stuff at the surface as well, before we got out of the water. So yea, it was awesome^^
One thing annoyed me a bit though. We were supposed to bring passport photos (for our certificate). I had already given him mine, when we were doing the Closed Water Dive. The last theory lesson, he told me that he didn't have my photos (last theory lesson, after CWD before OWD), so the day before our OWD, I went to the post office and bought some new ones. $12.50. When I wanted to give them to him after our dive... he said he found mine in a folder... the old ones. So I just wasted another $12.50 on passport photos that I have absolutely now use for. I can't even use them back in Denmark, as I had to take my glasses off...
The 3rd and 4th OWD's were at a different place. A place called "3 Ships". You can probably guess what it was. The first dive that day, we did some stuff again. "Full mask removal" at the bottom (17 meters this time), "establish neutral buoyancy" and "compass navigation". The compass navigation was the hardest, I'm having a hard time just looking at the compass, and not looking up all the time. I completed it though. The second dive, we just swam around the three shipwrecks, looking at everything. There was a pretty nasty current in some places, and my weightbelt was messing up, so I kept losing my balance in the water, so I had to use my arms to stabilize myself, which use up a lot of energy, and therefore, a lot of air. I had 10 bar(10 bar is probably the lowest the needle will go, before hitting 0) left when we got up, or something.
We also lost two people down there. Mathis, and Anders Papsø. Mathis was playing with the sand on the bottom, and didn't notice that we swam away. He stayed where he was, and we eventually got back to him. Papsø got lost when we were swimming through a hole in a wreck. When he got through, we were gone. He kept cool, though. Checked his air reserve, and then his compass, remembered where the anchor was, and waited for us at the anchor. Respect. Most of us would probably have gone straight to the surface, after the one minute you're supposed to look for you buddy. It seems Steve was pretty impressed as well. Especially that he was actually able to find the anchor again. Those things are pretty damn hard to find...
Anyway, we all got out of the water together, and got our gear off. Still semi-slow, but it wasn't so bad. After that 4th dive... we were scuba divers. We just needed our license. Of course, those things takes ages to show up, and we needed it for Whitsunday, so we got a temporary license instead. Awesome! Steve said we did great, and that we were a great bunch. And that we definitely was the A-team. The other team hadn't done too well, apparently (we had that explained the following Monday in school xD).

Scuba diving is awesome, can only recommend it! Quite expensive, even if we got it cheaper than most others. Now I'm really looking forward to the Whitsunday trip. Can't wait! I want to go scuba diving at Great Barrier Reef!

Oh, and there was one downside about scuba diving... I mentioned that I used my hands a lot. Using your hands a lot, means a lot of scrapes on your hands. I hit the wrecks and corals several times, which can actually be quite dangerous, but I was lucky. As we swam through a hole in a wreck, I also hit the top of the hole with my head, back, arm and cylinder. Got a pretty big scrape on my left arm now. Doesn't hurt too bad though. The worst thing is the bruise I got from the BCD and the wetsuit. I guess they weren't tight enough.

Now THAT hurts. Pretty damn sore, even after a couple of days. I need some kind of shirt when we're going diving in Whitsunday.
No pictures from the dives, unfortunately. Nobody on our team had a camera to use underwater. One person from the other team did though, so I'm hoping I can steal some pictures from him. Would be great.

Anyway, that's it for now. Will probably update again before Whitsunday (leaving this Friday), if I remember it of course.

See ya! /wave

(Oh, and before you ask, YES we saw sharks^^)