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81. The day I "Discovered local diving"

After looking through couple PADI intro videos Clive took me and more senior DM candidate Taigh (US Navy dude?) for timed 800m snorkel swim and Discover Local Diving assignment. As I hadn't yet read the book at all Taigh got to go first. He did quite an excellent brief for us and after 15 min dive I got to practice same thing. All things considering I think it wasn't too bad as first try. After, Clive took us practicing SMB deployment. Clive and mine weren't flacid ;) 7kg is waayy too much led with shorty. Oh.... the 800m.... on the scale oh 1-5.... I got 2 :) As did Taigh ;)

Location: St. Paul's Bay @ MaltaDate: Wed, Jul 4, 2012Temperature: 27CTime in: 15:33Duration: 40minDepth (max): 6mVisibility: PoorDive buddy: TaighNitrox: 21%

#DiveNet #scuba #liveaboard #St. Paul's Bay

St. Paul's Bay rescued

Rescuing fred andy shuanda and rest few times. Switched to shorty, not going back methinks :)

Location: St. Paul's Bay @ MaltaDate: Tue, Jul 3, 2012Temperature: 26CTime in: 15:50Duration: 30minDepth (max): 8mVisibility: GoodDive buddy: CliveNitrox: 21%

#DiveNet #scuba #liveaboard #St. Paul's Bay

80. Boyancy practices

"Ari, could you carry that hula-hoop?" I do hope that i the last time I have to answer yes to that question while preparing for a dive... After that episode, Judith did quite many boyancy practises while I concentrated holding on the diver problem no1 for the most of the dive. I did fo through the hoop few times tho....

Location: Cirkewwa @ MaltaDate: Tue, Jul 3, 2012Temperature: 27CTime in: 11:50Duration: 52minDepth (max): 15mVisibility: GoodDive buddy: JudithNitrox: 21%

#DiveNet #scuba #liveaboard #Cirkewwa

79. Cirkewwa - Sugar loaf

Aowd buddy learning deep dive mysteries. Bit of gear adjustment of my own, 8kg weights. Lots of jellyfish on entrance/exit and got stung by one on exit. Judith had to borrow my shorty + dive shirt as the instructor had taken too small one for her => always double check customer gear...

Location: Cirkewwa - Sugar loaf / Madonna @ MaltaDate: Tue, Jul 3, 2012Temperature: 26CTime in: 09:59Duration: 33minDepth (max): 26mVisibility: GoodDive buddy: JudithNitrox: 21%

#DiveNet #scuba #liveaboard #Cirkewwa - Sugar loaf / Madonna

Rescue diver - part one

This weekend I attended the theory and pool practise parts for the Rescue diver certification. Forgot to answer beforehand to them preparation questions, even with all the reading I had done while commuting to work. Anyways, saturday ended up being short day and then the test first on sunday and then for the real practicalities of saving a diver. And boy was the practise needed... Of course the long night out with the fellow consultants before that did not really help. Luckily my "victim" didn't get to complain too much when I did BLS breaths towards his face as I accidently pushed him underwater simultaneously ;) After few practise runs it went much better and I passed with flying colours. Next up, reading up all them DM books (althought, i heard a rumour that encyclopedia is not part of the curriculum anymore... true or false only time will tell...) And then part 2 - Open water practises for RD in Maltaa!!!!

Emergency First Response

First requirement towards DM is out of the way. was quite fun course, even with the serious content of it. Hppy people attending helps of course. It also happenned that Mari from my 2010 safari to Red sea was the course instructor. Small world and All :)

The preparation

New year, new goals I quess. Purchased flights to Malta where I'll be attempting to get my DM cert done this july. At least I think I did. After receiving 2 confusing emails I had to call the customer service which was promptly answered by a woman speaking broken finnish. She did vouch for the tickets being OK but somehow I'm still not sure if those e-tickets will get me into the plane come july. Oh well.... Got in touch with Maltaqua for accommodation and they gladly set me up with the same apartementos I spent my last week in Malta. Not exactly 5 star place, but hey... I don't really need one either. Also, managed to borrow course materials from Mikele for all the 3 certifications. Althought the exitement quickly faded after seeing how much I need to read to get all the info (thank g.o.d. them tests are PADI model so there shouldn't be too much kinky questions). So the plan now is to do Emergency First Response in early march here in Finland (no point wasting vacation time to no-dive course) and possibly starting Rescue Diver later same month and finish it's open water parts in Malta. And then of course it's smooth sailing to that DM harbour :) Let's see how things progress...

The idea

Me: Damn it's good to be home... althought....

Wife: Althought what?

Me: I feel like that last week on safari was not enough

Wife: Yhym.... I'll be on a 2 (maybe 3) week retreat with the kids next summer then

Me: Aha.... I'll be on another diving trip then

------

Me: (explaining the above discussion to Mikele and complaining that now I have to plan for a new dive trip already)

Mikele: So you're saying that you've been given 3 weeks vacation to dive with? Please tell me you will be doing that DM certification during that time?

Me: Oh yeah, that one..... :)

80. Cold and dark and dry

Mikele missed his arm cufling and got his sleave all wet from the start. We followed Sari & Sanna around the bottom for some more drysuit testing. Quite a few Perch (siis ahvenii) and couple lake lobsters were spotted too. Was supossed to have been a Made (= it's finnsh name) but i never saw it with my own eyes. And stayed all dry, although was feeling pretty chilly after them 25 minutes. Left a good feeling about diving with drysuit and the party-capabilities of Tampere. Awesome dives and the rest ;)

Location: Kaukajärvi @ FinlandDate: la, marraskuuta 12, 2011Temperature: 7CTime in: 18:27Duration: 25minDepth (max): 9.5mVisibility: PoorDive buddy: MikeleNitrox: 21%

#DiveNet #scuba #liveaboard #Kaukajärvi

79. Drysuit testing

Now one finds himself in a freezing waters, all because of you just once happen to mention never having used drysuit. Just the act of breathing is difficult with the tight collar.... And Sari broke hers with earring while putting hers on :( Anyways, it was quite a mess with visibility of 3 meters. Even torchlights were only seen up to 5m. Nasty... Did some pivot testing and suit operation tests at the beginning. Then we went looking for the old boat wreck. And got separated from Sanna straight after it. After she came lead us again, we had a laughing moment with Mikele as we couldn't stop our ascend and ended up popping to surface. All I could do was only hold on to my regulator until I stopped laughing.

Location: Kaukajärvi @ FinlandDate: la, marraskuuta 12, 2011Temperature: 7CTime in: 15:17Duration: 29minDepth (max): 18.7mVisibility: PoorDive buddy: Mikele & SannaNitrox: 21%

#DiveNet #scuba #liveaboard #Kaukajärvi

Never say "Never"

Yeah, the impossible happenned... I joined facebook. After years of denial, it only took one invite request that I couldn't say no to to make me come part of the worldwide phenomenon. And after accepting one I had to join with all of "them" :) I'm quessing same thing will happen with this upcoming weekend and the drysuit testing @ Tampere with new friends from the latest Red sea liveaboard journey. Got an invitation during our return trip to go and try out how these work, as I had mentioned never having tried them yet. At least there is no fear of getting landsick in Tampere ;) The problem is that this opens up a whole new way of practising diving, in cold waters. I always promised to myself to only dive in warm waters - "i will only ever use short wetsuit" - so drysuits were totally off the table. Let's see how it goes, at least it made me lookup Lofoten sites again.

Problem with using new cameras

Now that the latest scuba excursion is done with, i get to go through all the pictures and video clips acquired over the week (all 699 of them). Have to say that Contour's video quality is awesome. The colour underwater is way beyond anything I could have hoped for. I even thought several times to throw away my current compact camera (Fujifilm F80EXR) as it doesn't take good pictures without strobes (which I don't have). Which brings me to the title of the post, new camera is needed :) Possibilities: - Canon S95 or upcoming S100 - Panasonic LX3 (which i already have) - Olympus ZX1 • LX3 housing is special-made, costing around 600€ (ouch!), but I at least have the camera already :) But would need to get strobes too :( • Canon would be 350€ + 250€ for housing, but how to justify new camera for the missus. Then again, bundle has same price as LX3's housing alone. • Olympus around 750€ with housing, but same problem as canon for me But current camera won't suffice long either..... sigh.

"Once in a lifetime" chance to experience spawning corals

78. End of a journey

Awesome end to an awesome liveaboard. We got Sanna (the other half of girl powa duo) joining us as Sari had hurt her leg somewhere along the trip.

Found 2 cute Green turtles (one had had its shield torn by something), Anemone fish garden and all kind of niceness, all the while enjoying the most out of the comraderie we had gotten used to during our journey. Mikele was filming some cool videos with Contour from the latter turtle and some purple box fish, but unfortunately I had forgotten to mention that the camera would still auto-shutdown every 3 minutes, so no cookie :( Maybe next time....

Really nice dive all together to end a week of misfortune and hassle with the luggage, compressor explosion, sickness, the lunatically laughing/crying crazy weather and having to endure it throughout all the nights. Left me craving for more ;P UPDATE: Seems I might have time to get meself DM papers next summer, have to start scouting out places to do it at.... Work be damned!

Location: Panorama reef @ EgyptDate: la, lokakuuta 22, 2011Temperature: 28CTime in: 11:57Duration: 42minDepth (max): 25mVisibility: 45mDive buddy: MikeleNitrox: 28%

#DiveNet #scuba #liveaboard #Panorama reef

77. Drifting along

Terrific dive!

After the terrific stormy night 4 of us spent bouncing around the deck while trying to sleep ("please, no talking!!!") any dive would have been good, but this was really nice. Cool drifting start of which Basem warned us about strong currents pulling us towards open seas but not everyone put enough thought into it. There were some furious kicks to return back to the group in the first 15 minutes ;) After that we saw small Barracudas in a big school resting in a small calm area. Then the scenary changed to canyon-like pinnacle place for the rest of the dive.

Much better dive than the one on our way down south few days before at the same reef.

Location: Middle reef @ EgyptDate: to, lokakuuta 20, 2011Temperature: 28CTime in: 09:00Duration: 57minDepth (max): 16mVisibility: 35mDive buddy: MikeleNitrox: 28%

#DiveNet #scuba #liveaboard #Middle reef

76. Night morays

Night dive on the south side of the reef, with Mikele and Tomas (maybe it was Eija's time to enjoy them belly rumbles). Tomas spotted few cool Grey morays that I hadn't seen before on my dive travels. Coral reef itself wasn't much to look at, again quite dead it was...

Location: Ras Torombi @ EgyptDate: ke, lokakuuta 19, 2011Temperature: 27CTime in: 16:45Duration: 59minDepth (max): 15.9mVisibility: 40mDive buddy: MikeleNitrox: 29%

#DiveNet #scuba #liveaboard #Ras Torombi

75. Sand and even more sand

Zodiac dropped us at the east side in middle of underwater sandstorm, that only kept getting worse and worse. At ine point we couldn't see Sami & the girls even when they could not have been farther then 2 meters. Just had to go in to the lagoon and see if we could find them (we did). Sami with his techie speed lead us, sometimes a bit too fast ;) Nothing in fauna department to report, too much sand to see anything interesting.

Location: Ras Torombi @ EgyptDate: ke, lokakuuta 19, 2011Temperature: 28CTime in: 13:45Duration: 60minDepth (max): 15.2mVisibility: 10mDive buddy: MikeleNitrox: 30%

#DiveNet #scuba #liveaboard #Ras Torombi

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