27C today on Inch 10 and Car Cemetery 2, however we are supposed to have been diving Inch 1 and Car Cemetery 1, so what happened .........?
Last Sunday my buddy Kerstin suggested diving Musandam, however we could not get sufficient people together to warrant a boat and neither of us were prepared to fork out 750 Dhs each for our own boat for 2 dives at Lima Rock.
On Tuesday Kerstin called Scuba 2000 which is now under new management, and we were booked in to dive Inchcape 1 and Car Cemetery 1, with the new owner stating he would be happy to accommodate some photographers as he is not long opened. They have 2 boats now and run a schedule of 4 day dives and 1 night dive on Fridays. Sounded perfect to me.
So an 0500 wake up, except I was a bit lazy and didn't get out of bed until 05:15. Car was loaded from the night before and I picked up Kerstin leaving her house around 0600. Using the new extension of the E611 we made it comfortably to Scuba 2000 by 07:50
As I was unpacking our gear, Kerstin was confirming the dive sites and we were told it would be Martini Rock / Inchcape 2 plus Hole in the Wall, which was not what we ordered!
Well, said the owner, we have OW students and we cannot go to Inch 1 plus Car Cemetery is not so interesting etc.
Quick call to Divers Down confirmed they only had one place left for Inch 1, then we called Barracuda and Ruby confirmed that they were close to leaving port, No reply from The Dive Centre but I was prepared to drive round there anyway or phone Ken at ProDive when Ruby called back to tell us to come down, they would wait for us.
So we said farewell to Scuba 2000, who not only lost 500 Dhs from us today, but who knows how much in the future. We were told that if we book 3 days in advance we would have the sites we wanted, seems the can't count, Tuesday was more than 3 days in advance, their loss!
So I drove as legally as possible to arrive in Fujairah Marina 40 mins later and we were in the water by 09:16.
Dived Inch 10 and Car Cemetery 2. Decided to do some penetration of Inch 10 and explore the cabin and wheelhouse, some pics to follow as I was shooting Wide Angle again today. We were also on Barracuda's new boat for the first time, very spacious.
Thanks to Barracuda we had our dives, in fact some people were still gearing up when we arrived, so our late arrival did not cause much inconvenience in the end