Looking for buddy / buddies for Komodo LOB

[silent running]

Thanks Andy, for the wonderful tips again. I am just worried about the currents as I've heard they can be pretty strong. But RIPPING....gosh....how STRONG is THAT!! ???
I didnt know anything about GT Air, thanks for your warning. Now I know better how to book my return flight back to SG.
Hmm...wonder if anyone has horror stories to tell about the currents...

Hi Kim, the currents can be very strong, but you will notice that an experienced diver/DM will know how to handle it, at least they should. Just watch what they do and go with it. Don't fight it any longer than you need to to get in position. Then just hold on and watch the show. Believe it or not, it is not that hard to manage, people do it all the time. I had many of my best dives this way-hanging on and watching Grey Reef sharks and Giant Trevally feeding in a stiff late afternoon current. It's a good idea to get familiar with diving in current if you like seeing fish and travel to wild places to do it. Also, it might be a good idea to have one of the crew jump in and check which way the current is going before you all get in. I find diving in places where there is no current, like most of the Carribbean, to be less stimulating. Less current=less fish, generally speaking.

Make sure you get your weighting well sorted out. Too much weight and you will be adding/dumping your BC a lot which is not very helpful in a current. The less air in your BC the better, you will have more control this way.
The other thing to remember is that if you get caught in current that is going somewhere you don't want to go -like down- stay calm and try to swim 90 degrees/perpendicular to the direction of the current. This usually gets you out of it fastest.

Also a safety sausage/SMB(surface marker buoy) is very important to have. If you get blown off a site, deploy it and the boat can follow you as you drift. It's a good idea to practice deploying one at the end of an easy dive, so it becomes routine. It's not necessarily a bad thing to get blown of a bommie, that's the only time I've seen a Black Marlin, a big one driffting in the blue in Baja Mexico...

You'll be fine! -Andy

 

[kimmymore]

Oh wow. Believe it or not, but the more I hear about the aurrents from you, the more I tremble and shake... from excitement that is. Haha. I have a safety sausage and yes, I intend to use that. In addition, I am erm...so paranoid about the currents I am thinking of getting myself an airhorn, just in case. The thing is, unlike you, I might not so much enjoy being blown off a bommie. Doesn't sound like a good idea to me at all.
When I was at XXX (my last trip), the seas were terrible. Huges waves, extremely choppy and rough. One dive shop however, continued to bring divers out. The dive site - a straight drop into nothingness for about 20 m to the bottom where a boulder serves as the erm 'landmark'. The divers went in, none surfaced. Full nine of them, plus a DM, WITHOUT a sausage. That was about nine in the morning. The boatman waited and waited, eventually coming back to shore informing the dive shop. Hush Hush, bad reputation. No search was conducted until about 3 plus 4 when the dive shop, realising the severity, informed the rest of the dive shops along the stretch of the beach (STILL no coastguard, mine you) and every boat went out to sea, searching. Were they found? Yes, floating and alive, but not so much kicking. Quite dehydrated, the whole lot.
So tell me about currents....I am SCARED of them...

 

[pakman]

But the diving up North was fantastic, GPS, Crystal Bommie and Banta wall were really great, lots of Shark activity.

Sharks?? that was the one dissapointing thing about my LOB trip to Komodo last year. Lack of sharks and other pelagics. No mantas as well Maybe we were just unlucky but my friends who went on another LOB a month later had the same comments... That being said, I still think the trip is worthwhile. Impressives reefscapes and wide variety of fishlife. We also did it on one of the Sea Safari boats which have that old wooden boat charm...

We only encountered a couple sites where the currents were ripping but as silent said, the DM's would pick another side or wait it out. GPS point, hard to find rock were pretty nice sights. try to go to Rinca instead of Komodo to watch the dragons.

 

[Diver Dennis]

Check the website?
Basically that's the price I am paying, plus flight to Bali (SGD243, appro USD 142 return) and internal flights to Labuan Bajo (USD 160 reutrn).
I know the operators from my last dive trip to the Maldives, and they are pretty good.
Kim

Thanks Kim. I'm going to Bali in October and was looking at liveaboards.

 

[silent running]

Oh wow. Believe it or not, but the more I hear about the aurrents from you, the more I tremble and shake... from excitement that is. Haha. I have a safety sausage and yes, I intend to use that. In addition, I am erm...so paranoid about the currents I am thinking of getting myself an airhorn, just in case. The thing is, unlike you, I might not so much enjoy being blown off a bommie. Doesn't sound like a good idea to me at all.
When I was at XXX (my last trip), the seas were terrible. Huges waves, extremely choppy and rough. One dive shop however, continued to bring divers out. The dive site - a straight drop into nothingness for about 20 m to the bottom where a boulder serves as the erm 'landmark'. The divers went in, none surfaced. Full nine of them, plus a DM, WITHOUT a sausage. That was about nine in the morning. The boatman waited and waited, eventually coming back to shore informing the dive shop. Hush Hush, bad reputation. No search was conducted until about 3 plus 4 when the dive shop, realising the severity, informed the rest of the dive shops along the stretch of the beach (STILL no coastguard, mine you) and every boat went out to sea, searching. Were they found? Yes, floating and alive, but not so much kicking. Quite dehydrated, the whole lot.
So tell me about currents....I am SCARED of them...

Thanks for the background Kim, I understand your reservations better now. But, the thing to remember is that rough seas and swift currents are 2 different things. Rough seas are more likely to cause a LOB to relocate, and in my opinion, much more dangerous. The currents I encountered in Komodo were tidal and mostly happening in calm seas. It is much more likely that you will be spotted in a calm sea than a choppy one. The dive op you mentioned would seem to be on the extreme edge of incompetent. If you have any reservations about the conditions, say so and see what they say. If they refuse to send someone in to check the conditions, or the viz is realy bad, say no. Sounds like you know a thing or 2 about the sea, so trust your instincts. -Andy

 

[kimmymore]

Andy,
Agree that the dive shop is extremely important. I choose my dive op really carefully because my life depends on it. After that incident, and was I lucky I wasn't one of those nine stranded divers out at sea, I really made sure my DM and dive op is competent. That same trip, I saw divers going out for a night shore dive in choppy seas, NEXT to huge boulders and was I worried. I had no idea whether the divers knew what they were doing or not!!! Well, that one particular dive, the divers surfaced less than 15 minutes, all shacked out.
Sometimes one really wonders why...
Glad to heard it was just tidal currents in clam seas. I am actually thinking swift currents AND rough seas...what with the tsunami and the recent volcano eruption.
Thanks once again - there's nothing better than the latest tips from the diver(s) who'd just been there

 

[silent running]

Sharks?? that was the one dissapointing thing about my LOB trip to Komodo last year. Lack of sharks and other pelagics.



Hello pakman, the sharks are always there, but you need to be in the right place at the right time to spot them. This meant doing some late afternoon dives, say getting in at 4:30 ish and staying in until it was almost dark. It worked well on GPS and Crystal Bommie. My other "secret" to sucessful shark watching, is a closed circuit rebreather. I and the dive master both had CCRs and would wait until the open circuit divers had gone up and then we hunkered down in the current and the Grey Reefs would show up for feeding, along with the bigger Trevally. They barely noticed us and were zooming around, inches away and stayed around for about a half hour- top notch diving.
After doing a lot of dives like this, I'm pretty well convinced that sharks are almost always around, just out of sight. And if you're quiet enough, patient and can blend in a bit with the suroundings, they will eventually show up. -Andy

 

[scubadudee]

Hey,

few questions to ask...

1) How long do you plan to do the trip?
2) You mind sharing the bunk with 2 or 3 guys?

Cheers.

 

[kimmymore]

Scubadudee,
1) It will be a 8.5 days trip from the 25th afternoon to the evening of 2nd Aug. 3rd Aug morning will see me fly back to Bali. I will fly into Bali on the 22nd July. I have just checked the flights and it will set me back SGD 241 for return.
2) I don't mind sharing AS LONG AS we are NOT sleeping together, hahaha. I better let this on first - it is not a luxurious liveaboard. No AC on board. Be warned.
3) In case you are still considering, my advice is quick! I think the cheap flights will be booked up really soon on that particular airline I am looking at.
Cheers,
Kim

 

[pakman]

Scubadudee,

2) I don't mind sharing AS LONG AS we are NOT sleeping together, hahaha. I better let this on first - it is not a luxurious liveaboard. No AC on board. Be warned.

:lol: on pt #2... oh well, cross me off the list... j/k...

on a serious note, I found that you really don't need AC in the Komodos as long as you can crack the window and get a good breeze (might wanna check to see if the berths are topside or below deck... )