The Bolter
Registered
We had our first dive briefing at 7:50 morning in the long house. Each day you do two dives in the morning and one in the afternoon. There are 48 guests staying at the resort and this group is broken into three smaller groups. There are 16 of us in our group and we are assigned to dive boat, Wakatobi VI. The 16 of us are then broken into three smaller groups with a dive guide for each. The guide assigned to my group, Markus, has been working as a dive guide for over 20 years. Pretty impressive. For the dive briefing all 16 of us sat in a semi-circle while Markus held up a whiteboard with a diagram of the dive site and filled us in on all the logistics and what critters we could expect/hope to see. It was very thorough including the current tide and current conditions.
All of our gear has already been transferred to the dive boat. At the long house everyone is assigned a large numbered crate and this is your crate for the week. This is where you stow your gear and the crate is carried to the dive boat each morning and returned to the resort each evening. Between the two morning dives the boat crew changes out the tanks for you. When you arrive in the afternoon, your BC and tank are set up and ready to go. Im told this is heaven and I will never get treatment like this anywhere else (Nothing like spoiling me on my very first dive trip!). When youre ready to put your BC on they lift it to the bench and help you. When you return to the boat they haul you in from the ladder and as soon as you sit down and unbuckle your BC they take it right off of you. Then they bring you a towel, cup of water and fresh baked chocolate chip cookies (with nuts!).
Lets see, what else as we were gearing up for the first dive of the day I knew I had to dunk my BC before I attached it to the tank but how do you do this when youre on a boat? Then I spotted a big tank of what looked like fresh water and I dropped my BC into it. Not two seconds later I hear, Oh no, no, no. Thats for cameras. Its holy water. Never, never put anything in here other than camera equipment. I apologized and jokingly told my instructor that its not fair to go changing the rules on me. I learned I was supposed to wet my BC before gearing up so thats what I was trying to do. As it turns out, you dont wet your BCs when youre on a boat dive, I guess. Hee Hee. Live and learn.
Oh yeah, one more thing...I found a scorpion in our room this morning. It was only about an inch long but who expects that? I'm also dreading a run-in with the local monitor. As one of the guides was showing us to our villa he told us there's a monitor that lives in these parts and we might see it "if we're lucky." This isn't very comforting considering there is very little artificial light on the island in the evenings (they want to keep a natural look and feel) so they give you a flashlight for walking the paths. So far we haven't run into the monitor but I can tell you that the walks back from dinner are a little scary.
All of our gear has already been transferred to the dive boat. At the long house everyone is assigned a large numbered crate and this is your crate for the week. This is where you stow your gear and the crate is carried to the dive boat each morning and returned to the resort each evening. Between the two morning dives the boat crew changes out the tanks for you. When you arrive in the afternoon, your BC and tank are set up and ready to go. Im told this is heaven and I will never get treatment like this anywhere else (Nothing like spoiling me on my very first dive trip!). When youre ready to put your BC on they lift it to the bench and help you. When you return to the boat they haul you in from the ladder and as soon as you sit down and unbuckle your BC they take it right off of you. Then they bring you a towel, cup of water and fresh baked chocolate chip cookies (with nuts!).
Lets see, what else as we were gearing up for the first dive of the day I knew I had to dunk my BC before I attached it to the tank but how do you do this when youre on a boat? Then I spotted a big tank of what looked like fresh water and I dropped my BC into it. Not two seconds later I hear, Oh no, no, no. Thats for cameras. Its holy water. Never, never put anything in here other than camera equipment. I apologized and jokingly told my instructor that its not fair to go changing the rules on me. I learned I was supposed to wet my BC before gearing up so thats what I was trying to do. As it turns out, you dont wet your BCs when youre on a boat dive, I guess. Hee Hee. Live and learn.
Oh yeah, one more thing...I found a scorpion in our room this morning. It was only about an inch long but who expects that? I'm also dreading a run-in with the local monitor. As one of the guides was showing us to our villa he told us there's a monitor that lives in these parts and we might see it "if we're lucky." This isn't very comforting considering there is very little artificial light on the island in the evenings (they want to keep a natural look and feel) so they give you a flashlight for walking the paths. So far we haven't run into the monitor but I can tell you that the walks back from dinner are a little scary.
