Everyone Else is doing it

Well everyone else has a blog, So I might as well start one.

This is going to be a pretty boring blog, as I will mainly use it as a online dive log. I am currently up to 47 dives, with 20-30 of those under 20m which isn't bad.

The main issue I have at the moment is the inability to get a decent wet suit that fits me properly, I sit somewhere between the sizes 4 & 5, with my current size 5 wet suit having far too much slack space around me. This fills with water which keeps cycling and makes dives in 17 degree water a bit too cold for my comfort.

The last few dives I did was one on the Waikato wreck out from tutukaka, in which we penetrated via the stern entrance and continued through to the engine room and then turned around, due to there being 7 of us, the wreck line was very hard to follow back through the swampy mess that had been created behind us. This was still pretty cool with the gearing still visible on the machinery (I suspect I was looking at the drive gear for the prop shaft). The 2nd dive of the day was to the Tui, again out from tutukaka. This wreck sits in 34m of water so should have been our first dive, but due to the outgoing tide dragging much out from the estuary near the Waikato we needed to hit that first. This was my first dive on this wreck and its showing its age and the damage from the sea, we descended on the bow line and found the ship resting on its port side with a good third either in the seabed or collapsed. There were large amounts of collapse damaged parts with the top of the bridge falling down to the sea floor, which led to a easy penetration from the back of the bridge to the front. This silted out quite badly which is to be expected from a steel wreck of this age. Lots of corrosion was visible, and with the middle 1/3 of the ship collapsed to the sea bed, I don't think this will remain upright for much longer. It was interesting cruising over the hull and then moving out into empty space and seeing the accommodation's collapsed to the sea floor off to the port side of the wreck, according to the other divers on the wreck there were some very large crayfish hiding under the plates. This dive ended all too soon with the NDL running out before air.

The last dive was a cray dive in a secret location, we didn't find many large crays but there were hundreds of undersized. To be sure a location to return to in the future and see whats going on.

The main bit of bad news so far is that the trip I was booked on to Santo has been canceled due to lack of interest. So I am pretty annoyed by that, but c'est la vie.

Next lot of diving is out at gannet rock on this coming Saturday so I am looking forward to that.