A busy weekend of diving at Maeda
8 dives in 3 days is what living in Okinawa is all about, and if my friend hadn’t had to desaturate before flying back to the States the day after, I’d have done more. I hate to tempt fate, but maybe the rainy season is coming to and end in Okinawa. The weather forecast is certainly looking more promising (rather than the thunderstorms every day, that has been forecast for the past month). I’ll post the dive logs later, but here’s a summary of my weekend diving.
It was a long week at work, and especially on Friday, after staying up until 3am on Friday morning watching England’s World Cup game against Trinidad & Tobago. A very unconvincing performance until the 80th minute, although I do think Lennon put a lot of spark into the team when he came on. Hopefully he’ll have a bigger role in the side in the next couple of games. Owen is clearly struggling for form and confidence, and we may have to resort to Crouch (who, incidentally, everyone loves here in Japan. They don’t have many tall people here, so when they see someone like him, they take a shine to him!) and Rooney up front. We’ll see how fit he is against Sweden later on in the week. But I digress… the weather on Friday was beautiful and I couldn’t turn down the chance of diving.
So after work I dashed up to Maeda (getting some tanks for Ark Dive) and was greeted by water that looked like a lake. Quickly changed into my gear and hopped in with Brian and Heather. We went straight down to 33m and spent as long as we could down there before going into deco. We then came up along the wall on the south side of the site. That was a nice dive, and I’m feeling a little warm now in the 5mm - could be time to change into the shortie - yay! Heather left us for the 2nd dive, and we waited a good hour before getting back in. I really love night dives and this one was no different. They’re relaxed, slow paced, and usually with plenty to see. We saw a couple of decent sized cuttlefish which allowed us to get very close to them before they swam away. I spotted a tiny octopus running along the bottom, and there were some very big parrotfish sleeping in the corals. We got out of the water at about 21:30 and wished we had more tanks so we could dive into the night. But we had an early start the next morning so we headed back home.
Saturday was a busy day, which started at 7am at Kadena Marina. We met up with a student to finish her 2 remaining Open Water dives and get her certified. Once again, we headed up to Maeda as the seawalls were still a little rough for OW students. Fortunately, Maeda was like a scene from a postcard. The skies were clear again and even at 8am it was getting very hot. We got our gear assembled and headed down into the water. Our student managed her skills without any problems at all, although her air consumption is pretty high at the moment. I’m sure that’s down to excitement and overuse of her arms to swim, both of which will decrease with experience. On the 2nd dive Brian found a baby eel which was just poking his head out from some rocks, and I managed to get a couple of decent shots of it. The only worrying aspect, was that during the surface interval, an ambulance came to pick a student up from another OW course. I don’t have all the details, and so would never speculate on something like that. All I can do is wish them well and hope their problem was not too serious.
The OW course was finished by midday, so I grabbed a coffee before heading to Ark dive an hour later to meet up with Lindsey. She wanted to try out her new dive gear before heading off to Thailand for a week with it, and I was more than happy to be her dive buddy. She leaves on August 1st, and she will be sorely missed when I get back from Thailand, as she’s one of my best friends here on island. We got tanks and decided to dive at Sunabe. There were a few waves but I didn’t want to head all the way up to Maeda, to find she was still having problems with her ears. Her new dive gear comprised of a Ladyhawk BCD, a Scubapro Mk25/x650 reg (very very nice…) and a Tusa IQ-700 dive computer. The dive itself wasn’t great - limited visibility and not much marine life out. But Lindsey really liked her gear and her ears had no problems, so we decided to head up to Maeda for the last dive of the day. She seemed a lot more confident in the watet with her new equipment, and used air much more slowly (close to being on a par with me). This last dive of the day was nice - the sea was flat and there is always plenty to see at Maeda, including this cute baby lionfish (see below). After the dives we returned tanks, watched the sunset at Sunset Beach (very appropriate!), and had some dinner at Fabu Curry. Got home at about 22:30, very tired but very satisfied with the day.
But the weekend wasn’t over! On Sunday we had one more student to finish her OW course. This girl is very focused and methodical on her dives and skills, and nailed every skill perfectly. She will have no problems whatsoever with diving, and her & her hubby will make a good diving team. Once again, Maeda was looking awesome and I just hope it stays like this until i leave for Thailand. I want to get as many dives in and get as much experience as I can. Spent the afternoon sleeping and rehydrating at the beach, both of which were very much needed.
So with Brian in the States for 2 weeks, and Lindsey in Thailand for 9 days, my regular dive buddies have gone down to just Heather. But I’m going to Taiwan on Thursday until Sunday, so no diving for me this weekend anyway. Hopefully I can dive with Heather duing the week next week though. Have rocketed up to almost 140 dives now, and am one dive away from crossing the 100 hour diving mark. That’s a lot of desaturation!
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