SS Annie M Miller Dive

It was first time on this wreck SS Annie M Miller. It is a small wreck but it is interesting as quite lot of life on it.

As you can see my UW housing survived for second time.  I difinitly need strobe for this depth, may be next time????

SS Dee Why

Where is wreck?

Yes I know.  I had a enjoyable dive on SS Dee Why on Friday morning and I had a camera with me this time. But I didn’t get any good photos. This is the best shot of the day I guess. I need more dives to get used to this depth.

I took few video clip which I will post on my Flicker later.

Double Wreck

SS Dee Why

Doomba

 

Photo from Michael McFadyen’s Scuba Diving Web Site

It’s been while since I got wet as well as posting on the blog again.

This time we went to the double wreck  SS Dee Why and Meggol (ex HMS Wexford, SS Doomba and HMAS Doomba).

It was quite exciting as there are few penetration and 2 different wrecks on one dive!  We spend most of time on SS Dee Why and swam over to Meggol to have a quick look. I also tried Dive Rite Gator and a camera housing and both worked fine, so I will take my camera and start taking few shot and video next time.

Dive Data;

Max Depth; 48.4 metre

Dive Time; 62 minutes

Visibility; 12 metres

Temperature; 15.4 degrees

 

 

 

SS Birchgrove Park (ex-HMAS Birchgrove Park)

Photo from Michael McFadyen’s Scuba Diving Web Site

I was on my rotation day off. Most of people enjoy the sleep in for your day off, but I was up quarter to 5 this morning getting ready for a dive on the SS Birchgrove Park.

Weather was perfect, picked my buddy up and arrived at the boat pick up point Little Manly at 6am. Gear up and suit up for a 6:30 pick up, talking with other divers about the dive, 6:45 still not sign of the boat, keep talking, 7:00 still not, everyone start wondering if the trip was cancelled. 7:10 finally boat arrived.

10 divers total. Everyone knows everyone even new Tec diver like me knew most of them.

4 in my team, dive was great. It was my first dive on this wreck, so I was trying to picture myself which part is which. Did I success? No. I was so excited and went in where ever I could get in and just had fun.

It was over 40 metre dive so I didn’t take my camera but one of my team member took Sony Cyber Shot with 40 metre rated housing with him and saying it’s been no problem. I might take the housing only next deep dive to see if it works. If it’s OK then I can take photos on those wrecks around Sydney!

Coolooli again!

Photo from Michael McFadyen’s Scuba Diving Web Site

I realized I haven’t been diving for more than 5 weeks. Last dive was the last training dive for my DSAT Tec Deep Diver course. It actually was at Coolooli.

So I booked 2 dives on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday was with my buddy AB and Sunday was with guys from my course.

Both days happened to be Coolooli again. I was expecting somewhere else on Sunday but end up the same.

But you know, I like Coolooli!

I enjoyed both dives.

So what’s next?

New Toy

I got new toys!

As you can see, Dive Rite NiTec Trio. This is a 3 gases switchable Dive computer. You can pre-set the 3 gases air to 99% O2 and you can switch these gases during the dive. I received it just before the last Tec Deep course training dive last week. I set one on the gauge mode as we run the dive with a table created by Deco software (V Planner) and set on as computer mode for back up.

I have set air for bottom gas and deco gases 50% and 100% (99%). We went on the wreck Coolooli and dive went well till first switching gas. The dive table I had on my arm was wrinkled and hard to read, so I was too busy concentrated for the depth and finding the correct time on the table and guess what? I totally forgot to switch gas on my new computer. When we surfaced, the computer was beeping away. I didn’t utilise new toy, did I?!!

I will use it correctly on the dive this coming Friday. See how it goes!

Night Dives

My dive buddy and I decide to go night dive every Wednesday. First one was scheduled on 1 April but weather turned wet, anyway we went to the site “Obelisk Beach”, near HMAS Penguin, and saw the beach was wild so postponed to Sunday night.

It was good condition on Sunday, we had look around for 75 minutes both side of beach. East side was bit more interesting with giant cuttlefish and big Wobbegong shark which I didn’t see.

Wednesday 8 April, we went to Taylors Bay to find a wreck which sitting somewhere at the depth of 10m to 15 m.

We headed for SE for 30 minutes, SW for 10 minutes, NW for 30 minutes then NE for 10 minutes. Navigation was spot on but we didn’t see a thing. we need to get more information for that wreck.

Sorry, no photos. I can’t wait for my new camera to arrive!

New Zealand

It’s been a while since my last post.

I can’t remember what I was doing for that time till the end of February. Nothing exciting anyway.

I had a awesome holiday in Paihia New Zealand from 28 February to 17 March, catching up with my friends and few dives.

Diving on the HMNZS Canterbury F421 was the highlight of this trip. I missed out of the sinking in November 2007 ( I was there in October 2007 for that but they changed the schedule due to the weather). She is now lies on 37 meter sheltered place in the Deep Water Cove, Bay Of Islands. Her length is 113.4 metres beam 13 metres with a draught of 5.6 metres with a displacement of 3182 tonnes. I had a few dives but it wasn’t enough so I might come back in November for more! I have realized that I need a proper strobe and wide lenses for the photo like this.

Dive on the White Rock was a bit surprise for me as this site use to be nothig special, but now it was surrounded by all sort of fish and really colorful site. Black Rocks was awesome as usual.

Thanks for all my friends and Porpoise Dive for everything!

P.S. Holiday was great but I lost my camera on the way home. I have contacted Air New Zealand as I thought I lost it on the plane, and the lady on the phone was really helpful trying to find it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find it in the end but Thank you Air New Zealand!

Now I am busy sorting out what I’m gonna buy, I will report it later!

TSS Currajong

I got a phone call from my dive buddy “Go for dive?”

I am quite lazy and I usually say No to those spontaneous invitation. But I said “YES” with no hesitation. I think I needed to have a decent dive since last wreck dive.

High tide is 9:05am, bit windy but beautiful sunny day. Usual procedures head out from Bradley Head light house on 120 degrees for about 10 minutes and hang left and the TSS Currajong should be there. ????? Where is she??? We should be about 23 meters of water but it was bit shallower so bit of adjustment towards deeper water and there she is!!! You might be able to see on my other photos on Flickr, bit of current was running and my buoyancy wasn’t good at all.

I’m not happy with photos but it was great day after all!

The Valiant Dive

I woke up 7:30 this morning. It was beautiful blue sky! Good day for a dive! But it turned bit windy so I call up and checked if it still go? Yes, and they said it’s not too bad out there.

We headed to the Palm Beach to go for the dive on the one of Sydney wreck called the Valiant. We gathered at Palm Beach wharf at 12 noon and get on the boat and left around 13:00. At the site, skipper looked for the marker buoy for about 15~20 minutes but no success so they decided to throw a shot line using GPS coordinates.

Here we come, we descended following the shot line till we saw the end of shot line with no weight but short light chain at 15 meters, the wreck is suppose to be at 27 meter depth. We looked up and the other buddy pair came down with extra shot line so we continued descended to the bottom. ????? No wreck around. My dive computer was telling me it is only 22 meters. What the hxxx? We searched around about 30 minutes but no sign of the Valiant at all and we couldn’t get deeper than 23.5 meters. It was flat sand bottom with nothing but sand and salt water around you.

We start ascending and thinking about re-try again on the second dive, but it was quite rough when we got to the surface and the skipper decided to cancel the second dive due to rough sea.

Hmuuuuuu… I got wet but it was disappointed. At least the dive centre refunded us full amount since they couldn’t find the wreck.

Let’s hope for the next time!