Camping & Beach Clean-up 2004
It was a dark and stormy week and when it came to the weekend only an intrepid group of 16 risked their skins by venturing into the gloom that Saturday morning, with nothing but the kitchen sink, a variety of tents, stoves, furniture, lights, exotic foodstuffs and some kind of pipe...
We swiftly loaded the boat the phalanx of minibuses arriving just in time to get the 53 cylinders onto the deck. Steaming out into the tolo harbour we were faced with fresh Easterly Winds which potentially made our plan to overnight on Governors beach somewhat dubious.
We headed into Yan Chau Tong to see if we could find one of the artificial reef wrecks - the first pairs had no luck despite descending down a variety of floating buoy like objects and the (acting) Diving Officer dropping a large red lifting bag somewhere near the alleged position with his GPS. The visibility didn't help - which at about 2 metres made even keeping an eye on your buddy a challenge, at least the water wasn't too cold!
Shortly after this failed attempt the Agriculture and Fisheries boats pulled up and a lengthy discussion ensued regarding the location of our anchor - Was it in or out of the no-anchor zone of the marine reserve? With a vast array of camera/videos a lengthy discussion ensued.
Meanwhile the second wave headed out, once more in search of the elusive wreck ... It was eventualy found by a group of three by swimming north whilst holding hands at about 12 metres - the bow loomed out of the green soup! A delayed Surface Marker Sausage was attached to one the deck windlasses, while an orange nudibranch watched on - this let the others know and we did a loop of the wreck - well encrusted with blue lipped mussels and lots of fish inside the wheel house - interesting!
Well the hassle from the AFCD and the lousy visibility persuaded us to move off to look for a more suitable site with the prospects of being able to see a little more!
We decided to opt for something new and headed a short distance to Crooked Island (Kat O); not a site that anyone in the group had dived before - it turned out to be a good one! Under the boat was a flat sand bottom that gently shelved up to the rocky shoreline, at about 6 metred lumpy coral outcrops began to appear and from there up to 2 metres there were some spectacular coral formations and some interesting sea life (crabs, nudis and even a seahorse was spotted). We decided to come back again!
Now, by the time the last group had surfaced we were able to assess the wind/weather situation again - we had seen a bit of sun during the day and the wind seemed to have shifted and abated somewhat - after checking out some of the other beaches on Crooked island we gave Governors beach another look, and Mr Chan (our boatman) was happy to land us there - lots of trips later in his small tender we started the 'terra forming and setting up camp.
It didn't take long before the embers were glowing and the campfire stories starting flowing as freely as the wine.. tales of hookas and sampling of large South African Sausages - you had to be there (perhaps next time?)
The beach clean-up was the first thing after breakfast and after we had packed up and started ferrying our camping kit to the boat we started at the northern end of the beach and 'swept' along in line picking up as much of the non-biodegradeable 'lapsap' as we could - about 50KG were collected in all and we also discovered some dangerous rubbish which we advised the AFCD about later ( Who in turn have passed our query to the Food and Environmental Hygiene Dept). Some of the rubbish was so big it served as a boat to get back to the junk!
For the first dive of the day we decided to check out the same site as the previous day - this time all divers were determined to find the Sea Horse! Our grand plan to rendezvous with another dive club worked out (even though the two way radio plan failed due to a forgetful coxswain ...). The visibility hadn't got any worse and many of the buddy pairs were successful (and even an intrepid snorkellor!). We decided not to stray too far for the second site of the day - and although the boat captain wasn't too keen on getting too close we had a bit of surface swim to examine the delights of Kat O islet. The swim back to the boat helped us to justify eating the home baked goodies on board (Brownies, Ginger Cake, lemon cake and carrot cake!).
Tired, full and dived out we returned to Tei Mei Tuk and the intrepid divers quickly melted back into the city...
James
