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logsofamonatee · 8 years ago

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29th July 2016, Friday : Dive #18 - Oil Rig Wreck

I was honestly feeling nervous because my 16th and 17th dives were so shoddy with my iffy buoyancy.. And honestly? I wanted to impress the boyfriend by being, well, impressive. The weather had been shite the past few days before the day of the dives, and Waffi had warned me that the vis was going to be shoddy, but surprisingly enough, it wasn’t too bad on both wrecks.

The Oil Rig Wreck was spectacular - I had seen it before in photos and videos from the other divers, but it hadn’t prepared me for how incredible it was. It definitely looked like a massive playground and a great place to practice buoyancy control! We saw so many different fish, some I had never seen before on the other wrecks. AND we saw a pipefish! At first, I thought it was a seahorse because of its long snout, but turns out, it was a pipefish, about 8″ long or so. Waffi said that it was a rare sighting, and judging by his excitement when he spotted it, it definitely was.

I did my Navigation portion, and it went off without much of a fuss.. except when I did the portion where I had to navigate in a square pattern - I managed to find myself back at the exact same spot, but then it turns out, I had ascended a bit! When I got back to the starting point, I got a bit worried because I couldn’t spot Waffi, but I heard him tapping his tank. I even looked around for bubbles, as per buddy protocol, but couldn’t see any. I was starting to get nervous, then felt the bubbles.. from below - hah! He was laughing at me and later explained that he had been tapping his tank during my skill demonstration, but I had been so focussed on keeping a straight line and keeping count of my kicks, that I didn’t hear him as I kept ascending!

He then brought me out to the reef close to the wreck, and saw so many starfish! They were mostly a Prussian blue, and so beautiful. Waffi let me waddle behind him, so I could practice my buoyancy for a bit. He tried adjusting my posture so that my hips weren’t flexed, but I couldn’t really keep the position because it made me feel off balance, so he let me keep the posture I usually use. I felt that my buoyancy wasn’t too bad, and I could get close to the corals and fish without scaring them off - success!

We also saw a teeny tiny pufferfish with its wee fins! Super adorable!

We got to a portion of reef, and couldn’t really see the wreck anymore, and Waffi signalled to ascend, and I signalled back an OK sign. He then inflated his SMB with his Octopus, and we watched as it floated up. When I looked back at him, he signalled that he was out of air, and I quickly gave him my Octopus and we ascended - unfortunately without a safety stop! We hadn’t realised we were ascending so quickly until he nudged me to look up (I had been looking at him to make sure he was ok) and I saw the surface and broke it!

As soon as we broke the surface, we inflated our BCDs and laughed at how fucking lucky we felt to have been able to make it to the surface. We drifted to the boat (about 100metres away) in the current, and was met with jibes and teasing of the boat crew and other divers of how Waffi’s initial plan was to just stick close to the boat, and instead of that, we ended up so far from the boat and having to have a surface swim.

#monatee #Poni Divers #Oil Rig Wreck #Brunei Wreck #Brunei Shipwreck #Brunei Wreck Diving #Diving #Scuba Diving #Advanced Open Water #Navigation #pufferfish #pipefish

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