I wish you all a merry Christmas
Hope you have a nice evening together with your family, and maybe even get what you wished for

And what is better than a Christmas tree worm

A few youtube videos was posted, and found them so funny I made this posting, have fun watching them, I sure did

This first one is s diving doing a head first entry.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The next one is about hanging onto the zodiac.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Next up is a technical rebreather diver with a lot of equipment, it looks like the helping guy is actually doing the opposite.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And finally we have a video not about the entry, but about getting entangled while diving. This guy might be a very experienced tech diver, but I still think he should get a little more clearance between himself and the fishing nets.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The original forum thread can be found here it is in danish.

And the final one, i found myself.
Equipment removal the complete way, I will not suggest people living in cold water to do this

Click here to view the embedded video.

This time we did a Sinai Classic trip. From Sharm el Sheikh, we went to Ras Mohammed, crossed Abu Nuhas, to dive the Ghiannis D and Carnatic, then back again to Thistlegorm, and the trip ended in the Strait of Tiran.

Here you can see the 5 danes doing this trip together, and Hans from Germany (the 3 other germans had left for the airport already).

From the left we have Hans, Allan, Lise, myself, Rune and Arne.
From page 2, you can see the gps tracks I logged on the trip (nearly all the trip is logges). 1 day per page.

The page is google map heavy, so might take a few moments to load. On the next trip i’ll set the log speed to less than 1 log every 5 sec, that is way to much for a boat going at 15 km/h.

I had the pleasure og being on a one week liveabord in the St. John’s are of southern Egypt.

After over 600 dives (not all logged) in the Red Sea I finally dived with a Manta Ray, and it did happen twice !

Picture of the Manta, and the rest of the trip will hopefully be put online soon.

I dived with dolphins, I have snorkeled with them 4-5 times, but never did i dive with them.

It was a huge experience, a dolphin mother and her baby did circle around us 3-4 times.

Thanks to Lis and Søren for lending me the pictures.

You can see the photo’s here : Dolphins

The photo’s have not been edited in any way.

I hope you like them, feel free to post your comments.

The pictures can be found here: LiveAboard June 2008

Here is a few examples:

The group I was taking there for Aquasport (the divecenter where I work as instructor) had the pleasure of diving with DiveWise.

Here is a few picture of the staff and the divecenter.

DiveWise is without doubt the most professional divecenter I have meet while travelling, always on time, very friendly, highly qualified instructors/guides and they had a deep knowledge about the divesites.

Dive day #1

On day one we went to Cirkewwa and had to good dive, first on P29 Patrol Boat, and the second on the Tugboat Rozi.

P29 Patrol boat:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tugboat Rozi:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dive day #2

On day two we went to Wied iz Zurrieq to dive the Um el Faroud two times.

Um el Faroud:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dive day #3

Because we are flying quite early on the 20th of April, the last to dives have to be quite shallow. Out first 4 dives each was to about 30 meters, so we have to be a bit conservative.

The first dive was on the HMS Maori:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The second dive was on X127 Water Lighter, also known as Coralita.

All in all this was a very nice diving trip, the water was warmer, and the weather was more user friendly than compared to the last trip in February, which still was very nice.

Below here is a bunch of pictures taken on the trip.

Previously I have had the opportunity to dive the Dos Ojos centote, but this day we set out to dive Kukulkan and Chac-Mool both cenotes in the Chac-Mool system. Again both dives were done as caverndives, and our guide made sure we had a good understanding of the nature and technicalities of cavern diving before we begang the dive.

Both caverns were sufficiently deep to have halocline (meeting of fresh and salt water). The halocline is similar to the termocline (meeting of warm and cold saltwater), but when the halocline layer gets mixed the visibility gets severly blured (much more than in termocline). At some point I wonered that it would be easy to become disorientated in the halocline if it was not possible to use the cavern line as a reference. The halocline is hovever also absolutly amazing; It was beuatiful to see the cloud of mixed water from the finn-kick of the diver in front me; The way the layers shone when not mixed and the funny experience of beeing able to turn your head so that half your mask was in the halocline and half was out was just some of the cool moments I had duing the dives.

Both caverns beuaty also related to the places where the light penetrated, the effects was beuatiful, from the laser light in Kukulkan to the leaves on the surface in the Chac-Mool. It was hard to concentrate both on taking it all in, do photos and make sure my boyancy was correct

Angelita

I had seen a video of divers entering the sulfid layer og Angelita, so diving this hole was top on my list of things to do while in Playa del Carmen. The dive was planed and we left early in order to be some of the first divers at the site. I was bobeling with excitement as we sat in the car being given a thoughrow instruction by the dive guide.

The dive itself fully indfriede my expectations. As we entered the still and blank surface and the wather gave way for our decent in the somewhat murky wathers (visibility app. 8m), we decended and at 20 m the visibility became better. The water smelled of the rootten leaves and wood. We stopped just above the sulfitlayer in the hole, and nothing I had envisoned could meassure up to what I saw; It was simply breathtaking. We formed a circle of divers above the sulfit layer, and as sky-divers fell we through the layer into the dark below. Back above the layer we played around and watched our guide jump from a treetrunk into the sulfit layer. In the end we slowly accented while swiming round. We came out and quickly decided, that it had been such a good dive, truely wonderful and amazing. Not a least because we where the first divers that day; The sulfitlayer was so clearly marked, and the visibility was better than on most days.

We went on toward Gran cenote. This one was quite special since it contained small stalemites/staleklites eveywhere. The swimthrougs were smaller and there wher plenty of dark areas around. In addition this cenote also had a nice halocline. This was surely a cavers I was glad to have dived, in addition to the beuaty the cavern also included some narower parts where you needed to focus a bit in order to swim throught without toutching.

More cenotes…

While in Playa del Carmed, I have done almost all the diving possible, and after a few days of rough sea (no sea-diving), I had done all the most often dived cenotes. The divecenter was hovever very accomodating and assured me that they would find something new for me to dive the next day. I was therefore both gratefull and happy when the diving was arranged so that we could dive the caverns Tajmahal and Chikin-HA

The Chikin-HA cenote was at an adventure site not far outside Playa del Carmen, here people could go and do snorkeling / biking / slide anlong a line and generally spend the day. None of this hovever interfered with the possibility for divers to get into the cenote.

Both divesites generally seemed to consist more of larger pices of rock, and have darker places than eg. Dos Ojos. But the light shows was also very amazing. In Chikin-HA we dived from one opening to an other, and in the second one the surface (since no-one snorkeled or entried the wather) was really amazing, it looked like ice flakes floating around. In addition there was a stone that looked like a triangel almost falling down.

The Tajmahal dive was done as a 8 around two openings the Tajmahal and the sugar bowl air dromes. We surfaced in the sugarbowl and enjoyed the beuaty of the lians drinking from the surface (not to mentioning the spiders, though not so beuatyfull).

On the way back we wathed the light like a lazer hiting the surface and breaking and I also saw small pieces of rainbow in the wather.

Cozumel is the one place I have come acros that has the largest amount of dive shops (perhaps Sharm el Sheik has the same amount); It seemed like every other shop in the island city was a dive shop, an every respectable hotel had their own dive-center (I was told 1500 dives per day was done from this 14×53 km island). We were booked to dive with Deep Blue, but it would have been easy to find a dive center, even without pre-booking. We also easily found accomondation for the night in a hotel downtown close to the dive center.

Cozumel has some deeper dive oppotunities compared to Playa Del Carmen, and we soon where on our way to Colombia to do our first dive. The divesite started of with big coralboulders with swim throughs etc. and the dive ended at the reef wall where we drifted along looking at the fauna. We saw a barracuda, turtles and a spotted eagle ray and decided when we came up that it had been a good dive. The second dive was at Paso del Cedral; the dive started at with a app. 40 m wide strip of sand in between the coral walls the strip seemed to continue to eternity (or at least as long as the eye could see). The current was quite powerfull, which meant you needed to put in quite a lot of effort to go and see the different points of interests the guide pointed out to you on the way. Again I think we was quite lucky, and the dive included crabs, the special fishXXX, small cleaner fish, small/medium/hudge morray eels, turtles and a small shark. When we came up (after a somewat extendet safety stop), everyone agreed that it had been really good. And to top it of we came acros a group of dolphins on our way back to the harbor… All there is to say that some days you apparently get to see it all…

The second day the surface was carmer than the first, so the plan was to go to the well known place of Punta Sur. Unfortunally the visibility was not very good which made it impossible for the captain of our bout and for our dive guide to find the right spot. In situations like this is it hard not to wish for either a marking of the divesites or the use of other means of identification (GPS, ekkolod etc.). In the end it was decided that we did an other dive, and we therefore dived Colombia once more. This time we went trough more small tunels before we began our swim along the wall. It was a nice dive, but it would be impossible for it to live up to the wonders of the previous day. The secon dive was done at Yucab, shallow compared to Colobia, but with a very beuatifull fauna, more fish that I could possibly descibe, and sufficient time to see a lot. We swam around and had time to explore the different boulders of coral, and I was really surprised when I realized, that we had been diving for 40 minutes. I have never seen so big fish (parrotfish, groupers etc) as I have here, also because they came quite close.

All in all 2 very nice days diving Cozumel. I would love to go back and do more diving in this spot. I would hovever like to bring my own buddy, or if that was not possible take great care identifying my buddy for the dive and talk over with the person, just exactly my expectations of a buddy where. I write these last lines because it seemed that some og the dives actually just dived around alone, and that is not the way I would like to dive.

In addition I think you must not be shy to ask for the type of dive breefing you are most comfortable with. Briefings seems to be very short – at least from the two guides we had the opportunity to dive with.