With one PADI Open Water student and two PADI Night Adventure Dive students this weekend, I looked forward to a relatively relaxing weekend for myself while GS Diving PADI DiveMasters Gary Lim and Bernard looked after the leisure divers.
The month of June is filled with birthdays for us here at GS Diving! Gary Lim’s birthday was on the 17th of June so when I went over to Batam on Friday, I snuck over a birthday cake to surprise him.
I met Bertrand and Silvano at Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal, Singapore and they insisted that I get him champagne as well cause that’s what they do in Italy.
Upon arriving at Nongsapura, Bertrand, Silvano and Paul went off for dinner while I set up the equipment and prepared for Saturday morning. I also started giggling when I noticed that the boat crew had bought a dress for our water dispenser. It was there in celebration of Gary’s birthday.
It was a very nice “chill” evening. Paul decided to have an early night while Bertrand and Silvano stayed up for a bit to enjoy the ambience on the Seaborne berthed in the calm waters of the marina.
On Saturday morning, all the other divers arrived and diving begun.
Jennifer was a great student who was very attentive and was a fast learner. We spent most of the time during the 3 dives focusing on buoyancy but we still managed to spot a couple of crabs, nudibranches and cuttlefish.
For the night dive, I took Chrsta and Nicholas for their first night dive. We were dropped off a little further from where we normally do our night dives so everything we saw was a pleasant surprise for me as well. We saw a dog-faced pufferfish and a sleeping remora. I was startled by massive stingray and towards the end of the dive, we were greeted by a school of squid.
On Sunday, we ran a little behind schedule as one of our divers had to make last minute departure back to Singapore but everyone still managed to enjoy a long dive, curry chicken prata for breakfast and had the time for nice hot showers at the marina before lunch too.
Thank you for another great weekend.
Also, if you would like to view Bertrand’s photos of the trip including his picture of the resident seahorse, please click here.
Cheers,
Denise (GS-Diving’s full-time PADI Instructor)