As our dear boat, the Seaborne (live on board), went for a short spa holiday over the 2-3 July weekend to get a little cleaned up and have some parts tweaked, I was out of the water for almost 2 weeks and boy was I itchy to get back into the water!
On the 8th of July, I headed over to the Seaborne with 7 leisure divers and GS-Diving PADI DiveMaster Gary Lim. This group had booked a one night stay on the Seaborne with 2 night dives and a BBQ.
Sadly due to the conditions, we spent a lot of time splitting up and regrouping on the surface. This affected the amount of time we had underwater. Still, we had sightings of an adult boxfish, crocodile flathead, squids and crabs.
After the 2 night dives, Gary Lim and I left the divers to enjoy their BBQ and continued to work, in preparation for the 9-10th July 2D1N trip.
Many continued to play card games until early into the morning. All in all, it was a really nice night away from Singapore.
On Saturday, we had a boat filled with 10 students and 2 recreational leisure divers, so we knew that it was going to be a busy weekend for the GS-Diving PADI Instructors. Katherine took the 6 PADI Advanced Open Water Students while I took the 4 PADI Open Water Students under my wing. Sadly, Sherman was too sick and dropped out of the PADI Advanced Open Water Course.
Due to the conditions at the dive site, I decided to take my students on their dives, 2 at a time. This ensured that I could keep an eye out for my students at all times and enabled me to give them the best learning experience possible.
We had 3 training dives on day 1 where I focused on correcting their body postures in the water, skills and buoyancy. Katherine conducted the Peak Performance Buoyancy, Navigation dives and had a fun non-skill dive too.
After the first 4 dives of the day, we headed back to the Marina to drop off the PADI Open Water Divers as well as Sherman before continuing on for the night dive.
As always, the night dive was the highlight of the trip for me. I had the luxury of bringing down a camera and I tagged behind the leisure divers. The night dive did not disappoint with sightings of crocodile flatfish, juvenile boxfish, shrimps, cuttlefish, a pufferfish and a false scorpion fish.
On Sunday, I finished off my last training dive with my students while Katherine finished off with a Deep Dive followed by Boat Dive.
It was a really nice weekend getaway from the hustle bustle of Singapore life. Many thanks to Gary Lim for guiding the leisure divers and to GS-Diving PADI DiveMaster Bernard who also assisted on the courses.
Cheers, GS-Diving PADI Instructor, Denise