What an amazing Public Holiday with 3 awesome dives and an all day BBQ. This Vesak Day Trip even filled in less than an hour, when I promoted it a few days before.
The Dolphin Explorer has expanded its operation with the addition of a larger boat called the “Southern Comfort”. It is not really set up for diving, but it has plenty of room, although not much head room inside for those taller people. She is a nice vessel suited for socialising and BBQ-ing.
With 18 divers we decided to take both boats; Southern Comfort and the Dolphin Explorer. We used the Southern Comfort as the mother ship and the Dolphin Explorer for diving. This worked really well.
On Tuesday, we completed 3 dives at Hantu, all with great viz of 5 or more metres. First dive was at the Outer Reef, the second was at Sudong Wreck and the third was at the Reef behind Jetty I.
Karen and I were both guiding a group, whilst regulars Jeff and Su buddied up and dived together. Scott, Matt and Wayne also dived together.
This was Matt’s last dive in Asia and he really enjoyed it. He even saw a seahorse on the last dive. What a way to remember your last dive in Singapore! Matt moves to the colder end of the earth soon – Switzerland.
I have dived Sudong Wreck many times and can say this was “the best” I have ever seen it.
We dived it at slack high tide and there was zero current.
The viz was fantastic.
When I jumped in to tie the descent line to the wreck it was at least 7-8 metres viz.
With all the divers in the water it dropped a bit, to about 5 metres.
But still just as amazing with loads of colour and fish life.
Mel the Captain and BBQ-er, was busy all day feeding us in-between each dive. First we had mushrooms wrapped in bacon and marinated chicken wings. Next we had prawns and kebabs then after the last dive on the way back to Singapore we had homemade burgers and beers.
I don’t know about you, but life doesn’t get much better than that!
We saw a lot of marine life, loads of nud’s, flatworms, crazy juvenile sweetlips (at all three dive sites), a cuttlefish, octopus, seahorse, trevally, snapper, and there was a massive ray at Sudong.
All in all one of the best days diving in local waters.
Cheers, Gary Savins
Thanks to Karen Savins for your use of your photos. To view more photos from this trip, please click here.