Another fun weekend with a group of kids from an international school, this weekend we were on The Ark diving around Tioman, Malaysia. Travis and his better half Regan also joined me this weekend.
The seas were flat all weekend which made it a pleasant ride there and back. The visibility was bad at around 3-5 metres. Local diving at Hantu was the same viz this weekend too.
There were plenty of fish to see; school of fusiliers, a hand full of six banded butterflyfish and cute little yellow box fish on the last dive.
PADI Open Water students for the weekend were – Nicholas, Russel, Eva and Claire. GS-Diving Instructor Lillian looked after all 4 of them with the assistance of Guy, the teacher from the school, who is a PADI Dive Master Trainee. They all passed but some had to pay a penalty for lost weight belts.
PADI Rescue Diver students were Greselva, Chloe and Gerald and the PADI Advanced Open water student was Felix. All 4 passed and also had to pay for some lost weights. I had a fun time teaching them.
The rest of the guys went diving for the 4th dive at Labas, but I spent the whole time with my Rescue Diver students and Felix running rescue scenarios, back to back. Gerald had to rescue 3 “victims” at once! Now don’t worry, he delegated very well under pressure.
We dived Rengis, Chebah, Tiger reef, Labas and Bahara Rock. The huge sponge coral at Bahara was awesome. Too bad the viz was about 2 metres at 7.30am Sunday morning.
Glenda’s Tip – Fasten your weight belt correctly and firmly place your left hand on the buckle when you do your giant stride off the back of the boat. The belt and more importantly, the weights on it, are expensive to replace.
Cheers, Gary Savins