I decided to have an easy weekend and just do a couple a dives at Hantu. Alot of my regulars who can’t get away for a full weekend diving, love diving the World Famous Hantu, which is just a short stone’s throw from the Republic Of Singapore Yacht Club (RSYC).
On Saturday morning, as we rounded the corner at Hantu we all noticed that tide was super low. There was no water in the bay at all and the top of the nearby reefs were all exposed. The bottom of the tide was still 30 minutes away and still dropping. “Wow! It’s going to be shallow dive,” I thought.
I was conducting some of the initial dives for Ludovic’s TDI Technical Diving Courses. Jeff, Su and Zaki join me nearly every trip I do at Hantu. Jeff has always wanted to dive the jetty, but every time we previously dived at Hantu, there was always another boat at the jetty. The jetty is normally inundated by mostly open water students, stirring up the viz. So we usually avoid diving the jetty.
But today, we were the only boat at Hantu! We dived the jetty in search of the yellow seahorses that live under and around the jetty. Ludovic and I spotted one seahorse, a squid and an array of nudi’s. We competed a bunch of skills and headed back to the boat, only to find out no one else saw the seahorse.
The viz at the Jetty was really good and made for a pleasant easy dive with no current. The viz was easily 5 metres.
The second dive was planned at the small wreck, but Francis was driving the boat today, not Mel and we could not find it. We needed Mel’s experience.
So we dived the small outer reef and I went searching for the anemone shrimp to confirm what they were. I found them and they are standard anemone peacock shrimp, there was one big and one small one. The current had picked up as the tide was heading up, so Ludovic and I just swam back and forth a few times doing skills and generally practicing diving with twin tanks and a stage bottle.
My newly certified PADI Dive Master (DM) Francios was guiding Ben, Paul, Oliver and Jeremy. They all had a great time. Paul, well Paul was lucky to be diving at all.
When I arrived at RSYC, Paul was there with his JJ CCR and I noticed that he did not have an oxygen tank. I remembered he was getting it filled on another boat. With a glum look on his face he told he he got it filled and the boys put it on a boat that left for Tioman Friday night, not the boat we were diving from Saturday morning. Luckily for Paul, I had a spare oxygen CCR tank in my car that had enough gas for him to complete two dives.
Ben also forgot his booties, surface marker buoy (SMB) and reel – all of which he left on the boat the previous weekend. I have all items stored in my “dive shed” along with other items people leave behind and I generally never find the owner.
Glenda’s tip – Double check you have all your dive gear when getting off the boat and triple check you have it all, when packing again for the next trip.
Cheers – Gary.
PS – Upon Angela’s excellent suggestion, we have created a web page for lost and found items. Please do let us know if anything belongs to you, we would be most happy to return them! – please click here