With 64 scuba divers, 3 PADI Instructors and 1 PADI Dive Master spread over 5 trips, it sure was a busy weekend of local diving in Singapore. All whilst I was in the Philippines diving with some regular customers.
GS-Diving did morning and afternoon trips over the long weekend at a local dive spot called Hantu. The trips on Saturday and Sunday used one boat and then on Monday, the Public Holiday, we had 24 divers diving from two boats.
GS-Diving PADI Instructors, Lilian and Julius were on the boat Saturday and Sunday running PADI Open Water and PADI Advanced Open Water Courses and PADI Instructor Danielle assisted with students on Sunday too.
Congratulation to Fred, Marcus, Rohan, Patrick, Simon, Josh, Alex and Ayushi for completing their PADI Open Water Diver Course. Also congratulations to Monika, Michlee, Yasmin, Rahul, Mica, Liam and Taylor for completing their PADI Advanced Open Water Courses.
Whye Keong How completed his PADI Enriched Air Diver Course on Monday too, with GS-Diving PADI Instructor Danielle.
The visibility was good each day, but dropped slightly on Saturday morning due to a heavy storm that hit during the first dive.
Since I was not there I can’t mention all of the sightings. However, PADI Instructor Danielle mentioned she and her students saw sharks on Sunday. And Ghost Wreck was reported to have been a great dive on Monday. I have included a post from Chay Hoon about the storm on Saturday below together with some of the group photos.
“Out diving with GS-DIVING this morning at Pulau Hantu. Visibility was pretty decent at about 3-4m. Two dives at the western reefs again.
Surfaced in the midst of a thunder storm at the end of 1st dive. My 2nd time encountered such situation at Hantu. So remembering what we did the other time, swam towards the seawall away from open area to wait for the storm to pass. However, that time the tide was low and we were able to sit on the rocks. Unfortunately, tide was high and the water choppy today, so we got slammed onto the seawall by the waves! Tried very hard to hang on to the rocks until an Instructor (Julius from GS-Diving) came to pull us away from the seawall. After which, it was a long way swim back to the boat, not to mention with ‘light shows’ going on! It felt like that near death Cyrene trip all over again…..Yikes! But thanks God everyone made it back to the boat!
Nonetheless, an experience gained and it was still two good dives with plenty to see! For me, lots of nudibranch! Big and tiny tiny ones!”
A sample of Chay Hoon’s nudibranch photos are shown below. It looked like a city of nudibranches on Saturday!
Additional photos of the trip can be found on our GS-Diving Facebook page – please click here
Cheers, Gary Savins