Another Friday night meet up at TMFT, I am there so often that the Immigration officers know my name. I pass through all the checks with the usual greetings – Hi Gary off diving again? Yes, Indonesia this weekend I say. So nice of these nice people to be so kind and chatty.
As we wait at TMFT we see that the wind is blowing up alot of white caps and we discuss our options other then the planed 50m dive at Seven Skies just in case the seas are too rough to dive there.
We arrive at Seven Skies Wreck Saturday morning with not so nice seas, but still ok to dive. We wait until the main line is secured and then start to gear up for our “Gnome Dive”.
The Gnome was placed on the bench in the work shop of Seven Skies Wreck many years ago, but it was moved by a diver around 12 months ago. This is the first time I have had a chance to go into the work shop for a while, so I wanted to try and find the Gnome and re-locate it somewhere else.
Karen , Suzanne, Ovi and I all jumped in and descended down the line, at about 10m Seven Skies came into view and once we were close enough we dropped off the line and swam towards the entrance to where the workshop is located. There was no current and decent 20m viz which made it a very pleasant start to the dive.
I got to the hatch first and waited for everyone else to arrive, I signaled to enter the hatch and was given ok’s all around. So down we went, passing the first level at 40m, then another at 45m and we stopped at 50m. We entered the work shop and the storage room next door – no Gnome, only a broken piece still on the bench from its original placement. We searched everywhere from 50m-40m for the next 30 minutes in all the rooms and corridors and still could not find the Gnome. Disappointed, but still very happy with the dive we just did, we headed up and out of the hatch to make our way back to the line to complete our deco stops. Where is that Gnome, I kept thinking?
We only did the one dive at Seven Skies and another a Katoka reef that day. The highlight at Katoka was a curious little cuttlefish.
Sunday morning we were back at Igara and there was no current and good viz, we completed two awesome dives there covering every part of the wreck including the bow and stern, both port and starboard penetration unfortunately the starboard side is now blocked by a fallen piece of the wreck and you can no longer exit out at the stern, we managed to squeeze through a narrow exit point into a cargo hold instead, it was funny watching everyone squeeze through!
The residents Nurse Sharks and Marble Ray were not seen that day, although we did see the mark in the sand where the marble sleeps, school of big barracuda, GT’s and Tuna and we also saw a big Sting Ray of some variety hiding under the stern of the Igara at 40m.