I received a call from Sunil, who wanted to complete his PADI Open Water Course within less than one week. His rational was the fact that he was not required to travel for work that week.
I made a few quick calls, delivered the PADI Open Water Manual and other materials to Sunil that very day. We completed the theory and exam two days later and then spent two more evenings in the pool along with Mick and Judi, who are scheduled to do their PADI open water dives mid August at Tioman.
Sunil complete all the pool skills and had one night rest before we boarded the MV DiveRace bound for Pulau Aur, Malaysia.
Luckily for Sunil, who was concerned about sea sickness the seas were very calm and we had a very nice overnight cruise to our first dive site, Pulau Lang.
After the buddy checks we entered the water via a giant stride. It took a little while for Sunil to get over his nervousness and once he relaxed a little we decended to a max depth of around 5 metres. We swam around a bit and saw a blue spotted ray, school of rabbit fish and may others underwater life.
We found a nice place on the sand and started to complete a few of the required skills. We had a look around again, this time to a max depth of 10 metres, completed our safety stop and got back on the DiveRace for a well earned hot breakfast.
Dive 2 was at Rayners Rock and dive three for the day was at Telok Teluran with a max depth of 15 metres and the second dive was for 50 minutes. We saw a school of barracuda and loads of parrot fish.
Sunday morning saw us dive at Pinnicle 1. There was a strong surface current which made it challenging to decend. Once on the site it was awesome, no current good viz and plenty of fish to see.
I was surprised to see on the white board that we planned to dive Pulau Yui on the way back to Singapore. This is a bomb disposal island that normally has bad viz and strong currents. I was very pleased that none of this was present and the viz was an amazing 20 plus metres. The coral and fish, of which I have not really seen before due to the normal bad viz was amazing. There were bombs everywhere. This all made for a very exciting last dive for the weekend.
Congratulations to Sunil for joining the diving GS-DIVING Hall of Fame.