The magic 100

last night i completed my 100th dive.

alex and i grabbed all our gear from the shop after work and then we shot over to lake pupuke.
the lake has never been my favourite place to dive.  lately however, its been growing on me.  the eerieness, the green tinge, and the cheeky perch.

there were quite a few people there when we got there.
one of the SSI schools from south auckland was doing an advanced course.  we had a bit of a yak with the instructor and they were getting back in for their second dive at some stage.  alex and i geared up, still chatting away, and got ready and made them all feel cold as we snuggled down into our dry suits.

the dive plan for the first dive was simple.  find the ‘caves’ and then come back to the line and find the ‘pipes’.
see, we’ve all heard about the caves, but no one other than andy seems to know how to get there.  and we’ve heard of these pipes but each time we take students out, they hit the thermocline and all start shivering uncontrollably so we tend to bring them back before we find anything remotely interesting.
ANYWHOOOO .. we think we found said caves!!!  we found a really really really big bloody eel and lots of dark as overhangs.  we had a great putter around there, down in the cold at about 14m, and then swam back up over the rocks to about 9m and around the weed and back to the little pink buoy.  alex was having a few problems with her mask but we decided to soldier on and go out for the pipes.  swimming swimming swimming – or more like in alex’ and my case – floating floating floating (no wonder neither of us use any air!) .. and god damn it!  we found the pipes.  we did our little dance, well the one anna wants the students to do if they ever find them, and celebrated our awesome navigation styles.

we made our way back to the line, playing on the thing that looks like a toilet seat, the actual seat and the parking 180 sign which someone has thoughtfully secured down with a bunch of rocks and bricks.

we found the other group around the line.  one of the female students was having a right old freak out so we just hung around out of the way but in view of the instructor who gave us the ok just to stick there if he needed us.  all in all, when we ascended – dive number 99 – 13.9m for 51mins.

we changed our tanks over quickly and decided on the dive plan for the next dive.  my 100th!!
alex wanted to navigate this one, and it was getting dark and a little chilly so we decided max depth 12m and max time 30 mins.  we thought we would drop down, move out to the parking sign and then over to the pipes and back.  we found a rusted out old bucket with heaps of holes in it that when we flashed our torches around, it looked like a disco ball.  would have loved to have seen what that looked like from the surface!
when we got back to the line, the other group were there, just sitting around.  so we moved up the line to 5m and then had to move out for them to come up and we were done!!  dive number 100 – 12.3m for 26mins.

i cracked out the 375ml bottles of lindauer fraise and alex and i had a little celebration on the lake shore.

When snapper attack

the snapper at goat island were fed and this changed their behaviour – but holy freaken shit!  i didnt realise how much until today.

we had 7 students completing dives one and two of their open water today.

dive one was great.  it was just a tour and i led them out and back – to pretty much the same spot.  woah yea.

but the second dive, i popped down to secure the line, and i was attacked!  attacked i say!  by about half a dozen big fuck off snapper.  first i thought someone had kicked me in the head.  they were nipping at my bubbles and my hair.  then one of them tried to take my hand off.

lucky i am johnny bravo and i have ninja styles.

i had to punch them.  whilst my students and instructor pissed themselves laughing.

snap .. snap ...

attack snappers!