New Zealand

Tour Director Part 2

2 years ago

by dive mistress in New Zealand, Trip Reports

the weather gods just havent been with james since he has been in new zealand.

from a howling southerly storm passing through the south island while he was trying to fly fish to most probably that same storm reaching all the way up here to the north island and yes, our liveaboard on the weekend got cancelled. its a real shame – he was all signed up to complete his Advanced Open Water.

we went north anyway.

we meandered up to tutukaka on saturday stopping in at warkworth to check out the kauri farm and the museum and also taking a detour out to the best bakery in new zealand – at matakana.

sunday morning finally came and we headed out with dive! tutukaka to the poor knights.
kate had put us on calypso with the group that colin and will were teaching so we were spending the day with a good bunch of people. evan headed us out of tutukaka harbour and in the direction of the islands where we came across a rather large pod of common dolphins feeding. they had some young dolphins with them and as dive! tutukaka have a license, we were able to hang back but follow them around for quite a while.

once the dolphins had had enough of us, we altered course and started to head out towards the islands. the group that colin and will had were completing open water dives one and two so evan headed us in to south harbour. james and i were jumping in with our cameras so we got geared up first and went over the side of the boat. there was a bit of a current running through the harbour and this was james’ first tiime in a hood, long johns and jacket so we spent a bit of time in the water getting comfortable (read ditching the hood) before we descended and headed out over the boulders.
it was going to be a bit of a swim to hit magic wall so we just meandered around in the bay.

A surface interval and some lunch on the boat, then it was time for dive two. And we were in the perfect place.
If there is only one day to dive at the Poor Knights, then we try and ensure that one of those dives is at Blue Mao Mao Arch.
the arch did not dissapoint. the walls had blue fish and blue mao mao streaming up and down them. there were nudibranchs galore. and we had a wonderful (long) dive.

Specialty Instructor Training

2 years ago

by dive mistress in Dive News, Dive Training, New Zealand, Trip Reports

Alex and i headed up to Tutukaka on friday night to spend the weekend with Pete Mesley doing our PADI specialty instructor training.

when we arrived, the party for the raising of the Tui anchor was in full swing.
and as the weather had been complete and total bollocks that day and all diving was cancelled, lets just say that everyone was pretty much hammered. with a capital Hammer. we met some people from PADI and caught up with the peoples that we know and love in tutukaka.

saturday dawned bright and lovely and we headed down to the marina to load all our stuff on to Henrick J to head out to the wrecks. we were scheduled to dive the tui in the morning and the waikato for two dives in the afternoon. i hadnt dived on the tui before so after seeing her anchor the previous night – well i was hell of a excited!
i had Wreck One as an assignment – to plan the dive and carry it out as if pete and alex were my students. pete would ask me what each divers air and no deco time was and as the instructor, you need to know within 10 or so bar. i also needed to make sure that we returned to the line in time without a decompression stop. i didnt quite get one of my students to move fast enough so he had a “mandatory” 3 min deco stop. and that in real life would have been a NO-NO!

pete's breakfast of champions! full on burger (preservative and colouring) flavour

we returned back to tutukaka for tank fills and then headed out to the waikato where pete completed a reeling off and penetration workshop for alex and i. it was interesting and quite hard work and we were just working inside the helicopter hangar of the waikato which is actually a huge open space!

after the next return and tank fills in tutkaka, we returned back to the waikato for alexs turn to lead – Naturalist One.
the marine life – fish and animals and plants – on the waikato is amazing. there are leatherjackets schooling, vast spreads of anemones and there are fans growing on the area above the bridge.

sunday also dawned pretty bright but not as clear. there were a few spits of rain in the sky. but who cares!! under the ocean, its all wet anyways. we were headed out to the knights on board Bright Arrow with Ben as our skipper.

we headed out to the knights and anchored up around hope point. this morning alex and i were doing Deep One and Deep Two with each of us completing the dive plan and briefing and then leading the dive making sure all performance requirements were met. theoretially, we are not supposed to be looking at anything whilst we are training but its so hard not too!! on the second dive at hope point, there were so many kingfish around us that i am pretty sure we did 6-8 minutes instead of the 3.

we’d been a bit cheeky and jumped in to do an extra dive … but then we had another dive that day too.
ben headed us up to middle arch – one of mine and alexs favourite spots. pete was going to do a photography workshop with us.
i headed over the side with my Sea and Sea and alex was going to use petes Nikon. i spent about 30 minutes with a mosiac moray and the entrance to the arch and until some water started to fog up the screen, i was pretty happy with the results!