Just fighting off my sleepiness before leaving home for diving in the waters around Sai Kung. I am not that keen to dive actually cos the waters must be darn frigid today. But D wants to go, and being his buddy, I have to brave the cold and go with him. Suddenly this weekend, the cold front from the north has descended upon us, and over just one day, the temperatures plunged from a hot and humid maximum of 29 degrees C to the current 17 degrees C. The wind chill effect obviously drives the temperatures southwards. Drats, I have washed and kept all our winter wear.
Originally we were supposed to go for a 2 days 1 night liveaboard to Pedro Branca (some 85 km away from HK), but the current is at 4 knots, which definitely brings back memories of our rough seas condition at the King Cruiser Wreck (Phi Phi Diving Trip). Due to the strong currents, the trip has been cancelled.
UPDATES FROM THE DIVE:
This is me prepping up for the 1st dive. Beneath that cool exterior is a really cold person who is having major shivers. We were on Diving Adventure’s newest boat which has liveaboard facilities.
While we were waiting for the boat at the pier and being buffeted by the strong wind which gave me the shivers as I dug deeper into my hoodie pockets, I asked myself “Why the hell am I diving in this crappy and dreary weather?” And this line “Do one thing a day that scares you!” kept popping into my mind to answer my question. A adventure kayaker had said it on the A1 channel (A1 or Adventure One is a cable channel that we subscribed to here in HK, apparently this channel is not shown on Starhub). And the other obvious reason is the man whom I am accompanying.
To keep myself warm in the waters, I wore my NeilPrdye 0.5mm Rashguard beneath the Gul 3mm full wetsuit, gloves, boots and my new-purchased Ralf Tech 5mm hood. I borrowed another shorty to wear over my Gul and the result is a very clumsy-looking seal. However this seal was quite warm and moving about gracefully in the waters.
By the way, the Ralf Tech hood really kept my head warm. Very pleased to have bought it.
Later I found out from my dive watch that the water temperature was a balmy 20 degrees C compared to the 17 degrees C at the surface.
We were diving near Basalt Island which is about an hour ride from Sai Kung Pier. There isn’t much to see actually except for lots of orange anemones and its inhabitants, the clownfish; some schools of small fish neutrally buoyant in the current.
Nonetheless, it’s in this sort of places that you need to look beneath the rocks and that’s where I saw my first octopus. Well, actually, D spotted it first and beckoned me to look beneath some rocks. The first thing I saw were 2 shrimps, but my eyes spotted a big dark round thing staring back at me deep inside the hole. And soon, I made out the familiar purple mass and white suckers underneath. Wow, that is cool… D and I observed this octopus for awhile, and it stayed in the safety of its sanctuary.
On our 2nd dive, it was almost the same scene, although I saw my first sea snake zipping away and D released some fish and a crab from an abandoned fishing trap before being tangled by the rope. I had to “rescue” D in the end.
What else am I afraid of, I have been thinking about this for awhile. Some are really obvious (death & terminal illness to me or family), to the silly (bungee-jump, sky-dive, major air turbulence on the plane, stuck in a lift with a huge flying cockroach) to the unforseen (being framed, stove exploding in my face, falling while lead-climbing).
I can be incredibly paranoid at times and I do think about the worst-case scenarios and role-playing the various possiblities and solutions in my mind. It’s like there are so many things I am afraid of, but I think through them, whenever and wherever, so as to be somewhat prepared for the worst.
To have some kind of an action plan is better than none.
Kancheong Spider 