amateur hour

One of the very few good things about working in Chatswood is that I can get home super-quick; extra early yesterday as we Sal, who also works in the Wood, had driven and was also leaving early. All rather dull; early home gave me time to (badly and quickly) cut the rear lawns before we decided to head out and see the latest Matt Damon outing, The Bourne Ultimatum. Cracking movie, pretty much non-stop action and a fair bit filmed in London. Always nice to see a faithful representation of the homeland in a movie as opposed to the typical psuedo-London of far too may American movies.

So that was the end of the week and the start of the weekend was time for me to deliver on a promise made to JCJ last week. We were to dive in the chilly winter waters of Sydney, me in my 3mm wetsuit. Nice morning and I was awake well before JCJ was to arrive to collect me so I dismantled a futon and used the wood to create a fabulous - even if I do say so myself - wooden floor in the void under our back stairs for the dogs to use as a sort of kennel. I even put a rug in it. Rumpole hates it; will walk to it, will look in it, will skulk off. Bugger, but maybe a blessing in disguise as this could be the bolt-hole Rowlf may need.

JCJ arrived on time, we loaded up, headed for Dive2000 to get airfills and find out where the mass of Saturday morning divers were headed. They were going south to Bare Island so JCJ, John and Grant (who we met at the store) and I decided to head north to Fairy Bower and the possibility of sharks.

We arrived to see a flat calm ocean. The morning was warm after the northerly winds of the end of the week. Lovely. I will Divelog the dive itself and will keep the details of the shocker of a pre-dive preparation that JCJ had. And I would go into detail now were Doctor Who not starting...back in a bit...

Bit.

Back, having been instructed to attend the meal table with the in-laws and therefore missing Doctor Who, damnit. So back to Manly and Fairy Bower. First JCJ had to attach his hoses to his regs; he'd dismantled the lot when he came back from PNG and had a momentary lapse of memory looking a little puzzled and asking which side each hose should attach. He knows this shit; he's been diving since before sharks swam the world's oceans. Then he had to tighten bolts on his backplate and then then attempt to take the dust cap from his regulator first stage (the bit you screw into the tank valve,for the non-divers.) It was stuck. It was passed around and eventually we managed to remove the thing. JCJ finally put his kit together in record slow time and discovered a slight leak from his regs. Trying to fix the leak he managed to piss a ton of air out of his tank as he dismantled his regs. This was keeping me amused and I probably did not help his flusterment with my constant piss taking. Then came the suiting up and that was a whole lot more fun, especially the bit when he was murmuring "I can't breath!" I could have rushed to help but instead of rushed to get my camera. Grant had missed most of this comedy routine by the time he came over to ask if we had any weight to spare as he had forgotten the lead for the belt he had not forgotten. Ensuring more fun to come, JCJ took some weight from his belt and gave it to Grant and we finally made our way to the waters edge.

The water was a chilly feeling eighteen degrees as we waded in and I noticed that JCJ had not threaded his harness through his crotch strap. Again for the non-divers (and a lot of divers who will have no idea what that means) that means his buoyancy compensator would not sit properly but rather float up around his ears. The way to fix this is to take your rig of and quickly re-don it with the crotch strap threaded as it should be. The correct thing not to do is try and sort it out without removing the rig. So JCJ was floating on his back drifting and wobbling and pissing himself laughing. Bad had become worse, more air was being lost from tanks but we were all having a great time.

Then we descended, JCJ's decision to pass some of his weight to Grant meant he was rather floaty and he made a quick grab for a rock that he spent the rest of the dive cradling. Maybe you had to be there, but really it was very funny. The dive was a cracker too. If you're interested, head over to the divelog.