renovation, Rowlf and wreck

renovation

Not a great deal of big-stuff progress on the renovation but some things of significance. We now have light downstairs. The hallway, bedroom, walk in robe and en-suite on the inside and outside we have lights either side of the entry door and a sensor-floodlight for the garden. These things make taking the rubbish out and getting to the laundrty after dark less perilous.

We've also had the en-suite waterproofed, the floor tiles are down and the wall tiles are going up. It is starting to look a lot like a bathroom. Upstairs the veranda has a ceiling and the inside of the half-height wall has been gyprocked and plastered. This week I get to swing a paintbrush again.

I did another small run to the lockup as we move completely out of our three upstairs bedrooms, sunroom, main bathroom and WC. Stuart has measured up for steel beams and other big things as he prepares to take the wrecking ball to the house again.

As for the curernt living arrangement, it is relatively comfortable. There are the sore throats resulting from shouting Harrie to sleep most nights: "go to bed" "I've been to bed" "go to bed and stay in bed!" "I no want bed" "GO...TO...B-E-E-E-E-E-E-D!" But other than that, pretty plain sailing so far.

Rowlf

The big fella is an OCD mutt. I think one of the builders once threw an empty chip wrapper into the skip at the back of our house and since, right after dinner each night, Rowlf trots around the house to rummage around in the skip. Luckily it contains nothing spiky and horrible at the moment. I am not sure what I can do (lie - there is nothing I can do) to stop him from being such an arch-scavenger.

And on that...Yesterday I got home to find Sal in the garden looking poised to kill. To kill Rowlf. He had eaten the just-cooked tuna bake Sal had made. No matter that she knows Rowlf is a scavenger and that simply shutting the kitchen door or putting food up high can prevent such a disaster. No, the dog is a bastard and someone this was also my fault. Yesterday I though this was especially harsh on me...

Wreck

...harsh because I was in the Harbour. Literally. I was 3km away and underwater. How I was supposed to keep an eye on MY dog or close the kitchen door was not made clear. Before I got home I had spent a reasonably pleasant 30minutes or so in the greener-than-I'd-anticipated Harbour.


Having not videoed the kingfish on either of my previous two trips I was keen to capture them today. Actually, rewind; I wanted to dive the Bower, but parking was impossible, so I went to Fairlight again, GoPro at the ready. It looked very nice from the shore, not bad from the edge, green from the wall. Nevermind. Basically the same as before - without kingfish - I went up and down along the wall, chased a Port Jackson shark and found the wreck. Eventually.

A few things saw me get out after a relatively short 30mins. The water was pretty green, I'd spent a bit of my free time trying and failing to park at the Bower and there was a reasonable amount of boat traffic about on Father's Day. I was on the wreck when I heard a boat that sounded quite close...but sound can be deceptive under water. but it was fucking loud. I headed back to the surface - no real option without a tank - to see the back of a speedboat a little way off. Not too close, but close enough. I had my videos so I bailed.

And got home to the murderous missus.

Ho hum and a happy father's day.

...I'll get in trouble if I don't...the girls got me things made at daycare, a photo book from AJ and a picture form Harrie. It was very cute. AJ had spent days waiting to give me the present and H just loves presents. We had breakfast in Manly, played on the beach and then Sal did the shopping while I took the kids to the local playpark. Post swim I went to the lockup with AJ, and that was Father's day with the family.

And yes, I know I should write more about the girls, but it is so much easier to to just quickly waffle on about general shit. So my blog, my rules.

Frozen fingers at Fairlight

After a week with next to no rain the Harbour was looking unusually clear. However my lungs were not feeling usually clear on Saturday morning. I got up at silly o clock to take Rowlf for his long walk and had a bit of a clearing hoik. Green. Lumpy. Yuk. The water at Fairlight looked clear and I was feeling OKer by the time I got there wiht a coffee onboard...but there was a little pressure in my ears as I walked down the steps behind Manly aquarium. But my ears were clearing and having removed the nighttime lung-gunk I had not built up a new coat of green stuff. Maybe I'd be able to get in the water...

Sal took the in-pool duties at the kids' morning swim. I was having a break from Harrie's 30minutes of whinging through her lesson. As well as the rest my ears got  I also avoided getting chilled. Once the kids were back home and asleep I grabbed my wetsuit, mask, fins, snorkel and charged GoPro (I learnt that lesson before) and headed back to Fairlight.

It has been a little while since I was last in the water and it was noticeably cooler. I slid in and headed out past a returning paddle boarder. He said the water temeprature was about 16 or 17 degrees - chilly in a 3mm - and that he has seen an eagle ray while paddling about, which gave me hope that the water was as clear as it had appeared from the shore.

It wasn't. There was a reasonable amount of particulate matter in the greenish water. Compared to what I usually expect from Fairlight the visibility was OK, but it was nowhere near my (unrealistic) expectations. Regardless, I was glad to be back in the water. The first few minutes were spent getting my mask to fit without leaking, reassuring myself that the GoPro was working and taking my first couple of tentative I-really-hope-my-ears-clear dives. The ears were fit for purpose, the GoPro was faithfully taking some very ordinary pictures and the mask stopped leaking. All good.

I headed for the rocky drop behind the pool and tried to find some spots were there was enough light to get some pictures. I clicked more in hope than anything else. The GoPro does not do a great job of stills in lowish-light, and with no screen you can't tell what you're getting. I've not used it enough to have an instinctive feel for what I'll get. In some regards it harks back to the days of film, albeit with the capacity to take a few thousand shots instead of 36. I swam through some gaps between rocks, went low to shoot into the sun. Nothing was really grabbing me. Had I been with my normal camera I'd have started looking for macro subjects but with the GoPro I was a bit stumped.

There was a dive school bobbing about at the top of the rock shelf. It didn't look like they would be descending any time soon and I toyed with the idea of swimming under them and taking a dangling legs picture. I was a little bit further out than the school and decided against them as a photo subject as soon as I next put my head in the water. There was a school of around 40 kingfish, mostly around 1m long. They were clearly circling me. I clicked a few shots while trying to move myself and the camera around at the same speed as them. After they'd circled me 4 times I dropped to the sand and then came slowly back towards the surface, hoping to get a nice silhouette shot. They were, of course, gone. I kicked myself for not switching to video (metaphorically; it is quite difficult to kick yourself while wearing freedive fins.)


With the kingfish gone I was once again without subjects. Again I thought about the dive school, but as I looked around I saw some bubbles off to my right and decided I would instead head down to see the divers who were sending the bubbles up. There were two of them and one was trying to take pictures of a scorpoionfish that clearly scared the shit out of the other, cameraless, diver who went into a comical reverse as the fish swam his way. I waved hello, took about 20seconds of video of them and then went on my way, thankful that I was tank free. I took a couple of self portaits of myself, which was a signal that all inspiration had gone and it was probably time to get dry.

I was getting a little cold by then. I dropped to the sand in front of the rosk shelf to see if I could find the small shipwreck. It is as photogenic as it is elusive; I failed to find it. With a rapidly deteriorating ability to press the shutter release I decided it was now time to head back to shore. My fumbling hands-not-really-working attemps to remove my fins were probabaly quite amusing to watch. I'd lasted 45mins, which was about 15mins more than I thought I would.

Back at the car the coldness took a hold; all the while I'm in the water I feel quite cold but it is once out that it starts to hurt a bit. Bloodless hands and feet go yellow - not a great look. But it passes quite quickly, and while I was rewarming I could take a look at my pictures, thanks to the recent firmware update for the GoPro and the update of the Android app I have on my phone. Unlike the water clarity, this time my expectations were met. Few of my pictures even managed to get to mediocre.

You wind some you lose some, and really the pictures are a bonus; the real prize is getting back in the water.

swimming with the kings

An unexpected but welcome side-effect of my GoPro not firing up when I got in the water is a visit back to my neglected blog.

The weather forecast for this week had been pretty close to spot-on and after a couple of days of rain the weekend landed quite nicely. Yes, there was some early drizzle on Saturday but it was dog-walk-near-dawn early and the day cleared nicely to be warm and cloudless. As I'd walked Rowlf to Manly I had idly wondered if the word "drizzle" had made it it into Snoop's vocabulary; drizzle on my jizzle or some such. As it is I got a a bit wet before getting to Manly.

As I walked past the aquarium I saw how clear the water was. I was hoping to get in the water with my GoPro and things seemed promising. I wandered along the Corso to the ocean side and things started to look a little less promising for a dive; the surf was solid. Fairy Bower, where I had hoped to get in the water, was rather lumpy. Saturdy was for chores, so maybe it would drop off by Sunday, or even Monday when I'd be taking a day off work.

Sunday dawned clear, Sal set off for a walk to Manly (part of her training for next year's Everest Base Camp trek) and I hung back, driving the girls down a little later. We met Sal in Fusion Point, our semi-regular haunt, had some breakfast and then went to have a play on the beach.

While not as large as yesterday the surf was still pumping. I took some pictures - I think I took more of the girls than the surf - and once Harrie started losing the plot we packed up and headed for a drive along the beaches to the Bilgola lookout and a spot of (failed) whale watching.

Somewhere along the way I decided that today was the day to jump in the water. Tomorrow is not due to be as sunny, so the light would be at its best today, and as our builder started on our renovation on Thursday it makes sense for me to be around so I can answer any questions or simply get in the way. I plugged the GoPro in to top-up the battery, faffed around and then headed out, leaving Sal to do some packing while the girls did some sleeping.

My option was down to Fairlight or get battered in something akin to a washing machine. Fairlight had looked reasonably clear on Saturday morning, despite the rain, so I was OK with heading there. I suited up, applied some I-hope-this-prevents-my-mask-from-leaking vaseline to a top lip that has remained unshaven for over a fortnight and wandered down to the waters edge. It makes a pleasant change to not apply vaseline to my nipples crotch. It looked a bit green and murky. Ho-hum, I slid in and it was reasonably warm. And green and murky.

I'm not sure what the tide was doing but I seemed to get sucked out over the shallows, which saved some finning. There was a little bit of swell and small waves breaking by the pool, but conditions were good. The same could not be said for the condition of the GoPro. I tried all combination of the three buttons but it stubbornly refused to power up. On the plus side it hadn't flooded, so I guessed a battery-out-and-back-in restart would be needed.

Visibility was OK. By Fairlight standards. So visibility was pretty ordinary. I could see to about the top of the drop off and could see there were plenty of fish about. I dropped down through a large school of yellowtail. Towards the sand it went from reasonably murky to murky. I had a bit of a swim around and popped back to the surface. Futile attempts to get the camera to work were futile. The GoPro is so small that carrying it about is no big deal; I gave up on it and started to work my way along the small wall that is the Fairlight dive site.

Before long at all I spotted a couple of the Kingfih I'd seen last time I was here. OK, I don't know if they are the same Kingfish, but last time I was here and again today there were Kingfish, to about 2ft long, idly swimming through and probably scaring the shit out of the juvenile yellowtail. There were also old wives, blackfish, hula fish, lizardfish and wrasse plus the usual fixed life. It was, and with no photo or video evidence you will have to take my word for it, quite lovely.

I was feeling reasonably comfortable in the water. Despite the mukiness below the ascent was through some deceptively blue water. Milky blue, but blue nonetheless. One of the great things about short-stay freediving, the frequent trips to the surface, so I was having a great time.

I found myself in the middle of a good sized school of yellowtail as a Kingfish passed through. The yellowtail parted and it looked all very National Geographic channel. The Kingfish did a few turns and twice came within touching distance. So, without the aid of a picture, picture this; I'm midwater, hanging in the centre of a school school of yellowtail that keep parting and reforming as a Kingfish swims through. It was as close as I get to a religious experience. I forgot about holding my breath; that's not to say I took a lung full of water, rather that I was there in the water with the fish, not at all concerned that I needed to go back to the surface. I'm fairly sure that's a first. Eventually (ha! unlikely to be more that 2minutes) I headed back to the surface.

I worked my way along the wall and decided that I'd keep myself entertained by dropping right down on to the sand, which is only 8m away. I swam down through the murk, over a couple of small but nicely vertical walls and hit the sand at 7.8m. I swam away from the wall...and found the wreck. I came to the surface a few metres from a stand-up paddle board and chatted briefly to the rider whose opening gambit had been "have you found the wreck?"

The Fairlght Wreck is a small speedboat that sits just off the wall, as the more astute reader will no doubt have guessed from the previous paragraph. The thing is...I very rarely find the wreck. As it turns out there is a good reason for that; I've been looking in the wrong place. I took some bearings and dropped straight down onto it, marvelling at how rock-hard-water-man I am to sink through 8m of really quite warm but somewhat green water. I'll not be setting any records for freediving or hardness. The wreck - a small speedboat - seemed cleaner (in part) than I recall, more of the engine being recognisable as engine as opposed to crud-covered metal.

Very pleased with myself I decided 45mins in the water was enough and made my way back in as a dive school was preparing to enter the water. An especially inelegant fin removal kept them entertained; I'd timed my exit to coincide with a largish (by Fairlight standards) set coming through. I stood up, tried and failed to look cool as I wandered past them and headed back to the car to get changed.

And that was today in the water. Back at the car I removed the camera from the housing and the battery from the camera then replaced the battery and voila! It fired up. So I dried and dressed, took the now working GoPro back to the waters edge and clicked a few pics, including one that was of a water-creature (a sea hare) underwater. So I got a "underwater" shot in the end.

All in all a nice way to spend a couple of hours of an autumn afternoon.