Before a holiday to Mauritius last year I did my scuba diving open water training, this was so my sister and I could do a few dives whilst we were there. She already had done her training years ago but hadn’t done diving recently.
Since the training i have got a bit hooked and have kept on heading down to Rye on the Mornington Peninsula and diving regularly in Port Phillip Bay in Melbourne. Recently i also passed my Advanced diver so i can go up to 30m depth. The guys at The Scuba Dive Shop (aka Scuba Doctor) have been fantastic and are always holding courses, club dives and boat dive that i have been joining.
Below are highlight videos from a number of the dives so far in reverse order, i’ll add future videos in new posts and also add to this YouTube playlist: Scuba Diving playlist
Dive under Rye Pier with a pesky Stingray that kept buzzing us. We did find a Maori Octopus between Stingray visits.
Two dives in a day where we found a cuttlefish hanging out under Rye Pier before heading out to Elsa’s reef in search of Octopus. The night dive was under Blairgowrie pier (a new site for me) where we had a seal messing around us (not on video) and found a White Spot Octopus
These dives, both under Portsea Pier, were part of the Advanced Adventurer course, with my first proper night dive where we found a cuttlefish hanging out. The afternoon dive we found lots of Weedy Sea Dragons
A boat dive that was originally going to be on the Lonsdale Wall, however plans changed due to the very poor visibility and we went outside to bay to the J4 Submarine wreck. My first wreck dive. Had to be careful about my NDL (No Deco Limit – not needing a mandatory decompression stop) here as the wreck is at around 25-28m. Some other divers were doing their NITROX course so had a higher oxygen mix allowing them to stay at depth for longer.
My second dive on the Lonsdale Wall, lots to see on all the ledges but quite a strong current. This dive was meant to be to a wreck but as the boat skipper thought the conditions were so good out in the bay he suggested the Wall. As we were just a bit after slack tide this did end up being a bit of a drift dive with the change of current.
First dive on Lonsdale Wall, a short boat trip from Portsea Pier. I ended up doing my deep dive as part of the Advanced Adventurer course, a bit of a spur of the moment thing that as decided when i arrived at the shop! This part of the Lonsdale Wall consists of lots of ledges sticking out with each ledge around 5 m below the next starting from around 15m, we went down to around 28m deep here moving up the ledges as we hit our depth limits.
Back under Portsea Pier in search of Weedy Sea Dragons
My first full dive with my new BCD (Buoyancy Control Device) and Regulators. Headed out to Elsa’s Reef from Rye Pier in search of Octopus, the big stingray was hanging out too.
Final dive in Mauritius this time to the Aquarium site from Flin en Flac.
Second dive from Trou aux Biches to the Coral Garden
My first dive outside of Melbourne (and the whole reason i did the course anyway) to dive with my sister when we were on holiday. We did a double boat dive from Trou aux Biches with this first site being Holt Rock. We got to sea a Green Sea turtle which was pretty special. This was my deepest dive so far down to around 19m
My first dive playing with my GoPro, i just had it on my wrist so i didn’t have to worry about holding on to it.
Whilst in the UK back in June I did a silly ride with a 2 other cycling friends. We rode the London Wales London AUDAX route in one day, just over 400km, 4100m elevation and 17.5hrs moving time (04:00 till 01:30)
I’ve always like the idea of having a home climbing/bouldering wall and since we got this place i always said that an old bar nook would be a good place for one. I took the old bar out not long after we moved in when i built the new one and the nook has just been a junk storage place since.
After one of Michelle’s colleagues saw some of the telescope photos that i had taken he offered us his telescope he had had for a long time but not ended up using. This telescope is a refactor telescope with lenses rather than mirrors so is generally better at solar system planet viewing than deep space, the tracking makes it easier to take pictures though.
The final part of our postponed Gippsland road trip was to a small town called Loch. We were finally able to stay there last weekend just for one night but it was all that was really needed.
To encourage people back into the city now that things are opening up after Covid lockdowns a lot of hotels are doing 2 for 1 deals, as the Melbourne Comedy Festival was also taking place we took advantage of one of these deals and did some touristy things too.
Following a 5 day lockdown in Victoria that meant we had to cancel the second half of our Lakes Entrance holiday we managed to move the dates to last week. I also had a pre-planned cycle ride from Noojee up Baw Baw climb so we combined both with Michelle picking me up from Noojee and then we continued down to the coastal town of Inverloch.
So i think i may have jinxed this in my previous A bit of An Update post when mentioning things Conona wise were going well in Australia/Victoria….we’re now in a 5 day “circuit breaker” lockdown limited to going out of essentials and 2hrs of exercise within 5km of home. Unfortunately it meant we had to cut our holiday short, we were on a boat trip in the lakes around Lakes Entrance when we found out about the statewide lockdown.
For Christmas Michelle got me a great unexpected gift of a telescope! It is a 76mm (3in) reflector (starter) telescope which came with a few basic Huygens lenses, I had a recommendation to get a new Plossl lens which is a much higher quality and made a huge improvement. I’ve also got a phone mount to mount my phone camera on each lens which gets some great shots. The important thing is to use the remote shutter to avoid the whole scope moving when pressing the shutter.
I had a few days off this week so like a completely normal person I decided to go for a long cycle ride! I have had the gravel ride up the back of Donna Buang on my hit-list for a while but hadn’t managed to fit in the time to do it so this seemed like the perfect opportunity. It was a lovely day and with the whole route being on trails and back roads there was no need to get up early so i got a bit of a lie in too.
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