It’s the last day’s diving today, so three to finish it off. This morning we were back to Sipadan at 0745. Yesterday the diving didn’t look promising as we had to transfer in pretty rough seas, but it turned out ok. Last night there was a tropical storm (evidence by the trashed house in the stilted village we saw later), so it looked even worse today. I had a mad moment during the night thinking I had left my rash vest and shorts outside…and they had disappeared. Just as I was about to head out on a search in the middle of the storm, around 3am, I remembered I had hung them up in the bathroom. Quite an amazing acheivement really as I was so knackered after heading back last night, and had consumed a tiger and several ‘specially imported’ (ahem) shots of Filipino Tanduay Rum obtained from the local village next to the resort.
So the first dive went a bit like this…. hmmm…my camera’s not switching on – weird. I had put new batteries in this morning and had resealed the o-ring on the waterproof housing. I gave it several attempts then gave up. It was then I started to see the mist forming on the inside, closely followed by a rapidly increasing bubble of water filling up the inside of the casing……not much I could do at this point apart from sack off the dive in the hope I rescued it. We had got dropped off at White Tip Point though so I knew there should be more sharks down below (albeit not that huge)……so I did the only thing that was right…..continue the dive, watching the water seeping in, and rapidly trashing my camera. I quickly calculated that Raleigh staff seem to have around a 20% hit rate on trashing cameras on this trip……. never mind, it’ll give me an excuse to buy these Sony’s I’ve been eyeing up, despite their trashed count sitting at two.
It was a weird feeling coming in and washing down my camera in fresh water. I’m currently holding out the memory card dries out successfully as I was too lazy and relaxed to download the pictures of turtles and sharks last night…arrrggg.
Anyway, the dive continued and we saw more huge turtle elegantly cruising by and a few more white tipped sharks. The second dive at Coral Reef Garden had quite a current which was hard work after a while, but loads of coral to be seen.
Anyway, my last or second last dive beckons…I must dash…