Coral Sea Trip Number 2

Day 218 Thur 11/15/2012

Coral Sea 2 - Alarms

"SHARQS!"

“This was the day of travel out to sea.  My watch was only an hour & a half, from midnight to 1:30AM.  Bart came to wake me.  Tommy would pick up where I left off.  Low & behold the sail blew in half on my shift/watch.  Fun!  We got drenched putting the sail back in the bag at the bow of the boat.  All right before the end of my watch & bedtime.  Woke up again with a high temperature alarms regarding the cooling system of the engine.  YES!”

“I remember Masa, Richie & I out on the deck as the boat is plowing through the ocean while trying to get the destroyed front sail back in it’s holding bag.  I did get completely soaked at the end of my watch right before bed.  If I’m correct, the ride out was so bad I had to take a sheet & tie it up on both ends making a cocoon/hammock in order to get any sleep.  It was too hot below deck for me to sleep, & “wet as” on deck.  The small spots at the top of the steps in the cockpit were still dry, but you have to be tied up or there was no staying up there.

Once the water high temp alarms set off around 2AM sleep was ruined further.  The water temperature rose due to a leak in the coolant system.  We found the leak in the engine room & fixed it.  All too easy.  However, how we added the water back to the system almost broke me.  We ran a hose into the engine room where Richie was by the radiator.  I had the other end in the gallery at the sink.  I was told to hold the hose to the faucet & turn the water on after Richie’s command.  This was the most worthless method of getting water from one place to another EVER.  I could barely get water in the hose.  It wouldn’t seal, & water shot all over me & the kitchen.  I was so PISSED OFF!!!  It took ages.  AGES!  Passengers woke up wondering what was wrong.  When you motor down a ship crashing through rough seas the vessel starts rocking all kinds of crazy.  Masa was at the helm keeping the boat pointed into the swells, or trying to.”

Hell of a sanger (sandwich) right there!

            The diesel engine may be overheating, but in seas like this we couldn’t turn it off.  The motor was the only thing keeping us pointed into the swells.  If you kill the motor, the waves will turn the boat sideways.  Front to back waves are OK.  Side to side waves is not OK.  Masa has the boat idling fast enough to keep the boat aimed into the waves as we get the problem fixed.  He was having trouble keeping the boat faced into the waves.  Maybe we needed more engine, less wind, or maybe we were all half asleep and he was just struggling keeping the bow faced forward.

 

God Bless TEXAS!

“We were getting our asses kicked BIG TIME, & we weren’t going to stop until the coolant system was topped off to keep from really stranding ourselves in the middle of the Coral Sea.  However, at the rate I was SENDING water to the radiator the boat might sink or we run out of water before the coolant system gets filled.  With the engine room opened up it gets hot as hell below deck too, and LOUD.  So I couldn’t yell to Richie & tell him this shit wasn’t working.

Richie becomes angry when he realizes how long it is taking to add some water to the radiator.  He storms in to see what I am doing.  I assure him that the water is FULL ON but this method is garbage, & I am soaked again with water spraying everywhere.  Nope, keep it going.  This is what the skipper wanted.



It's a Manta Ray!  Good job TEXAS!  From their GoPro.



Eventually, our slow method worked, & we were topped off with water in the radiator.  I felt so ridiculous standing there at the kitchen sink with a garden hose getting drenched at some crazy hour in the AM out on the open ocean.

No more alarms the rest of the night though.  Please let us sleep now.”

            All this commotion woke up most the guests.  A few came out into the gallery and were asking questions.  Here I am standing at the sink completely dripping wet holding a hose up to the sink spraying water everywhere. 

            “Is everything OK,” one of our passengers asks.  He seems worried.  The boat is rocking all kinds of awful, and there is obviously something wrong due to the noise from the engine room, heat, and me standing here looking stupid.

Tommy's collection of lighters from the
Solar Eclipse Trip.  Silly ass!

            “No, everything is fine.  We are just adding some water to the cooling system,” I assure him with one eye shut and another squinted trying to even see due to the spray of water coming from my complete Joe Shit the Ragman setup.  Meanwhile there is another high water temp alarm going off.

            Another guest comes out, he is also worried.  They most likely hadn’t slept any since we got out here due to the rough weather.  I couldn’t tell them to go back to bed, because I knew how much trouble I had trying to sleep down here due to heat & heavy side to side action.  That’s before we opened up the engine room and made it hotter!

            I complain about Richie’s method of adding water to the cooling system, but honestly I did not have a better idea.  If the radiator just needed a few gallons of water we could have had a quick fix.  We must have been really low on water.  I wonder what this did to our drinking water supply.  That’s the water we were using to fill it up.  Can you use sea water in the coolant system?  I would think not.  Transporting buckets full of water back there would have worked, but with the boat rocking side to side I can see Julia tossing water everywhere, or I can imagine myself dumping water on myself.  Having some milk jugs with caps to fill up would have been ideal.  We needed someone at the sink filling and capping, while six or seven helpers created a chain of arms to get the jug back to the engine room.  The last person before Richie could uncap the jug and hand him the ready to be poured milk jug.  Better yet have a screw on tap for the hose.  Then you could turn on the water and not have 75% of it leak out onto the hose holder ON/OFF guy.

Crew have to rest when & where they can

Day 219 Fri 11/16/2012

Launch the Rescue Chopper

Get To Do Choppa!

“To the surprise of a few guests, who after last night were very weary of the reliability of the Rum Runner, we made it to the first dive site on the Coral Sea.  Amazing dive!  This dive made the nightmare of a trip last night well worth it.  Great viz (visibility) & many sharks.

We took divers out on 4 different sites today.  Then tragedy struck once again.  This time it wasn’t a boat issue.  One English Dive Instructor (NOT Tommy, this was a passenger from England who had her DI certification) had buddied up with another experienced diver, & they had gone on a dive to do their own thing.  They came up from the dive together, but she felt bad once she got back on the boat.  She couldn’t eat the snack we had prepared for all the divers.  She spilled her hot tea on herself.  Then she “fainted”.  Then she was dizzy & “sick”.

“I’ve got deco sickness.  I know it.  Something’s not right.  Something’s not right,” she claimed.  We laid her down in the cockpit & put her on oxygen.”

When people ask if I saw any sharks, I need to break out this photo

            When someone says they have decompression sickness, it is not any of our job to determine if this is fact or fiction.  Tommy, being our working instructor on this trip again, had a duty to get the rescue chopper in route and do everything he could for her at the moment until help arrived.  This meant putting her on oxygen and laying her down.  The cockpit area was the best place to keep an eye on her and administer oxygen.  While Tommy got the diver settled in Richie got on the satellite phone and made the call.  An Australian coastguard helicopter was dispatched from Cairns.

“The rescue chopper wouldn’t pick her up.  The only place to land nearby was a small sand island (50 meters small), & it was only above sea level during low tide.  “Negative,” was all we could get back from the chopper flying over.  Our satellite phone was very handy, because without it we had no other communications.  If a ship or chopper were near the radio was sufficient, but reaching the mainland with it was out of the question out here.

When the chopper wouldn’t land our only other option was to do the journey back to the Great Barrier Reef all over again.  Unreal.  UNREAL!!  All through the night again.  We left the Coral Sea just about sunset for the 10 hour trip back.”

            There was a floating helicopter pad back near the GBR for evacuation purposes.  If someone got deco sickness out on the reef a chopper could be there in minutes.  We would have to get the diver to this platform.

Day 220 Sat 11/17/2012

New GBR Sites

It was an experience seeing this all happen, but we would
have rather been diving.  We hope the diver is safe in the end.

“The next morning we took her (diver claiming deco sickness) over to the helicopter pad in the tender.  Basket was lowered from the chopper.  Get her the heck off the boat.  No one believed she was deco-sick, but we had no choice.

Now we don’t have enough fuel to get back to the Coral Sea, so the rest of the dives will be on the Great Barrier Reef.”

The Coral Sea charter trip is a top notch excursion to dive sites that top the Great Barrier Reef itself.  People pay a bit more for this five day trip on a live-aboard sailboat.  This one diver has ruined that aspect of the trip.  These divers all got a taste of the Coral Sea, so we have to step it up big time to save this trip.  Richie was all over this.  We set back out for the GBR, and Richie asks me if I am ready to see some more new sites.  I am super excited.  I have already said my goodbyes to the GBR for this trip in AU.  I am very excited to get a chance to go back and see even more new sites.

Day 221 Sun 11/18/2012

Fun Crowd

Me watching a school of GT's & barracuda pass

“I learned how to find nudibranchs on this trip.  Also, there were some wicked fast currents with some unfit divers and a diver panic.

Stephan was a large beer drinking German guy.  He was very likeable.  He was worried that the current would be too much for him.  I assured him if the current was indeed too strong for him we would not fight it & end the dive, or we would just go with the flow.

As we got to the Pinnacles I realized as we hung onto bottom rocks there was no way to make any headway against the current.  I looked over at Stephan & he was panicking.  We were too deep to surface quickly, & there was a lot of open water & current between us & the surface.  I got his attention.  With pointing & some basic hand signals I let him know we are going to let go of the pinnacle, drift with the current & be super lazy from here out.  Forget this other crap.  I let go of the rock outcropping we were holding onto.  He followed my lead, & we shot out in a direction I had no idea what laid beyond.

In the distance I saw a shark, & the current was taking us right towards it.  We soon saw another pinnacle where this shark was seeking shelter from the current as well.  We slowly ascended, held onto more stone & watched the shark disappear.  Stephan had sucked his oxygen quickly.  I had to get him up soon.  We freely drifted once again to another wall where we were able to do a safety stop.

When we surfaced we were FAR from the Rum Runner & drifting further with this strong current.  The boat saw us, & Tommy jumped into the tender to come get us.  As Tommy made his way to us I decided to put my mask back on and take a look below.  I see 3 grey reef sharks.

Stephan, my German dive buddy, during the wild current dive

“Quick Stephan, put your mask back on.  3 sharks right below us,” I quickly inform him of our friends below.  He was thrilled to see them.  Tommy pulled up & didn’t mind waiting as we observed the grey predators swimming beneath us.  The dive was only 18 minutes long, but it felt like an hour.  Exciting.  Even though we were completely robbed of our dives on the Coral Sea, we had some awesome dives on the GBR.”

            I did learn how to spot nudibranchs on this trip.  Chris has an eye for spotting these small and absolutely beautiful sea slugs, and by watching him I have become much better myself at finding these slimy little guys.  Chris, who was actually our deco-sick diver’s buddy before she cried wolf, is a great diver.  He always carries a torch with him, and his secret to finding nudis was looking in the right place.  If one looks at coral from a few feet away one is able to see it as a whole.  For taking a photo of a sea fan you don’t need to be within a foot, otherwise you don’t capture the whole fan.  For looking for nudis you wanted to be right up in there with the coral.  Nudis hide from the sunlight most of the time, so looking under coral outcroppings and hanging upside down with your torch was the best way to spot them.  Chris could point out 20-30 nudibranchs in one dive.

Here is Robert, the German Astrophysicist, putting

on gear like the boat is sinking.  He was FAST & super

fun to be around if you cannot tell from this picture.

Another great person on this trip was a German Astrophysicist, named Robert.  When it was time to gear up and go diving on the Rum Runner that meant no slow poking around.  Wasting time on the deck gearing up is time not in the water and can be dangerous with people sitting around who are fully geared up and ready.  We all gear up together.  We do our buddy checks together or with our buddy, and we all enter the water together.  Robert was the fastest diver I have ever seen get ready to dive.  He would be ready to jump in before most other divers were in their wetsuit.  He was so funny about it though.  There were a few dives where I didn’t even tell him it was time to get ready.  We waited until he went below deck, and only then did I let our divers know it was time to dive.  He came up, saw us gearing up and like superman in a phone booth was fully geared up with a regulator in his mouth breathing compressed air.  He was a fun guy.

Bart & Julia enjoying the Rope Game

Richie & (Texas) - Richie is about to punch himself in the face

“So did she have decompression sickness?  No.  She didn’t!  They told her she was dehydrated, which was the first thing I said to her when she told me she felt bad.”

I took a balloon diving

Strong current on our drift dive



Julia had one eye on this dive!



More sharks checking us out



Tommy2T emerges



Richie & Masa onboard the Rum Runner Cairns

Day 222 Mon 11/19/2012

Mad Monday

            We went out tonight with the Asylum Backpackers Hostel group tonight for their Mad Monday Pub Crawl.  No photos from this night will be offered.  That is all.

Day 223 Tue 11/20/2012

Pirate Crew

            According to the time stamps on my photos we took one picture today.

Here it is.

Angela being happy for this meal

Day 224 Wed 11/21/2012

Chinese with Ang

            Once again, all I have to show this day happened at this point is a photo of Angela showing her excitement as we go on a date for Chinese food at the food court.  She complained so rarely!

Day 225 Thur 11/22/2012

Julz the Prankster

Julia got me!

“My last trip out to the Thetford Reef * the Great Barrier Reef on the Rum Runner.  Bart is off this trip with a new DMT, Amos, filling in.”

            Someone had to stay behind for Amos to come on board for a trial run.  Bart volunteered.  He was super blasted from the Coral Sea trip and our couple of wild nights.  He has met a lady, so maybe that had something to do with him wanting to take a few days on land.  Actually, there is no doubt.  Laura, one of the gals working/staying at the Wooduck Hostel, & him have hit it off.  Thanks for staying behind regardless buddy.  He also knew how much I wanted to be on the boat and not staying at a hostel.  Love ya for staying bro!  J

            Amos did a great job.  He is an Aussie bloke, so there is no excuse for him not to be perfect working with Richie & Jase.   I took very few pictures this trip, but I did take lots of video.  Julie tried to sneak into one of my videos and put bunny ears on me.  I caught her after the fact.

Day 226 Fri 11/23/2012

Last Dive in Canyons



Biggest nudibranch I have ever seen.  HUGE!



“On the morning dive I volunteered for lookout, but when Masa returned to the boat he told me to gear up & get my camera.  He was on his way to retrieve a crown of thorns starfish, but he wanted to show me a huge nudibranch.  When we reached the bommie I couldn’t believe how large this sea slug was.  I swear it was a foot long.  Masa knew pictures underwater usually mask size & scale, so he knew to lay something next to the slug to add perspective for the photo.  He laid his torch on the coral next to the slug as I snapped half a dozen photos or so.  It was enormous!  Then he directed me back to the boat.  He was going solo to find the crown of thorns.  Diving alone is frowned upon, but it is the most peaceful & relaxing experience on Earth.  Masa is solo certified.  He is the “Masa Splinter” of diving.

My last dive was on the Canyons dive site, one of our best.  We usually left this site for last on our 2-day trips if weather permitted.  I saw my last shark here, Spanish mackerel, a seal-faced puffer fish, & many Nemo’s.  There were large coral bommies at this site.  I stayed below the surface of the water for a total of 68 minutes & swam through every part of this dive site.”

            Richie didn’t think I was going to get back onto the boat.  I have to find a way to piece together these videos!  I guess if nothing else I just need to randomly throw them all into a 2 hour Rum Runner dive, party, swim, dance, and multi-national video montage.  If only I had more commentary from the skippers to make a hilarious Rummy commercial, or more video from Jase particularly for a “How to cuss properly” video montage.  Haha, love you guys!  I have one more trip out on the boat left after today.  We are going to the Coral Sea ONE LAST TIME.  Hell Yea!  I am so fortunate Richie is allowing me to hang around for one more trip.  I owe ya mate!