Solar Eclipse Trip

Day 213 Sat 11/10/2012

Jase’s Kitchen

“This is the trip Jason created his kitchen rope to cut down or eliminate all clutter.  I also tested & replaced all of the batteries in our dive torches.”

Nicolas, Han Solo, & I

            While on our second dive site this morning, Nolan’s wall, I got back in the water looking for an older mooring rope that had been lost in the months past.  According to Jason it was off to the port side of the boat in about 60 feet of water.  I would have to go down and find the mooring block on the ocean floor.  Jason was fairly sure there was still a chain anchored to the cement block, and there was possibly a rope along with this chain.  The Rum Runner had encountered a problem with this mooring line and tore the floating ball off of the line.



While at sea:
Rule#1. Don's piss off the cook
Rule#2. Don't piss off the skipper
Rule#3. Don't piss off Jase
Jase is both!



            I swam over with some navigation help from Jason tried to drop down where he thought the mooring would be.  I scanned the ocean floor for a few minutes.  The visibility was garbage this day.  I could only see 10-15 feet.  Eventually I came across a large rope covered in algae floating awkwardly from the sand.  I had found the old mooring rope.  Jason had given me a long smaller yellow rope to tie off to anything I found that would work as a mooring.  I was so tangled up in this rope at one point I remember thinking I would have to cut my way out.  I finally got smart and drug the rope by the end and let it tail behind me.  I resurfaced with the rope tied to the old line, which would not reach the surface.

            Jase threw me another buoy to tie off the line to keep it at the surface.  He would go down and replace the rope altogether another time, because it was time to take more people diving.

NOTE:  Working on this mooring at Nolan’s Wall reminded me of the time we lost another floating ball over near Canyons I think.  By the time we realized the ball had been ripped off it was barely visible floating into the distance.  There was fishing vessel nearby, on our dive site Mystery I think.  Richie & I took the tender over to grab this buoy that had drifted over to the fisherman.  He came out onto his deck as we approached, wondering what the problem was.  We picked up our buoy out of the water and Richie explained he was tied onto one of our mooring lines.  Richie pays for these lines in order to use them for safely mooring the boat near reef without having to worry about damaging reef.  The fees the Rum Runner pays for these lines covers the routine upkeep on ropes (usually), and other various reef fees and taxes.



Double Rainbows on Thetford Reef, GBR



            Richie nicely told the guy we would be coming over and using this mooring in the next 30 minutes to an hour.  The seaman wasn’t happy, but was pulling off the mooring as we returned to the Rummy.  “Screw this guy,” we all thought back on the boat.  He was fishing on our dive site.  I thought Richie was extremely nice about the whole thing.  So after our morning snack we pulled over to our site.  This fisherman was off in the distance, most likely with an anchor slammed into the reef, waiting for us to come over and perform our dives.

            “This %*#@ is waiting for us to dive, and he’s gonna pull right back over here!”  Richie is not happy.  We finish our dives, and drop the mooring line back into the sea.  “The funny thing is we aren’t the only company who owns this mooring line.  I think the (I cannot think of the name of the other boat) comes here for a morning dive as well.  They will tell him to EFF off the same as we did,” Richie explains.

            We didn’t get more than a few 100 meters away before we see this other dive boat in the distance.  The fishing boat has just tied back up on the mooring.  We throttle down, because Richie wants to see this.  The dive boat we speak of isn’t a small motor sail either like us.  I think it must have been a Pro-Dive boat, one of those ships that will unload a few hundred people into the water at once.  They pull right up on the fishing boat.  This Pro-Dive boat towers over the fishing boat.  We hear them on the loud speaker telling this guy to get the “hell out of the way, you are on our dive site!”  Richie loved it.

Day 214 Sun 11/11/2012

Best Nemo

Probably the best picture I took of a Clown Anemone Fish
The Canyons on Thetford Reef, GBR

“One of our passengers, Nicolas, came with me for a dive & we took Han Solo on the GoPro stick I rigged up.  The PVC pole was usually used to take the Crown of Thorns Starfish off of the reef.  They are a nasty starfish that eat the reef at an alarming rate.  They are also poisonous to people, so we hook them with the pole & take them off the reef.

When we get back to the Marlin Marine Tommy rocks up after all of our guests have left & we are cleaning the boat.  He has red hair!  It looks hilarious.  What a turd!  Bart is sporting a Mohawk, & Tommy rockin’ a fireball.  Our next trip is the Solar Eclipse Trip.  A group of people have chartered the boat to have us take them to see the solar eclipse.  I must do something to hang with these two clowns while working this trip.  Masa is off this next trip & Tommy is filling in as our instructor.

So in the showers, without telling the rest of the crew, I shave into the nastiest, motorcycle, redneck, Hulk Hogan mustache.  We all decide to go out tonight.  Hot Cindy, the manager at the Woodduck Hostel here in Cairns, went out with us too.  I think tonight was the night I found out about my two friends from Kalgoorlie, WA breaking up. Candy had just up and left Luke.  Ouch.  Don’t travel in love.  Play the damn field son.”

Here is Bart, with his new mohawk, checking my gear
before I go in for a dive with Han Solo

            I actually thought Candy & Lukas had been dating from back in Germany before they came to Australia, but it turned out they met in Kal and began their relationship.  That would be like me flying to the other side of the world and dating an American girl.  No way!  Well we all took him out tonight and had many distractions lined up for him.  Good times.  Unfortunately with my mustache I had very little chance of attracting any women.  The best was approaching ladies in the Woolshed and trying to act like I was 100% serious about my new look.  I looked like the biggest creepster in the Land Down Under.

            See in all this trying to piece stories back together I almost forget the title of this chapter being BEST NEMO.  This would most likely be my last dive at our best site, called Canyons.  This was in fact my last 2-day trip with the boat.  So, on my last dive on Canyons I went and got the best picture of a clown anemone fish.

Day 215 Mon 11/12/2012

Solar Eclipse Trip



2012 Full Solar Eclipse, Cairns



“This trip was so out of control & hectic it will be hard to tell the story with justice.  I never did figure out how this group knew each other.  The lady putting the trip together was older.  She had everything “organized”, & we let her control the madness.  The group was too large to fit on the boat.  So half of the passengers boarded the water taxi to Fitzroy Island while the other half boarded the Rummy.

NOTE: Initially the other half of the group had booked the Vagabond dive boat, Tommy’s old employer.  This boat, however, has recently been dry docked with major hull damage due to a leak that had caused extensive damage to the vessel.

We have NO CLUE who was on which boat, which can be dangerous for safety reasons.  Jason was our skipper on this trip though, & he said EFF IT we will figure it out later.  It will work out, right?

We took the first group to the reef for one or two dives, sailed back to Fitzroy Island, ferried them to the island for dinner, & then tried to figure out who was staying on the boat versus the island.

NOTE:  We had no idea at this point.  The lady in charge was super nice, but from what we could tell guests were changing minds on whether to stay on the boat or stay on the island.  We didn’t care, but it was making it very hard to keep up with who we were taking out to sea.  Having a definite roster on this boat was something Richie and Jase took very seriously.  The DMs job on these dive boats is to make sure you go out to sea with the same people you took out.  This was a task I shared with Bart, Julia and now Tommy.  We were a little worried about head counts with this madness.

Once all of the passengers were off of the boat and on the island, Jase started slinging beers with us.  Next we went to the island to the only bar on it near the resort, named Foxy’s.  The skipper, Jase, bought multiple rounds of drinks for the crew as guests from the trip slowly rolled in.

Our lady in charge had games planned for all of us including clay sculpting & “Guess what role each crew member has on the boat.”  More than half of the group had not set foot on the Rum Runner yet so they were the only ones allowed to play that game.  It was pretty apparent Jase was the skipper being fully tattooed & dark from years of ocean & sun.  They group guessed him as sipper easily.

The rest was funny.  Tommy was indeed our 21 year old dive instructor with more dives than Bart, Julz & I combined, but he looks & acts 12.  The crowd agreed that I had to be the instructor, Julia was the hostee, Bart was the DM (Dive Master), and Tommy was definitely the DMT (Dive Master In-Training).  Hahahaha, Tommy quickly let it be known as he reached up to put his arm around me that “this is my bitch.”

Jase relaxing with a XXXX Gold Tinny

            There are so few details about how and why we are here at this point.  The Solar Eclipse of 2012 was only visible in Cairns and out to sea a few 100 miles.  The path of the eclipse caused the city of cairns to flood with eclipse chasers and backpackers alike.  This group had the idea to watch the eclipse from Fitzroy Island.  This group was mostly young Australian couples with some random party animals.  There was some relation between some cousins somewhere in the group, but I find out later that some of the guests on this trip literally walked up the day of and signed on with this group.

            The fun began once we got the first group back to the island.  We had to moor the boat up in the cay and ferry people back and forth in the tender.  Our tender, or dingy, would only hold maybe 8 passengers, not accounting for anyone have extra bags.  We had no idea who would be coming back on the boat tonight to sleep.  We set a time to meet back at the pier if you wanted to sleep on the boat.  Again, half of the guests had rooms in the resort, and the other half had paid to sleep on the boat.  The solar eclipse will occur first thing on the 14^th.

Self Timer Photo of the Rum Runner CREW

            After we get all the guests off of the Rum Runner the crew takes a moment to enjoy themselves and not worry about the crazy crowd we have had on the boat.  We slam a few beers with the rowdy tunes cranked up.  We have no clue how many or who is on the boat in the morning.  Some people are sleeping on the island, but they are supposed to be on the trip in the morning.  We are all flying by the seat of our pants.  We drink another beer.  Bart, Julia, Tommy, Jase & I load up into the tender and head for land.



Bart at Foxy's shooting pool



            We find the Foxy’s Bar completely dead.  There is no one there.  I guess the island is pretty dead at the moment.  We step up to the bar, where Jase lays down the law.  Drinks fly!  This might be the first time in a long while the entire crew is on a trip together and left alone on land at a bar.  Normally we are stuck on the boat together having to tend to guests needs and keeping the boat afloat.  This trip is so different.  I assume some of our passengers started hearing us down at Foxy’s raising hell, because slowly but surely they all came to the bar.



Jase & Tommy & Foxy's getting more Yager.  Notice
Tommy's sweet new tats (sharpie)



            The games they had planned were mostly icebreaker games.  It was a good effort to get the group all together and laughing, but the group was unorganized.  We were all better off shooting pool and talking over a beer.  However, the “Guess Your Crew” game was fun, right Tommy?  Only a few people wanted to come back and sleep on the boat tonight, which was fine by us.  Only one trip in the tender and we could all go to bed.

Day 216 Tue 11/13/2012

Girls in Underwear on Trampolines

Welcome aboard the Rum Runner.  Here is your dive staff.

“We took the other half out to the reef today.  Once we got back I convinced Jase to let me clean the prop on the boat, because Bart, Julz & I really wanted a dive on our own.  I think it took 2 minutes to scrape the grime off the prop & we were off.  I dropped the GoPro camera stick at least twice, Bart & Julia having to grab it a time each.  I dunno where my head is at!

Visibility was terrible, but we made it over to the island on the starboard side of the boat & got some fun photos.  Bart ended up getting rolled around in the crashing waves, which was quite hilarious.

The solar eclipse id scheduled for early tomorrow morning.  The sun will rise & within half an hour go back into full eclipse.  So the plan was to take it easy tonight.  At some point we were on the boat with one of Angie’s friends when he pulled out bottles of rum & vodka.

After seeing these pictures I think this is the moment
we spotted the girls in their undies on a trampoline!

Later, the crew & I were ferrying people back & forth from the island to the boat when we heard screams over the water.  Jase pans his multi-million candlepower torch over & we see 2 chix on a floating trampoline in their underwear.  We had to make sure they were alright, & invited them back to the boat with our other passengers.  They did have one bogan dude with them too.

Eventually everyone gets taken back to the island or goes to sleep on the boat, minus Tommy & I.  It is 3 or 4 in the morning & sun up is in just a couple hours.  If I go to bed I’m not getting back up.  He agrees.

 We stay up & jam tunes until it is time to wake everyone up. This was damn hard.  Bart did NOT want to go at all.  We drug him out, got my cameras ready, jumped into the tender, climbed the mountain & met all the rest of the group up there.”

            Hahaha, what a worthless crew we are.  We had full intentions of taking it easy.  We cooked for the guests, took them diving, taxied them to and from Fitzroy.  Angie, what’s your buddies name again (starts with an “S” I think) who broke out all the booze?  We went back to Foxy’s for more pool & most likely more beers.  All was still recoverable until the girls on the trampoline.  The dude with them did not like any of us, but his boat was a floating pile.  The Rum Runner was undeniably the party barge in the whole cay.  I am almost sure as we left the boat ferrying people around we left the music playing my phone.  A heavy set list of the Black Keys, Gaga, STP, Poison, & Rudimental (then some) would have been cranking out over the water the whole time.  These girls wanted to come back to the Rummy and PARTY.

            Almost immediately as we had sat down with beers in everyone’s hands one of the gals was feeling sea sick.  The water was flat in the cay, but the boat was rocking from the party we had going.  Some of the ladies on our charter did not like the idea of us having MORE girls on the boat (cough cough ANG).  After taking the newly found guests back to their floating dumpster the party slowly dwindled down.  Bart had put himself down too early.  Julia was not nearly as irresponsible as her male crew members (most times), so she had gone to bed as well.  Jase finally went to bed, so Tommy & I were left thinking “There is no way we can get up in 2 hours for the eclipse.”  We were not going to bed.  Get the rest of the beers.



Oh yea, I forgot we went diving.  Julia & I on Fitzroy.



Life...  "Crushin' It!"

Day 217 Wed 11/14/2012

Full Eclipse

“Evidently the last few solar eclipses around the world have been ruined due to weather.  Eclipse chasers from around the world gather together to take in the rare spectacle.  The last eclipse in China was ruined by smog.  Cloud cover had ruined the one prior to that.  Rain killed the last viewing of an eclipse in Cairns.

Most mornings when the Rum Runner stayed overnight on the reef we woke up to a cloudy eastern sky.  We were fairly prepared to not see this eclipse.”

            Richie had not come on this trip for two reasons, in my opinion.  One, the trip was a head-ache long before it started.  Planning for twice the guests on one boat, food, who dives when, taxi services, not having a defined roster… The trip was nerve racking.  Two, the eclipse was going to be a wash.  He just knew it would be a flop.  He was taking this trip to relax.

Angie & I post eclipse

            Tommy & I woke everyone up.  Julia was ready to go.  Bart was tragic.  He would have slept if I didn’t jump on top of him and force him to come.  We only had a few guests on the boat.  The rest were more than likely already up on the island.

            We were to watch the event from the backside of the island that faces east over the ocean.  We had no idea how long our hike would be.  With the hangovers most of us had it felt like hours.  We got there as the sun was starting to peak up from the sea.

Angie with her classy solar sunnies on

“The sun rose & quickly hid behind the lone cloud in the sky.  Five minutes prior to the beginning of the eclipse, the cloud magically moved out of the way for us to see the event.  Video cameras rolling & cameras snapping I was able to video the whole thing with Angie, Julz, Bart & Tommy nearby.  Tommy & I had to share one pair of solar shades, so of course we tore them in half and made monocles.  Tommy ended up taking some amazing pictures with my camera by taking his monocle and holding it over the end of the lens using it as a filter.  AMAZING PICS TOMMY!

It was an outstanding moment to have the entire island we were standing on go from daylight to 100% blackout like it was midnight with zero moon.  While everyone was staring into the sun fully blocked by the full moon I took a moment to remove my half sunnies & turned to look back at the island.  To see everything go from full sunlit to night time darkness felt very unnatural.  Do animals get confused during this event?

Tommy & I were talking some silly stuff on the way down from the eastern lookout due to lack of sleep.  Tommy was also barefoot.  Everyone went back to bed either on the boat or in the hotel, while Tommy & I had to see who wanted to go diving today.  We gave the group a few hours to round up anyone interested in diving.  I think our deadline was 10:30AM.  We told them any takers could find us playing table tennis in the foyer of the resort.

We got some very good games in.  There was a ton of room, so we had a huge, heavy hitting match.  Great fun!  Ask Tommy who won.  J

Tommy working the tender

I’ve been out to sea working so many days straight now that I have no idea how tired I am.  Then the all nighter last night with Tommy.  Richie knew how many trips straight I had had.  He called Jason from Cairns & asked him to ask me if I needed a trip off.  The trip tomorrow os our 2^nd Coral Sea Trip & there is no way I’m going to volunteer to miss it.   I’ve told Richie I’d like for my last trip to be at the end of the month, so I cannot afford to miss any trips now.  This was all OK with him, but I better get some sleep if I wanted to go on the next trip.  Jase was nice enough to let me sleep the rest of the afternoon while moored at Fitzroy while Tommy took our only diver for a quick dive.  It felt good to have both skippers looking out for me.  I slept at the front of the boat like a rock.  Angie tried to ruin my nap, but the crew helped keep her from waking me.  Thanks guys!”

The only picture from our HUGE table tennis match

            Just kidding Angie!  Hahaha!  If you look at the time stamps on the photos we took there is one photo of Tommy driving the tender stamped 4:54AM.  He is wide awake.  The eclipse occurred at 6:15AM.  What a hell of a time.  We have tonight to recover, and tomorrow we are heading back out to the Coral Sea.  Thanks again for picking up the slack Bart, Julia & Tommy.

I feel like this short description and so few pictures barely scratches the surface of this trip.  If you read this story and YOU WERE THERE then please leave some comments here so we can pick up all the bits from this trip that were just lost.  I have NO pictures of Toby & his wife/GF, and they were an awesome couple.  Angie, what was your buddies name again?  Thanks for any comments and additions people.  Happy times!

Oh, and our group on the island had the only view of the eclipse!  Everyone who flew into Cairns to see the even from the Esplanade missed it.  There was cloud cover over the water.  EPIC!  I met people the entire rest of my year in Australia that came to Cairns for the event.  We were the only lucky few to see it. 

Minutes after the eclipse...
Not bad for ZERO sleep!  Tommy holding the camera setup that caught the great picture of the eclipse.  Notice
the ripped solar sunnies held over the end of the lens.  Tommy, if we hadn't drank beers through the night
there is no way you would have thought to do that.  Agreed?  Good stuff brobeano!