Another perfect weekend

Though my body fails me a few times, I don't let it get to me.  EH, I'm over 40, its to be expected to hasve a few hurts.

We had Kelsea with us this dive so we were diving with her company of choice, Shellharbour Diving, Mick there is pretty awesome, I have talked with him in the carpark in the past as we were going in for a dive and he was leaving. I have seen his photography work and its certainly beautiful. For me, they are much more relaxed than Donna and this suits Kelsea and Heath, but make me worry a tad., I like Donna's no nonscence attitude. Still this was a social dive, not a class and the guys at Shellharbour are wondefully welcoming and friendly. You can't NOT dive with them.
Heath reports that they do cost doube what Windang does but IF Fabian will lend me his flippers, we won't need to hire from now on.

The boys took me to the Gutter. Heath has been trying to get me to dive here for ages but its always been crappy tides/waves/.swell or Donna has taken us to the Gravel loader instead.

Visibility was CRAP. I turned to check on my buddy, looked back and poof the Dive Master was gone! He was only 5m in front but damned if I could see him. Luckily he was wearing neon flippers and so I eventually located these in the gloom.



Rather dull looking Mosaic Seastar (Plectaster decanus) 

Weedy Seadragom (Phyllopteryx taeniolatus)

Thanks to Mick, we found two weedy sea dragons, some pip horses (Too small for my camera) some tiny tiny shrimp on the fan ) a few star fish and a frog fish.  I saw some amazing things but one photographer came in on top of me at one point and pushed me out of the way. GRR. OK I don't have my DSLR underwater but you broke the photoline. Not cool.








I was running out of air as wqas Heath. Kelsea was with the dive master but when we found the toad fish, I was clear aboiut my air situation. Lucky we were near the exit point. :) All good. I exited with 29 bar :) Heath told me he had 5 bar left. AH we were close to shore anyway.

Back at the store,this store does one dive, pack up, return to the store and then return.. odd. I would rather stay in my wet suit, gossip for two hours and jump back in but each shop does things differently.
Kelsea was hungry but I was chatting. Heath tells me I was super animated, My headache had not god despite severy pain killers.l GRRRRl I tried hydrating but water makes me sick in quantilites over 300ml. Ugh.

Subway was yummy and returning to the shop, I tried not to lose my temoter when Heath sold my lead weights without discussing it with me. ARGHHH.. I know Fabian will be able to use Heath's weights, but for some reason this just rubbed me the wrong way. Trying to keep my temper, I concetrated on the next dive. We had decided to do a solo dive. Heath chose the Gravel loader but the east side. The Western/Southern side was boring, only urchins as far as the eye can see.

We headed off after a surface interval of 2hrs 20, plenty of time.

Saddling up, we did the illawarra thing of clambering over rocks. What is it with these Wollogong people. They love to dive off rocks. I felt like a seal with one flipper. Unco doesn't even describe my grace over the rocks.

As soon as we descended, Heath headed off North to which Kelsea and I, confused, made the WTF signal.. hahha., she swam over to get him and she set off as the new dive master. She trained under Mick at Shellharbour and it showed. She found the tiniest things, She did miss the Port Jackson shark but otherwise did a great job.



I found a Turban Shell,(Turbo torquatus) but alas it was at the end of dive 2 so I didn't stop to photograph it. BOO.,  Kelsea found a Tasmanian chromodroid( Chromodoris tasmaniensis) but I didn't have any macro equipment. My Go-Pro macro lens had fallen off, Ugh. Equipment malfunction,.
Heath found some eggs. Very cool

Three Bar porcupine fish I chased.


Port Jackson hiding from us

We had a great dive. I really enjoyed this, Aside from not finding the octopus that I saw evidence of, my two dive buddies were excellent.  I was thrilled with the 50 minutes, we weren't stressed and we didn't get lost. :)

Lots of Leather Jackets of many types. Exit from the dive site was sorta easy if you like being washed up like a whale carcass. The fisherman nearby would have seen three of us wash up on the rocks. LOL.

A great day out. I am thrilled I can be out and about on my few days off, Just wish I could dive during the week on my normal days off, but no one is avaliable. BOO.

Good exercise. 1000 odd calories for two dives. Total win, :)

How was your weekend????

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