Following on from the Manchester Diving Group course in not-so-sunny Manchester, Rob, Mel and a bunch of people from the club headed off to Marsa Alam (well, technically Port Ghalib) for a week of pleasure diving in the warm. With air temperatures in the high 30's and low 40's and the water a balmy 26 degrees (2 degrees warmer than our northern Dahab waters) it certainly met that with aplomb.

On something of a whim, we decided to go see them... so Naida and I rented a car and drove from Dahab to Nuweiba, Nuweiba to Suez, Suez to Hurghada, Hurghada to Safaga, Safaga to El Quesir and then down to Port Ghalib. 1200km and 13 1/2 hours later, we arrived tired and in much need of the one beer we managed to get before the bar shut!

Port Ghalib itself is pretty small... so small, in fact, that the hotel is really all there is there. A TGI Fridays, Baskin Robbins and Costa Coffee the other side of the marina (2 minutes by zodiac, 20 by car) complete the 'town'. If you're in the market for diving, it's pretty ideal - the dive centre is literally in the hotel, which is in the marina, so the boats basically moor right outside the restaurant where they serve breakfast. If you're not looking for diving then there'll be absolutely nothing to do here but laze in the pool... be warned. There's no actual town as such, so no shopping, no restaurants other than the hotel and TGI's. There is a small pharmacy (which doesn't seem to open most days) in the middle of the building work that's going on - 10 minutes by car, if you know where you're going.

The diving was quite different to Dahab... though the weather was bad and we didn't get to dive the traditional 'big' locations like Elphinstone, we did see quite a bit that you don't get here. Titan Triggerfish, lots of blue-spotted rays, a few giant morays (ok, the last two we do get here, but not in such large numbers), and... turtles! I've had to cut this into two videos because YouTube has a 10 minute limit... it seemed a shame to cut out 6 minutes of turtles, so instead it's two separate postings.

We also took the chance to drive to Cairo (careful - there's a radar speed trap at the end of the Cairo-Soukhna road, where they confiscate your car licence if you're a foreigner, leading to delays and fines!) and spend a few days staying with my friends there, and took in the Pyramids & Sphinx while we were there, as well as diving Alexandria (separate post on that due shortly - need to edit the video first!).

A big thanks to the MDG group for their invite and hospitality during the week, and to the staff at Emperor Marsa Alam for looking after us so well during the week!

Voyager CCR

Tom, Sebastian and I spent the last week completing our Voyager SCR and CCR instructor courses with the manufacturer, HB Technology.

A mechanical rebreather, it allows the flow of gas to be adjusted across a wide range of rates, enabling it to be used as a closed-circuit rebreather (using oxygen as the constant flow gas, and diluents from air to hypoxic trimix) or a semiclosed rebreather (using nitrox mixtures in both cylinders to provide a constant fraction of oxygen during the dive but massively increased runtimes compared to open circuit. It's a really nice little unit - compact and simple in its design, and with far less to go wrong than on an electronic rebreather.

We've got units here for rental if you'd like to do a rebreather try dive (either SCR or CCR) or a course.

Darren, Paul & Simon, Tech Divers

Congratulations to Darren Astles, Paul Catherall and Simon Allison on becoming IANTD Technical Divers at the beginning of May, here in Dahab. It's not an easy course (and shouldn't be), but you all performed the requirements (and more) admirably and I think everyone had a really great time.

One of the nicest things about the course is the range of diving it opens up here - the Canyon (pictured - the light patch is the lagoon through which we enter and exit) is a great dive between two walls, exiting through a narrow crack onto the face of a wall at around 50m, and is a truly exceptional dive.

For sheer "log book value" though, it's hard to beat the final dive of the course - a dive beginning in the Blue Hole, descending to 54m/180feet and out through the arch onto a vertical wall, making our way along at depth to El Bells, before ascending and beginning our decompression drifting all the way back in a gentle current, cresting the saddle of the Blue Hole again and back in, exiting right in front of a cafe with a waiting cup of tea right on schedule 87 minutes later.

An awesome set of dives, and a fantastic course - a big thanks to all three of you who made the week so much fun, and well done again. IANTD's motto is that training is purchased - certification has to be earned. You all did that with room to spare, and should present your cards with pride next time you're out diving!

Manchester Diving Group

So... this hasn't quite been as up to date as it could be. But, it's been a busy old time... forgive me?

A big hello to the folks from Manchester Diving Group who completed their IANTD Instructor course at the end of April - it was great fun teaching it, and I hope everyone got as much out of it as it seemed. Congratulations to (in no particular order), Rob, Fob, Sid, Pete, Mark, Mel, Col & Doc, and a big thanks to Kat, Mike and Dave without whom it wouldn't have been possible to run the courses at all, as well as Diving Leisure Leeds for staying open until 3am so I could come back across the windy M62 and buy 11 twinsets of trimix!

Sadly, no video of the proceedings exists, but a couple of little highlights were Mike's imaginary bonfire and the "tunnel" at Dorothea which actually wasn't a tunnel at all but a dark patch of rock... it hurts when you swim into a hard rock face, that's for sure!

Congrats again, everyone... and maybe I'll see you in Marsa Alam in a few days!

Gabr el Bint... and dolphins!

Ok, no video for this one. But...

...a big shout out to the group from Diverse Scuba (and Belle & Sarah, the naughty nurses!) who spent the last week diving with Fantasea, and who managed to rustle up a pod of five dolphins for us on the way back from Gabr el Bint.

It's not the greatest photo, but it's taken from a camera phone while trying to keep an eye out and see where the pod's gone... when they dive under the boat and stay down, they REALLY stay down.

Awesome day out, and the perfect end to a really great week. Thanks again to a superb bunch of guests!

Canyon @ Thomas Reef and a turtle at Jackson

Went to the reefs off Tiran Island on Thursday - Beppe the Italian, Sebastian and I doing it as a tec dive, and Tom Steiner doing his first single-cylinder recreational dive in about 4 years with a Dutch group.

The vis wasn't great - it's algae bloom time here in Egypt at the moment, so there's lots of plankton and algae in the water which cuts down not only on the visibility but also on the natural light. You can really see that on the video - the shots of the canyon itself (sadly not much video of it came out usable) were really, really dark. The ones in this video are actually lightened quite drastically already.



The dive itself was pretty awesome... we drifted in a gentle current along Thomas Reef toward the canyon at around 55m, then crested the saddle of a coral reef and turned to drop into the canyon and drift back along. You can see one of the archways on the video - they're really, really spectacular... almost like a viaduct, they seem so perfectly symmetrical and so high overhead as you drift through them with the white sand below. The downside to the depth the canyon sits in was 47 minutes of deco, however, and a whopping current on the way back... about 4 knots, which made the drift decompression a bit... interesting!

The second dive (video by Tom, while the teccies sat on the boat and off-gassed) was on Jackson Reef, which provided a reasonably rapid drift and a turtle at the end... all in all, a good day was had by all.

Cheers!

The Rosalie Moller

The Rosalie Moller is a British wartime wreck - commandeered for the war effort but too old to maintain a suitable speed for carrying troops or weapons (her maximum cruising speed limited to just 7.5knots, compared to her original design speed of 10.5knots) , she was assigned to carry coal from the UK round the cape of Africa (the Suez Canal had been closed by another British vessel striking a mine) along with a flotilla of other ships, among them the world-famous SS Thistlegorm.

Anchored in what was designated a safe harbour, she was sunk by German bombers and now lies in 52m of water off the coast of Egypt. Her deck is at around 30m, with her holds stretching down to 40m and her keel nestling on the sea bed so she rests upright. It's accessible to advanced open water divers, but the conditions can be rough and the visibility often hampered by strong ocean currents pulling plankton up the red sea....

...but we had perfect conditions and a glorious day out. See Tom, Sebastian, Toby, Volker and me explore the wreck on an 80 minute technical dive.

An awesome day out!