Red Sea 2003

The generator judders into silence and all the lights on the boat go out. Too high from my day I’ve crept through the sleeping boat to the sun deck (by now, I suppose, the moon deck). As my eyes adjust to the night a brilliant canopy of stars unfolds all around me. I smile. I light a cigarette and reflect on the days diving - and what a fantastic day it has been.

It started, as was routine by now, with a knock on the door at six in the morning. Briefed and in the water fast, by eight Maili and I had finished exploring the Thistlegorm and were working our way slowly up the line. The day before we noticed a shoal of fusiliers off the port side of the wreck and this morning the hunt was in full swing with us right in the middle of it. The small fish swirled in confused unison as jack fish attacked them from below. Every panicked flight took them towards another jack relentlessly pursuing breakfast in the cool blue water. They swirled back - below us, above us and around us as they swam for their lives.

After a long,lazy safety stop watching the action our own breakfast was almost ready back on the boat. Quickly devouring eggs, cheese and fruit we sat chatting as the boat headed to Shag Rock. Spending a week on a boat without landing once is a superb way of getting a lot of diving in but can turn into purgatory if the people don’t get on. No problems here, Tony has got some great people together. Chatting on the sundeck we were an easy going, relaxed group.

Marc interrupted the calm. Books got put down and tanning bodies un-stretched as he appeared with a cheery “Briefing Guys!” He roughed out the plan with a picture of the Sara H in front of him as we sat on the deck. There were an odd number of us and today I was “fill- in buddy”. Maili and I had enjoyed the spectacle on the Thistlegorm and for the next dive I was with Carl.

The Sara H lies upright and stretched up the reef from nineteen metres to four. She’s not a big wreck but beautifully covered in sort corals. We had a thorough look around - spotting a nudibranch nestled in the hull to compliment the ships fixtures and machinery.

Then off up the reef for a drift along the coral. As we admired the table corals and gorgonians, crowded with life, a turtle swam over to meet us. In a gentle current now, we drifted along together for five minutes before the turtle thought better of our company and dropped languidly down the reef - almost as if he knew that divers will seldom follow.

It didn’t take long before we were joined by another turtle. If anything he seemed even happier in our company - drifting smoothly along, sharing the current with us. We kept company for ten minutes or so before he decided on a breath of air and coasted to the surface, ignoring the shoal of barracuda as he spiralled idly through the water, completely blanking the unicorn fish.

Working slowly up the reef I checked my buddy behind me, I spotted him in among the coral and parrotfish and we exchanged signals. (Back ashore later I would notice how much harder it is to look around in two dimensions. All I had to do was lean slightly forward and look back past my feet, suspended in the water I could look up, down, left or right with just a languid flick of a fin) By then we were in about 6m and enjoying the last few minutes of the dive, more waiting for our computers to say “60 minutes” rather than looking at anything specific – just taking in the whole beautiful scene.

Back on the boat I hadn’t even got out of my wetsuit before the shout of “Dolphins”. We all headed to the bow and watched as a pod of at least twenty bottlenose dolphins teased the boat. The skipper gently nudged forward, moving the boat into a good position. From the moment he shouted something in Arabic that resembled the word “snorkel” to the time we hit the water was about thirty seconds.

They were all around us. Mothers and calves hanging back while the others enjoyed playing with the divers. There would wait until someone duck dived then bomb in, spinning around them. They would swim by close, wait until you tried to reach out then peel of fast – whistles and clicks sounding like giggles. We were being played with and we loved it!

Lunch and a dive on small crack with Ed and Trevor filled our afternoon. The current was too fast to make it though the crack, so we contented ourselves with a moray hunt – Peri finding four along the reef and excitedly pointed them out to the divers behind. Ed, Trevor and I continued our game of killer hand signals: Miming frying fish for groupers, dispatching trigger fish with guns, and tearing the blue spotted rays in half. Only funny because it was so far from the truth – I never dived with a group quite so careful with the coral and respectful of the wildlife.

The sun went down in a beautiful layered display. Orange mountains overlaid by stripes of white cloud fading into the deep blue of the outer reef and finally the turquoise strip of the lagoon. Those not diving toasted the sunset as we gradually prepared kit for the night dive.

Dropping into the lagoon our first find was a huge moray, poking his head from the top of a coral head – eyes wicked in the torchlight. Trevor and I finned to the reef and towards Small Crack. The current through the gap was still strong, but not too strong so we knuckled down and swam against it. The extra pressures flooded my mask constantly but we pressed on. I was just looking up to clear my mask again when the eagle ray appeared. Soaring just inches over our heads, we looking into its eyes as it passed into the night.

Finally through the gap and the current was with us now, pushing us gently along the outside wall of the lagoon. A moray out hunting adopted us and for a while we buddied up with him, hunting along the reef together.

My cigarette is finished and I look around one last time. No moon tonight and the boat is suspended in space, invisibly held between the stars above and the darkness below.

I creep back down and lie on my bunk. The surface of the water seems to be just above me, the portholes lighting ripples as I gaze through the surface of the gentle swell. I close my eyes and my mind fills with the reef fish of Tiran.

Memories come in bright colours: Fifteen divers out in the blue, all trying to use each other as a reference point as they bob up and down looking for hammerheads. A moray being cleaned by an iridescent blue wrasse seeing me too close and hissing – jaws opening menacingly as the wrasse bolts. Lazing on the top deck while an orange moon rises over the night sea – slowly brightening to white as our effortless conversation rolled on. Seeing my first shark – a grey silhouette in the blue beneath us.

Thanks!

Thankyou Tony for organising the trip.

Thankyou Martin for the fantastic photos - you can see them all on his Web Site.

Thankyou everybody for making it such a fantiatic, relaxed trip.

Tomorrow I’ll fin out into the blue with Shona, chasing a shoal of Barracuda. I’ll pose for a photo sitting on a toilet on the wreck of the Yollanda and I’ll savour the last few moment of the last dive of the trip, drifting along a wall with Cathy, surrounded by butterflies and angels.

But that’s tomorrow. For now I breathe out gently and drop the last couple of metres into sleep.

A knock at the door. “Briefing in ten minutes guys!”

Sid/