One of the managers of the dive shop told me an interesting story the other day. It all happened about fifteen years ago at White Haven Beach. An instructor was conducting an introdive for a couple of non-divers in the shallows right off the beach, and he lost sight of one of the introdivers. The general rule in diving when it comes to losing fellow divers in the water is very simple. you search for the missing part for 1 minute. If you don't find the person within that minute you go to the surface and find them there.

The instructor did that but the introdiver didn't surface. after a short while they found the bubbles, and went over there just as the diver surfaced. They asked the woman what happened, and she replied:
" I saw this really cool striped whale, and I was able to follow it for maybe five minutes before it disappeared."

The instructor and the rest of the crew went pale, and told everyone to get out of the water. They were going home imediately.

There is no such thing as striped whales. This is what the woman was following…..
And it must have been a fairly big one, too.

We normally go to White Haven Beach two times a week. but I haven't seen any striped whales yet. 😛

One of the managers of the dive shop told me an interesting story the other day. It all happened about fifteen years ago at White Haven Beach. An instructor was conducting an introdive for a couple of non-divers in the shallows right off the beach, and he lost sight of one of the introdivers. The general rule in diving when it comes to losing fellow divers in the water is very simple. you search for the missing part for 1 minute. If you don't find the person within that minute you go to the surface and find them there.

The instructor did that but the introdiver didn't surface. after a short while they found the bubbles, and went over there just as the diver surfaced. They asked the woman what happened, and she replied:
" I saw this really cool striped whale, and I was able to follow it for maybe five minutes before it disappeared."

The instructor and the rest of the crew went pale, and told everyone to get out of the water. They were going home imediately.

There is no such thing as striped whales. This is what the woman was following…..
And it must have been a fairly big one, too.

We normally go to White Haven Beach two times a week. but haven't seen any striped whal

These islands are named the Whitsunday Islands, but after the last week of weather I truly think they should change the name to Wetsunday Islands. It's been raining , raining and raining.  The temperature has dropped as well, so its bloody cold here the moment. I'm not talking about 23 degrees when it's usually 35. Oh no… It is only about 12 degrees at the moment. and this weekend it's supposed to drop down to below 10. IN THE TROPICS!!!
The weather forecast just said that there has been low temperature records all over Queensland during the last couple of days. The cold weather is caused by some freak winds that originate all the way down in the Antarctic. Where is that global warming everyone are talking about? 

This photo was taken last week outside Popeye's, the local fish 'n chips shop. I had just finished work and noticed that a couple of lorikeets were bothering an old lady. She was just sitting outside trying to enjoy a cup of coffey. The little buggers are cute, but very smart and cunning. The bird was pulling quite hard and the old lady was holding on. her affection for the little flying rat was quickly turned into anger when it wouldn't let go. hehe…

I had today off, and went to the Airlie Beach together with Scott. we caught the first ferry bright and early at seven this morning, and it is all thanks to him. left to myself I would've slept til noon and maybe caught the two'o clock ferry. what can I say? I really like sleeping in.
anyway. First thing I did in Airlie was going to MSQ and got my ROPES book. ROPES is an acronym for National Record of Practical Experience and Sea-Service. The australians really love their acronyms, just like the americans. By completing this book I will cut the seatime required for my coxswain ticket. down from 365 to 182 days of seatime. If you want you can download your own copy here.

Our captain is really eager to teach me all about the vessels, navigation, signals and everything else you would need to know at sea. And I'm eager to learn. I do have some experience from back home, and it has already come in handy.

After we came back I went to the sports club for a bit of a workout, and afterwards I relaxed in the sauna for a while. I was all alone in there (no I didn't fondle myself), and my mind drifted. It drifted to the beautiful saunas in Finland, and a familiar tune started playing in my head.

"Lissa laula, lissa laula, paaalevoo
Lissa laula, lissa laula, paalevoo…"

Good times.

Uncertified people can come out with us and to an introdive if they choose. They will have to meet up at the pool in the morning where we'll go through some theory (equipment, never hold you breath, and equalisation), followed about half an hour of pool training. People need to be able to perfom some skills in the pool before we will take them out in open water. if they can't do them, they fail and they will have to snorkel instead. for their own safety as well as for ours. The diveshop run through a lot of different people every year and there is a pattern to the country of origin and whether they pass or not.

People from the following countries usually suck (not in the good way) in the pool. China, Japan, Pakistan, India, and Ireland. The last one was a suprise to me, but people from Ireland are really really bad in water. It is perfectly alright to be a non-swimmer. But why , oh why, would you want to go scubadiving if you can't swim for shit? I simply don't understand that.

anyway…
This morning we had ten introdivers in the pool, and I didn't think it would be much of a hassle because we were three instructors. I was given the four irish girls since I was the most experienced of us.

Before we could start the pool training we had to talk to the weather girl at Sunrise Weather Winnebago. They were here on the island this morning and did their sunrise show from the pool where we do our morning training. The producer came over to us in the morning and told our boss that they wanted to interview some scuba divers in the pool. Our boss volunteered me and the four irish girls about three seconds later. We were put  on the bar stools in the island bar. yes.. there is a little bar in the pool we do our training.  The weather girl came over, chatted to us for a couple of minutes, and before long the lights came on and the cameras were rolling.

The girls were asked a couple of questions, and before I knew it she turned towards me. She only had one question for me, so I didn't really have time to get nervous. I think she asked me if the drinks we got from the bartender were real drinks or something. and then they had a commercial break and we got to continue with our training.  check this out.

I could elaborate alot about how the training with the irish girls went, but lets just say that they were very irish. not a single one of them passed the pool session.

I have now worked here on Hamilton Island for two months, and I have done alright so far. There has been alot of things to learn, many people to relate to, and many new situations for me. It has been all good, and I have really enjoyed myself so far.

For the most part I have done what I was supposed to do, and have done so fairly well. There has, however, been a few hickups.. or bloopers if you like.

On board Reef Spirit, the 20 meter diveboat, we have two toilets. they are connected to sullage tanks below deck and they need to be drained when we are not in a harbor or in a marine park.  The drainage pipe has a valve on it and that valve needs to be opened whenever we leave harbor/marine park, and closed whenever we enter again. usually the Deckwatch, the second in command, will tell someone to open of close the valve. And last week Scott was the deckwatch and he told me to go and open it as we left port. I have done this alot of times now and I know how to do it, but when I climbed down the hatch by brain had a little blackout. I remember looking at the valve and thinking. "hm.. someone already opened this". Because the valve was open I just left and went back up on deck again. In reality it was still closed. You might ask yourself if that really is a problem, and yes it is. Because we are traveling at 20 knots water will be pushed into the sullage tanks and they will overflow. The contents of the tanks will be floating around in the storage compartment. very nice… 

 When we got to the dive site someone went down there to close the valve again.  But they discovered that a) I forgot to open the valve, and b) we had a mix of salt water and fecal matter floating around down there. nice…..

That afternoon we cleaned it all up, and were actually able to pump most of it out with the fire hose. the remaining water slushing around the keel was sucked up using the vacuum cleaner.

After about a month the skipper we had gave me credit for not getting lost during the diving. usually people would surface everywhere, but I always surfaced pretty close to the boat. My response to him was that I will probably get lost eventually. I am very glad I have done alot of diving back home in Norway with many times bad visibility. That has taught me to pay attention to the small details that will tell you directions. angle of the sun, patterns in the sand, direction of current, how to measure distance, and also to some extent sound all play a role in determining where you are.

Yesterday  I got lost for the first time. And I actually had a compass with me at the time. very embarassing. I was a little too arrogant and didn't really take a good look at the compass before we decended. the plan was to follow  a bay back to the boat, but when we reached 15 meters and still no corals I knew something was wrong. I tried to picture the charts and the direction of the bay, but to no use. I was just lost, and after almost twenty minutes I brought the guest back to the surface, had a look around, and swam back to shore. we continued the dive from there. The crew on the boat took the piss out of me for getting lost. can't blame them.

🙂

My pal, Torkel, has just arrived in Brisbane, Australia. He will take his time and use maybe a week or two to get himself up here to Hammo. I am really looking forward to it, and I have arranged to take a week off work. We will probably hook up somewhere on the mainland.
Since this is his first time here in Australia I though I should post a small dictionary. The Aussie english can be quite different. most often because australians are a lazy people and will not pronounce the entire word if they don't really have to.

barbie = barbeque
brekkie = breakfast
tazzie  = Tazmania
kiwi = someone from new zealand
aussie= australian
mate = dude, friend, pal etc
hog = Big Dick 
fair dinkum = no bullshit
howsigoin? = how is it going?
avo = afternoon
tah = Thank you
Shano = someone named Shane
Johno = someone named John
Damo = someone named Damian.
and so on….

😀

But now I'm off to work. Today we're going to the northern side of Hayman Island, to Blue Perl Bay. I'm not sure wether I'll have snorklers or divers today, but it doesn't really matter. The bay is a great place for both in any case. Very friendly fish and lots of them. mainly because they have been fed for years. lots of coral bommies, fish, colors and lots and lots of good diving. the good parts are shallower than 10 meters. We are having a overcast and the temperature is barely over 20 degrees today. brrr… it's another cold day.

Most of the staff had the day off today, so a few of us took Wild Dream out. We went
to Eduard island to the east and went diving and spearfishing this afternoon.
It was a great afternoon. not only because I got to go spearfishing again, but mostly
because we didn't have any tourists to take care of. I could just sit back, relax, and
just take it easy. Scott and I went spearfishing while the rest went scuba diving or
snorkling.

I was exited to go spearfishing. first of all I haven't been spearfishing since I left
Norway, and second I wondered how much of a problem the sharks would be. When we go
diving here we see sharks maybe half the time. And now we were going to shoot fish and
fish rarely die when you shoot them. If you hit them perfectly they will die, but that
doesn't happen very often. most of the time the fish will still be very much alive,
swimming panicked around you in a circle with the spear sticking out on the other
side. back home that is not a problem since we don't really have any sharks to speak
of. I asked Scott about it and he said that we make sure we hit the fish in the head
and bring them back to the boat quickly. no problemo.

We towed a little surfboard with a box on top it after us, so we could get the fish
out of the water as soon as possible. it worked quite well. Because I haven't got my
own freediving gear yet I borrowed some fins and a speargun from a friend of mine.

After about 45 minutes I shot a coral trout and raced it back to the surfboard. I
reckon it was about two kgs or so. not long after that Scott surfaced and called
out:"Fuck!!" He had just shot and injured a large coral trout. he had it up on the
surface but lost it. The poor bugger swam off with its guts hanging out after it. He
turned around and said to me that we would probably see some sharks now. hehe…
But we didn't. I was actually looking forward to see some active sharks. normally they
just sleep on the bottom or swim sluggishly away.

I got tired after a while more and got back on the boat. Scott , however, couldn't
come back until he had killed something so we had to wait for him. He shot a nice
coral trout after a while and home we went. It was a great afternoon, and the weather
was great the whole time. not a gust of wind at all. just blue skies sunny sunny
sunny. beautiful.

The fins worked out well, and I was able to go down to probably about 15 meters or so.
difficult to say really. I timed the dives with my watch and they usually lasted
between 30 seconds to a little more than a minute. hopefully both depth and time will
improve. 

Pictures are posted here.

Yesterdays entry about the paddling and the cup itself was probably a little boring. after all, there was only sports and no hoochie mamas shaking their booties. Hopefully I will do something about that with this entry. enjoy.

This weekend is the second most busy weekend of the year in the entire Whitsundays, both by day and by night.
even though they only had a single stage and only three regular bars/clubs here, it really felt like the good ol' Blues Festival back home. They had closed off part of the street and had street vendors selling food, tshirts and other stuff you would regret buying after a week.

I went out for a couple of drinks every night of the festival. because I worked on friday and sunday I mostly took it pretty calm and only had about three to five beers every night.

Some interesting things happened throughout the weekend though. I met up with Sarah, fellow instructor, and her two brothers on friday night. They are all from Scotland, and I thought Sarah had a pretty strong accent. that was until I met her brothers. I can understand almost everything of what they are saying when we are all sober and there's not much background noise. There is something completely different when we've had a couple of beers and we are listening to a band. it was quite funny. It was just like Robin Williams's standup act when he is talking about scots. It was brilliant. 

me: "So Chris.. what do you think of the band? do you like them?"
Chris: "Aye! 's arrhight, boh aye fhin… *something something*…perdy fukn laldy..*something*… idn'it?
Me:"eeh… come again please?"
Chris: "Aye! 's arrhight, boh aye fhin… *something something*…perdy fukn laldy..*something*… idn'it?
Me:" eehh… alright!

I just had to smile and wave probably one-third of the time I was talking to them.

After midnight I decided to go home, but before I made it all the way I met some friends. they convinced me to join them at this after party. I wasn't too keen on drinking more, but I joined them anyway. Besides.. they lived about 35 meters away from my door. I could hear some familiar blues melodies as I took off my shoes and entered. Three guys were playing instruments and singing the blues. it was great. and the three of us coming in were the only ones there. They played famous blues songs like "blue M&Ms are better than green", "Cucumberhead" and many more. One guy was playing the guitar, another the harmonica and the last dude was improvising a didgeridoo out of a vacum cleaner tube. hehe..  Even though the guys had been drinking for a while they were still pretty good. 

Sunday night was the best night for sure. all the paddlers were done with the races and they all went out to party. The closed off street was packed with people and the crowd was jumping from about eight o'clock at night. One of the teams that took part in this weekend was called up on stage to dance in front of the rest of the audience. I think I might start outrigging…

  

Halfway through the night I was talking to one of my former students, when suddenly the guy in front of us threw a tequila shot over his shoulder and almost hit me in the face. luckily it only hit my shirt. I looked over his shoulder as we yelled, and he immediatly appologized to us. he was very sorry and it was an honest mistake. he just didn't want to drink any more shots that people bought him. He asked us if we wanted drinks, and we tried to decline. Seconds later he was back with not only one drink for the two of us, but he also had about eight extra drinks with him that he also gave us.
oh the horrible fate. It turned out that he played in the warmup band and he got the drinks for free. good night. and I also got the day off on monday because of bad weather and no bookings. even better.

Last weekend, from Thursday to Sunday, we hadquite a spectacle on the island. It was the annual Powerade Hamilton Island Cup 2007, and it is the biggest outrigger regatta in the southern hemispere.  The island had about 1500 more guests than usual and every accomodation imagined was booked. There were about 90 different teams from all over Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Hawaii, and Fiji here to compete in many different events.  The outrigger canoe is a type of canoe that originatet here in the pacific

They competed during the day, and during the night there were several concerts and other festival activities. I was able to see the races up close sunday morning. That was the day for the main event, the 42 km marathon. They competed in 6 man canoes. Because of the distance they had 10 paddlers that took turns paddling and resting. During this race I was a part of the support crew for the mixed team from Hong Kong.

It was alot of fun and I got to see the race from up close. My job was basically to assist the team when they got in and out of the boat.  Because there were more than 90 teams, and each team had a support boat, and lots and lots of spectator boats the water was pretty much crowded. I am glad I didn't have to drive the boat , because there were people in the water and boats everywhere. there was a real chance of collision or running someone over if you didn't pay attention.
  

To my knowledge there were no accidents yesterday.

Here's the map over the local area and the route of the 42km marathon.

The southern end of the course was quite rough and we had some pretty heavy rain and thick fog in between Hamilton Island and Pentecoast Island. The team even rolled over after beeing hit by a rouge wave. You'd think that it would be pretty difficult to roll over with an outrigger, but it is still very possible. I saw several other canoes roll over as well. The winner of the mens division finished in just more than three hours. thats an average of 9-10 knots an hour, battling big waves, wind, and currents. pretty impressive stuff.

It is time for another update, and this time for a little more serious stuff. I spent
the last day back home in Notodden, southern Norway, with my dad and two of my
brothers. Tomas asked me what plans I had with this year. And I replied that I hadn't
really made up my mind on that yet. He told me to make full use of this year, and
don't just waste it on women, drinking and the occasional scuba dive.

While I didn't think of it at the time, a quote from the late George Best comes to
mind:
"I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered."

funny guy, eh?

I have spent some time contemplating myu goals for this year.
Here's a list of some of the things I have set in mind:
– get lots of sea time and get my coxswain (boating certificate).
with the  certificate in hand alot more opportunities will open up for me

– work in a couple of different dive centers. (townsville?, cairns?) and get experience with lots of different aspects of the dive industry.
– improve my language skills. possibly brush up on my german. I will definatly pick up some japanese since alot of the customers are from the land of the rising sun. Aichan is also one of my housemates and she has promised to teach me some basics.

– get in to much better shape.
(have already improved my strength by lifting tanks every day.)

Do you guys have any suggestions for more goals?

Here's a satelite image of Hamilton Island which I borrowed from Google Earth.I have
added a couple of details. Catseye beach is about 600 meters long to give you a
general idea of the size of the Island.

It takes me about four minutes for me to walk down the hill in the morning and about ten to walk back.
You'll see the airport in the bottom left part of the island. it is rated as one of the most dangerous ones in Australia because of the water on three sides, and also because the approach is chock-a-block full of hills. I spoke to a pilot and he told me they never land without a visual on this one. I totally understand why