aboard the Spirit of Freedom
We awoke this morning excited as kids on Christmas: it's time to go diving!
First, though, we had to get ourselves to the dive boat. Our host, Sam (my sister's husband's daughter's husband, i.e, my nephew-in-aw-in-law) was kind enough to get up early and give us a lift to Hinterland Aviation, a small airfield near the Cairns airport where we would catch our flight to Lizard Island.
It should be noted that we had been advised ahead of time that each passenger was allowed 20 kg of baggage, including carry-ons, on this flight, so we had taken pains to jettison all unnecessary items and had dutifully weighed all of our bags to ensure that we'd be under the limit. And then we got there and found that the limit was actually 32 kg apiece. Oh well. They weighed us as well as our bags and handed us orange plastic cards and told us to wait in the departure lounge, which already held a small horde of Japanese tourists. Our friends Scott and Kira joined us there.
The plane we took to Lizard Island was so small ("how small was it??") that even I had to duck to get inside. Poor Scott practically had to kneel. It had 12 seats, and I think a hamster or two provided the engine power. It did, however, successfully transport us to the island, an hour up the gorgeous NQ coastline. From there, a small dinghy awaited to shuttle us onto the majestic Spirit of Freedom, awaiting us just off-shore.
The next few hours were spent touring the boat, finding our cabins (excuse me, stateroom), and getting a variety of briefings. Then there was a yummy buffet lunch, a safety briefing, and - at last! - it was time to get ready to dive.
On this first day, we will do three dives - 2 afternoon and 1 night. On the other three days, our schedule will be something like this: get up, breakfast, dive, second breakfast, dive, lunch, dive, tea, dive, dinner. Life will be hard but somehow we will get through it.
---- Three dives and oine amazing dinner later -----
Our first dives were lovely and...uneventful. Nice coral, pretty fishies, no current, very easy warmup dives. This was our first time diving on Nitrox, which is an enriched air mix that allows you to recover faster from each dive and generally lets you do more dives over an extended period of time without getting tired. The tradeoff is that you have to check your air mix before each dive, and you can't dive as deep.
So far, I'm liking it. After almost 3 hours underwater, I feel far more energized than I would after the same on the regular air mix. No headache, either.
Did I mention that the water is toasty warm? I did the first dive in my 3mm wetsuit and did not even start to get cold at the end of an hour, so I did the second dive in my new dive skin with hood. I got a little chilly by the end of that one, but mainly my hands and feet. It's so lovely to be warm in the water!
Other things that are awesome so far:
- having a room to duck into between dives to pee, shower, dry off, etc
- the food, which is excellent and plentiful (dinner was seared tuna, rice, and stir-fry)
- the staff
- the complimentary wine we are currently drinking as we journal our day
All in all, we are being spoiled.
----- Next day, four dives later
Didn't sleep well despite being exhausted. It's either the extra oxygen in the Nitrox, or my brain trying to figure out why the ground keeps shifting and there's no daylight.
Despite that, made it through a full day of diving. Our brains have quickly been reduced to following very simple thought patterns. Here's the approximate series of thoughts in my head today:
Get up! Ugh. Coffee. Ugh. Brekkie 1: fruit and yogurt yum! DIVE TIME! Dry off. Pee. drink water. Brekkie 2: eggs and taters and toast with Nutella yum! Digest sunbathe DIVE TIME! Dry off. Pee. Drink water. Warm up in sun. Lunch: pizza salad yum! Digest sunbathe read DIVE TIME! Dry off pee sunbathe drink warm up. Nap. DIVE TIME! Shower. Dress. Dinner: tofu mashed potatos veggies wine. Wine? Yes wine. No night dive. Tired. Watch media. Pass out.
Before each dive was the thought: I could skip this dive and sleep instead. But I am here to dive. And I might miss something cool. Ok, dive. Except the night dive, which would have been our second night dive in a row, our second time at this site (which was only OK), and our 5th today. So we (and a few others) opted out.
Highlights: several reef sharks, heaps of lionfish, a meter-long sea cucumber (or maybe sea slug?), fire dart fish, disco clam, huge schools of fish.
------- 2 days later, back on dry land
We survived! 16 dives over 4 days. My ears aren't quite sure what this lack of pressure is all about now that I've been out of the water for more than 12 hours.
I can't even list all the types of fish and other sea critters we saw. The leading contender for our next tattoo is.....the white-tipped reef shark! We saw them on every dive but the first, and several times had one circle all the way around us, as if considering whether we were too big to be considered for dinner. (These sharks are not aggressive toward humans, but it's still a bit unnerving.)
All in all, it was a fantastic trip. Highly recommend Spirit of Freedom if you're looking for a liveaboard dive trip in the Coral Sea.
And now we have our last day in Cairns before heading on to the next leg of our adventure: Melbourne!
First, though, we had to get ourselves to the dive boat. Our host, Sam (my sister's husband's daughter's husband, i.e, my nephew-in-aw-in-law) was kind enough to get up early and give us a lift to Hinterland Aviation, a small airfield near the Cairns airport where we would catch our flight to Lizard Island.
It should be noted that we had been advised ahead of time that each passenger was allowed 20 kg of baggage, including carry-ons, on this flight, so we had taken pains to jettison all unnecessary items and had dutifully weighed all of our bags to ensure that we'd be under the limit. And then we got there and found that the limit was actually 32 kg apiece. Oh well. They weighed us as well as our bags and handed us orange plastic cards and told us to wait in the departure lounge, which already held a small horde of Japanese tourists. Our friends Scott and Kira joined us there.
The plane we took to Lizard Island was so small ("how small was it??") that even I had to duck to get inside. Poor Scott practically had to kneel. It had 12 seats, and I think a hamster or two provided the engine power. It did, however, successfully transport us to the island, an hour up the gorgeous NQ coastline. From there, a small dinghy awaited to shuttle us onto the majestic Spirit of Freedom, awaiting us just off-shore.
The next few hours were spent touring the boat, finding our cabins (excuse me, stateroom), and getting a variety of briefings. Then there was a yummy buffet lunch, a safety briefing, and - at last! - it was time to get ready to dive.
On this first day, we will do three dives - 2 afternoon and 1 night. On the other three days, our schedule will be something like this: get up, breakfast, dive, second breakfast, dive, lunch, dive, tea, dive, dinner. Life will be hard but somehow we will get through it.
---- Three dives and oine amazing dinner later -----
Our first dives were lovely and...uneventful. Nice coral, pretty fishies, no current, very easy warmup dives. This was our first time diving on Nitrox, which is an enriched air mix that allows you to recover faster from each dive and generally lets you do more dives over an extended period of time without getting tired. The tradeoff is that you have to check your air mix before each dive, and you can't dive as deep.
So far, I'm liking it. After almost 3 hours underwater, I feel far more energized than I would after the same on the regular air mix. No headache, either.
Did I mention that the water is toasty warm? I did the first dive in my 3mm wetsuit and did not even start to get cold at the end of an hour, so I did the second dive in my new dive skin with hood. I got a little chilly by the end of that one, but mainly my hands and feet. It's so lovely to be warm in the water!
Other things that are awesome so far:
- having a room to duck into between dives to pee, shower, dry off, etc
- the food, which is excellent and plentiful (dinner was seared tuna, rice, and stir-fry)
- the staff
- the complimentary wine we are currently drinking as we journal our day
All in all, we are being spoiled.
----- Next day, four dives later
Didn't sleep well despite being exhausted. It's either the extra oxygen in the Nitrox, or my brain trying to figure out why the ground keeps shifting and there's no daylight.
Despite that, made it through a full day of diving. Our brains have quickly been reduced to following very simple thought patterns. Here's the approximate series of thoughts in my head today:
Get up! Ugh. Coffee. Ugh. Brekkie 1: fruit and yogurt yum! DIVE TIME! Dry off. Pee. drink water. Brekkie 2: eggs and taters and toast with Nutella yum! Digest sunbathe DIVE TIME! Dry off. Pee. Drink water. Warm up in sun. Lunch: pizza salad yum! Digest sunbathe read DIVE TIME! Dry off pee sunbathe drink warm up. Nap. DIVE TIME! Shower. Dress. Dinner: tofu mashed potatos veggies wine. Wine? Yes wine. No night dive. Tired. Watch media. Pass out.
Before each dive was the thought: I could skip this dive and sleep instead. But I am here to dive. And I might miss something cool. Ok, dive. Except the night dive, which would have been our second night dive in a row, our second time at this site (which was only OK), and our 5th today. So we (and a few others) opted out.
Highlights: several reef sharks, heaps of lionfish, a meter-long sea cucumber (or maybe sea slug?), fire dart fish, disco clam, huge schools of fish.
------- 2 days later, back on dry land
We survived! 16 dives over 4 days. My ears aren't quite sure what this lack of pressure is all about now that I've been out of the water for more than 12 hours.
I can't even list all the types of fish and other sea critters we saw. The leading contender for our next tattoo is.....the white-tipped reef shark! We saw them on every dive but the first, and several times had one circle all the way around us, as if considering whether we were too big to be considered for dinner. (These sharks are not aggressive toward humans, but it's still a bit unnerving.)
All in all, it was a fantastic trip. Highly recommend Spirit of Freedom if you're looking for a liveaboard dive trip in the Coral Sea.
And now we have our last day in Cairns before heading on to the next leg of our adventure: Melbourne!