Dive Madness, Day One :)

All the nitrogen has been safely off-gassed from my body. All my SCUBA gear is dry. I have my land legs almost completely back (occasionally I still get the feeling that I'm on a boat, particularly when I am sitting still in a small-ish room). And now, I will tell you all about my dive trip!

The Mike Ball Dive Expedition office is just outside of the main area of downtown Cairns, and I dropped my luggage (meaning my giant orange duffel bag full of mostly scuba gear and a few pieces of clothing) off there and checked in around 3:30pm. I then had about two hours to kill before boarding, so I mooched around Cairns for a bit, and went to P.J. O'Brien's (an Irish pub) for dinner. They have quite decent $10 meals which include a small mug of beer. (Also, unrelatedly, a picture of Oscar Wilde is painted on one wall, but he TOTALLY just looks like Snape and I was all, "Why is there a painting of Severus Snape on the wall of an Irish Pub in Cairns" and then I saw the quote painted next to it by Oscar Wilde and thusly realized it wasn't actually Snape).

Walking up to Spoilsport

We were instructed to meet near the pier at 6PM and slowly everyone congregated there and began introducing themselves. My initial fears about not being friends with anyone on the boat were quickly banished as everyone was very friendly. Then two of the Mike Ball Dive Expedition crew members walked up and introduced themselves and immediately started learning our names (with compulsory nametag wearing, of course). They walked us over to the boat, which was named Spoilsport, and I was pleasantly surprised before even getting on board: it was very nice.

This was taken from the doorway. Tiny!

Once all of us were on board, we were directed to our rooms where our luggage had already been delivered (it was like being at Hogwarts!). My room was roughly 8 feet square with a bunkbed, set of drawers, cabinet/closet, bedside table, and air conditioner. The sheets and bedspreads had a cute seahorse and seashell pattern on them AND we got a freshly made bed and a pillow mint every morning! My room was a double occupancy room, but I had it all to myself and I was very glad of that. It meant that I got the bottom bunk, two pillows, two towels, more tiny bars of soap than I'd ever care to use, and best of all: privacy. Not that I wouldn't have LOVED sharing a closet-sized room with a complete stranger for four days...We were then asked to come upstairs where we got the welcome talk and the safety talk, along with complimentary champagne (yes, it told me how nice I looked, Dad, ha ha ha). Then we got introduced to the crew.

The bald captain's name was Pete and he frequently wore a pirate bandana and always wore his silver hoop earring with a piece of shell on it. Yes, he was pretty much a pirate all the time. The first mate was Leigh, who's shoulder length brown hair and mustache were both streaked with blonde from the sun (but don't worry, his mustache wasn't shoulder length. That'd be really creepy). He was rather shy, but very nice and could play the harmonica and sing quite well. The trip director was a pleasant Scottish man named Craig and he kept everyone organized and on time during the trip. Andrea was the chef in training and he was from Italy. Anita was the pleasant German hostess who was excellent at remembering and using everyone's names. Gus was a tall, SUPER freckly ginger man who has never lived in one place for more than three years. Shay was a short and nice dive instructor who is also an excellent photographer and guitar player; he and Gus were the first two crew members we met. The boat's engineer reminded me of a tiny little hermit crab, but I never learned his name. The main chef was another ginger (although he had hair more my color) and he had many crazy tribal tattoos, and I think his name was Karl. The boat's photographer/videographer was an American named Lawrence, who was nice and very good at photography, but always seemed a wee bit butt-hurt/disgruntled about something or another most of the time. Then there were two volunteers: Patrik, from Switzerland, helped out in the kitchen, and Philippe, a French Canadian, was a general helper. All the crew were dive certified, and most of them were also certified Divemasters or Dive Instructors. Everyone was exceedingly pleasant and helpful and seemed genuinely happy to have all of us passengers along.

View of half the dive deck

After all our meetings were done, we were each assigned a dive station out on the dive deck and we set up all our gear for the morning. Almost everyone had gone to bed by 9:30pm (which makes sense, given that breakfast was at 7am and we had a full day of diving ahead of us), which left the dive deck deserted, and an excellent place to journal. It was the perfect temperature outside, not warm, but not cold, with just the slightest hint of a breeze, and it made me smile how at home I felt on this boat.

My dive station! :)

I'm doing my best to split these dive posts up by day, so that's all for this one.

Up next: meeting my fellow passengers and hearing about our first day of diving :)

If you'd like to see all my pictures from this trip, click HERE to go to my Facebook album.
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Song of the day: If It's Love by Train