Diving the Great Barrier Reef

Finally, we got a break in the weather and Oso Blanco and us scooted 40 miles north of Cairns to the Agincourt Reef. We anchored behind Crispin Reef. Our whaler is too heavy to unload in the still persistent swell, so Glen and I lowered our rubber dingy and headed over to help Eric get his whaler down - it is a lighter version. It was still a bit of a rodeo, but we managed without breaking anything. Both big boats have their "flopper stoppers" out, we look like fishing trawlers at work, just sitting at anchor, but it does minimize the roll of the waves. This is the big times for diving and we can hardly wait for tomorrow to come.

 

First thing in the morning we all head out for our first splash of the day. Eric's whaler does not have a chart plotter on it and there is no showing land for us to reference our position, but we have a hand held GPS and so armed we head out into the great blue ocean. On route, I discover that I don't know how to operate the handheld (figures!) and we make a big 2 mile loop in no less than 130 feet of water - Where are the reefs and bommies when you want them?  Undaunted we return to the reef encircling the big boats because we can see the waves breaking on it (thus we know where it is) and we dive there; big disappointment!  It just "had" to be a "wrong" place to dive.  We head back to our respective big boats, grab a bite to eat, swap tanks, learn how to operate the handheld GPS and head out again. Woo Hoo! The GPS directed us to the dive spot we wanted and there was even a tiny buoy there to tie up too.  The dive was well worth the effort. Maybe not as full of life as our Fiji dives, but many new things to see and that's what counts. There were 5 giant squid hovering over coral heads, trying their best to blend with what ever color was closest to them.

 

In all we had two days of diving before we had to head back to Cairns because of impending bad weather. The weather forecasters were off by 1/2 a day and we bashed and crashed our way back to port. Probably the worst conditions we have been in since leaving Canada. But it was only a 5 hour run and other than being super salty, Mystery Ship handled it beautifully.