(sorry all - bit late - but we still had a great time!!!!)
9th December – Departing Tab Lamu Pier
There’s no rest for the Wicked! The mariner is off again for another three-day trip around the Similan Islands.
With our favourite Irish trip leader Colin heading up the staff for this trip, which includes Brett – crazy Australian dude who will be teaching Advanced course on the trip, Deaw – our loveable thai teddy bear who is guiding fun divers, Chrissy – our fun an out-going chick from USA, Jacob – our newly qualified Divemaster from NZ and finally myself – Krystal – For this trip I am finishing an Open Water course and am also responsible for writing this fun filled blog!
This trip we have a good mix of people from around the world, including UK, USA, Poland, Canada, India, Sweden so it will make for interesting surface interval conversations.
Some of the guests have already been on the boat for three days and are booked in for another three, and the rest are arriving on the Mariner for their first time.
We welcome them onto the boat with fresh coconuts, a boat briefing and our regular letting off of fire crackers to shun all the bad spirits away and make for safe crossing on the seas.
After making everyone comfortable in their cabins we are all delighted to hear the ringing of the ‘dinner bell’. Hungry and anxious to taste our famous food courtesy of our amazing kitchen cook P’Da we are all in line to serve up our thai cuisine for the evening. Ead is our new kitchen assistant on the boat, so we welcome her also.
With dinner out the way, its straight to business and we set up our equipment ready for the early morning dive.
An early night is in order for most, and as the Mariner makes it’s way towards the Similan islands, across the calm seas, under the beautiful night stars, we are all gently rocked to sleep in our cabins, ready for the adventure that awaits…
10th December – Anitas Reef, West of Eden & Stonehenge
Up early this morning and ready to go. It’s another beautiful morning in the SImilan Islands and I am first up with a nice cup of tea and my coco pops to watch as guests wearily start to appear from their cabins. Its nice to see that people are up earlier then Deaw's wake up call….. perhaps they preferred to wake up to a gentler sound.
Blurry eyed and weary the guests sit through our standard safety briefing by Brett and our dive site briefing by Chrissy we chuck the guests in the water and what a way to wake up!
Anita’s Reef is our first dive of the day, and it is beautiful today – visability is a good 20metres, nice white sand and clear waters.
I am taking my diver for her Open Water Dive 3 for this dive, which involves quite a few skills which she blasts through and we are on our way to explore around the reef.
Lots of colourful soft corals, clownfish and clouds of glassfish. After we finish the dive I harass to the others to find out they find lots of interesting things too…Deaw tells me he saw lots of garden eels and a lovey blue spotted ray to keep his divers entertained. Chrissy sounds like she had a good dive, finding an octopus and watching on as three crazy triggerfish chase each other around.
Everyone comes back from the dive and heads up stairs as the scent of freshly cooked bacon wafts through the boat….. Breakfast time!
Just time for breakfast and a little snooze before its briefing time again!
This time the guests get an interesting eco briefing before the next dive briefing and its time to jump again!
The second dive of the day is in beautiful West of Eden, where the divers are treated to lots of mantis shrimp, scorpionfish, octopus, sweetlips, giant moray, great barracuda, harlequin shrimp, giant pufferfish with trumpetfish following and also three mating sea slugs….Awesome!
I finish dive 4 of Open Water with my student Saira and her boyfriend Simson, Whoop Whoop! We cheer as we reach the surface…. Another certified open water diver is born!
Back on the boat and its that time again…. Time to eat! Lunch is served and we all take a break, swapping dive stories and looking forward to some well deserved hammock time!
We take a rest as the Mariner heads towards the next dive site which is Stonehenge – a dive site which surprises you with big granite boulders smothered in gorgonian sea fans, soft corals and sometimes we get the ‘green monster’ as we like to call it – a thermocline, which drifts in, the temperature drops a couple of degrees and visibility drops – but alas this is not all bad – it brings in food for the bigger fish so the hope of seeing something bigger out in the blue is always there!
We jump in and a gentle current takes us round to the end of the point and we are tucking ourselves into the rocks to make it round and not get pushed out by the current. We make it around and find pufferfish, clown triggerfish, some clown anemone fish and some cool unicorn fish.
We make our way up to the surface to find Crissy and her group coming up too. They saw the biggest EVER pufferfish and a huge ray they tell us as they grin from ear to ear!
Snack time on the boat, its time for fruit and cookies, a little snooze and then its off to the beach to explore!
Brett leads the way and the guests follow off to Honeymoon Bay, I send Jacob and Chrissy off with the camera to get some good photos of the guests having fun.
They take a nice stroll over to Princess Bay and Jacob tells me they say nicobar pidgeons, flying foxes and they went to the lookout , which was beautiful. Up some crazy steps, through a wonderous cave, which lead them up to a giant boulder at the top with an amazing view out over the whole bay. Sounds perfect!
Meanwhile, back on the boat P-da and her kitchen staff are cooking up a storm! Dinner time comes around and once again we are treated to lovely thai delicacies.
Everyone seems hyper and excited after the days activity and so there is a lot of dive talk going on and general good vibe.
Saira, my diver makes the decision to go on and do her advanced course as well, which is exciting, so I sit her down with some nice homework to do for the evening!!
Just as I am sitting at the table, Saira comes up and asks for a torch, apparently theres something in the water! Its dark by this point, so I grab a torch to investigate….. ‘Shark! Shark! Shark’ people cheer… or is it???
There is a big fish floating around the boat, around and around, its not a shark, the tail gives it away, but what is it?
After a while of wondering, I decide to get a closer look…. Fins on, mask on, torch in hand, I slip into the water quietly and approach this big fish… OK maybe this wasn’t such a good idea! Im less than a metre away from it, it is big and looking pretty mean! Its swimming with its head down and its tail right up at the surface, I wonder what is wrong with it before it disappears into the night. Unidentified as of yet, but a very strange and exciting occurrence non the less!!!
Back to my coco pops to discover that last nugget of excitement was the final straw and all are retiring to their cabins to dream of whalesharks, turtles and other mystical underwater creatures!
11th December – Elephant Head Rock, The Bombies, Three Trees, North Point Bay
Another early start today, and what a beautiful way to start the day… with a beautiful sunrise over beautiful tropical islands.
So, today we have lots of activity’s to get through, I am taking Sairas advanced course, Brett is also taking an advanced course with his guest Praveen, as well as nitrox diving with Byron and Andrew.
Not to mention its Eriks birthday today! Happy Birthday Erik – we hope you have a great day!
Bleary eyed guests start to appear on the middle deck in anticipation for the briefing for our first dive site of the day – Elephant Head Rock.
It’s a shock to the system, the fresh water first thing, but it does good things for the soul I believe, and so we make our descent!
Current is present on the outside of the rocks and so we weave inbetween the large granite boulders and make our way through awesome swim throughs. We see mantis shrimps, triggerfish, travellis – Definitely not a bad way to start the day!
As we all jump back on the boat, Colins group is excited by a flatworm they saw and Bretts group are happy to have their ‘deep dive’ complete towards their advanced course, followed by Deaws fun divers who talk happily about the scorpionfish they saw.
Time to eat again and we all sit down for breakfast.
Discussions lean towards the ‘unidentified’ fish we saw last night, but unfortunately my child like scribblings and ‘basic’ descriptions leave me with guesses not far fetched from unicorns and mermaids! Will I ever get to the bottom of the mysterious fish??
After breakfast we have a little time to relax before its that time again….. Brieeeeefing time!
Dive 2 of the day is at ‘Bombies’, I jump in for the regular current check and then Crissy takes the briefing before we are on our way again into the deep blue!
This dive is really awesome – lots of bombies covered in beautiful soft corals, all different colours, and seafans everwhere. It does not fail to disappoint even more when we see big spotted grouper, a boxfish, an octopus and at the end a lovely hawksbill turtle who seems friendly and sticks close by.
We make our way back onto the boat, where we see a green turtle who is hanging around the back deck, unfortunately expecting some food. We don’t feed marine life here, it breaks the cycle of their food chain and causes them to become to dependant on food from boats and not hunting from themselves.
We have a nice surface interval, eating lunch, catching some sun and for some, brushing up on navigation skills ready for the dive ahead.
The next dive site we go to is 3 Trees, which is a lovely relaxing site. Sloping reef, which has seems to have become inhabited by quite a few titan triggerfish it seems. As I am getting my student Saira to lead the dive for her navigation skills , I feel someone/something tugging on my fin…. Hmmm my divers are in front of me, who could it be? No other then a yellow margin triggerfish who seems to want to go a round or two under the water, he is biting my fins as I defend myself with them and swim backwards and away. I get a narrow escape with some teeth marks in my fins and continue the dive.
We come up and have a nice long surface interval before the night dive, which is spent mostly relaxing in hammocks and catching some rays. Relaxing for some, apart from Bretts students, who fill their time watching Nitrox videos and taking exams.
We start assigning out the torches as it starts to get dark, and I am once again hoping to see my ‘mystery fish’ again tonight. I’ve resigned myself to thinking it was a freak barracuda, it had a barracuda like face (very scary close up in the water at night), but the tail was a lot thicker and it didn’t have the same dorsal fins. Also, it seemed more brown colour then usual silver.
We will see if it makes an appearance tonight!
Brett heads up the night dive briefing, telling everyone not to get lost, not to shine the light in our faces and not to kick the crap out of the reef. Good to go then!
We jump in and off we go. It’s a relaxing dive the night dive, and very personal too because everyone is focused on their own little bubble of light.
We see lots on this dive, sleeping lionfish, lots of lobsters, a sleeping turtle, a cute little octopus, sleeping parrotfish and surgeonfish and not to mention the fun of blocking our lights off and waving our arms around to see the bioluminescence glow.
No mystery fish tonight, but its out there in the blue somewhere…..
We are treated to a feast of a dinner tonight, and not only that, P-da has cooked up an awesome pancake birthday cake for Erik! We all sing Happy Birthday to him and he blows out the candle after he has made his wish… I wonder which big fish he is wishing for!
Everyone is shattered after another awesome long day and retire early.
Thursday 12th December – Christmas Point & Koh Bon
Its 6.30am wake up call today, the earliest yet and the guests are up and ready for their two final last dives of the trip.
Our first dive of the day is at Christmas Point and it is really awesome. Not much current, so lots of fun swimming in and out of the big granite boulders and through swim throughs. We manage to spot scorpionfish, a grouper being cleaned by some little cleaner wrasse, two big napoleon wrasse and some cool red fire gobies.Back on the boat and its time for our last big breakfast, before getting ready for our last dive of the trip, on the infamous Koh Bon.
We have our briefing and all rub our nipples as the calling sign for the manta rays before we jump in and off we go!
A few of our groups hang around on the ridge waiting patiently staring into the blue before deciding to carry on. We head past the ridge and over the rest of the dive site, again this place is buzzing with life – octopus, travelli, clouds of glass fish, blue dragon nudibranches. We are even blessed with a huge 6ft eagle ray, a big leopard shark and turtle playing with one of our groups on their safety stop.
Buzzing from the last few days, we all head up for lunch, to finish our log books and any other paperwork before its chill time (and tidy up time for the staff!)
It’s a beautiful day as we sail back into Khao Lak and the guests look happily tired out!
Congratulations to Saira our new PADI Advanced Open Water Diver, Praveen – our new SSI Advanced Open Water Diver and also to Byron and Andrew for completing their SSI EANX Diver certifications! We wish you all the best in all your future diving endeavours!
Thanks to everyone for an awesome trip – Simon, Sally, Praveen, David, Dina, Chris, Casey, Juanna, Jennie, Erik, Eva, Andrew, Susan, Avanti, Pawel, Eva.E Philip, Byron, Simson and Saira.
-Wicked Diving Thailand
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