The weekend getaway.

In my 4years of diving, I've never come across waves as big as the ones I've accounted last weekend. Even on my live on boards, where we sail into the open sea to dive, I've never seen or dived in conditions like this. In all honesty, I was quite scared. We started our dives on Saturday. It was rather uneventful except for the surprisingly strong current. But it wasn't something I could not handle. I've been in bad currents before and this was considered mild. However, on Sunday morning, the weather had turned for the worse. The wind was starting to pick up and the sea became really choppy. We decided to take the risk and go out to see what was the conditions. We reached Labas (Stella, I hope I spelt it correctly) which was about an hours journey from P.Tioman. We jumped in and carried on with our dive. But upon our ascend, we started to feel the pull of the ocean's currents. When we surfaced, the dive boat was no where in sight. Wave after wave hit us and me and the 4 other guys I was diving got separated. It was hard to see over the swells as it was almost 2 meters over my head. I was swallowing salt water fast. My mask and regulator came off. I tried to to look out for my friends. Eventually I spotted them and we tried to swim towards each other. That took up most of the oxygen that was left in my tank. I was now low on oxygen and my limbs were tired from fighting the currents and waves. After about 20 mins of fighting we finally spotted the dive boat. We slowly swam to the boat. I used up the last bits of air I had in my tank and with a desperate lunge I managed to grab the tow rope behind the boat. I gingerly pulled myself to the ladder of the boat. As I began to take one of my fins off, a huge wave hit and sent me crashing into the hull of the boat. Stunned and throwing up salt water, I blindly lashed out for the ladder. Luckily I managed to find it. Removing my other fin, I managed to climb in to the boat, not before being slammed by the waves a few more times. Damn, I had fun. I know it was scary and stuff, but its all part of diving. Learning to overcome nature's elements its tough but for the opportunity to dive and see the wonders of the ocean, I'll carry on doing it. Here are some of the photos of me and my dive buddies and Jasmine doing her Open Water Diver Certification.

Its been a while...

Its been a while since I last blogged. I've been rather busy sice my last post. The passing of my best friend was a major shock to me. It all happened so suddenly that it seemed so unreal. I still wake up in the middle of the night and cannot believe that he's left us. Beside that, work has been really busy. I just completed a 6 weeks upgrading course. It wasn't the most demanding of courses but there was a lot of studying and reading to be done. What made it more challenging for me personally, was that my Uni semester exxams were right smack in the middle of the course. It was really a challenge to balance both my studies and my course at the same time. There was really a lot of reading involved both ways. On the plus side, I just returned from a 4 day, 3 night Church Camp at Port Dickson. I really had a lot of fun. It was really good to get away for a while after all the studying and exams. I'm also looking forward to this coming weekend. Going diving at P.Tioman. I really cannot wait. It's been a really long time since I last went diving. Can't wait for this friday. Anyway, here are some photos from my recent Church Camp. Enjoy!