Poseidon's Parlour: Day 1 - Into The Black & Blue

Tuesday 25 November 2014

Day 1 - Into The Black & Blue – 18/11/2014

As I mentioned, probably a hundred times if I met you in the last few months, I’m now in Egypt diving off the Snapdragon - a fairly grim Flowers of Sinai live-aboard. I’m bunked up with a very pleasant chap who we'll call Seanathon. I’ve dived with Seanathon before, well over a year ago. He's a decent chap, that said, he’s probably gutted be sharing with me.

For diving purposes, my buddy for the diving side of things is the Zookeeper.

Today we did three dives, having arrived quite late last night. The sites were:

Ras Katy – a shallow reef check dive
Ras Satar – a deep wall drift dive
Dunraven – a notable Red Sea wreck, with a nearby reef

As I’m discussing a few dives I’ll stick to the more notable incidents. Essentially everything went to plan on dive one, luring me into a false sense of security and even delivering a very pretty octopus. It was too far inside its whole to photograph, so you’ll have to take my word for it being pretty.

Ras Satar was a quite different affair for me.

I once heard bittersweet being described as “watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your brand new car.” I have no real issues with my mother-in-law, but this dive was bittersweet. I was bobbing along enjoying the drift and wall when after about five minutes what felt like a jolt of electricity shot through the right hand side of my face. As this was my first ever Nitrox dive, my first thought was it was a symptom of oxygen toxicity (at 22m *coughs*). The reality, however, was far more mundane.

I endured the rest of the dive, made only bearable by my first ever turtle sighting. When I emerged I had a scarlet rash laden cheek and mouth. Apparently, it was a plankton sized jellyfish.

I can tell you, even now, 9 hours later, my face is loupin. In addition, I cut my leg as I boarded the Zodiac.. As I said, bittersweet.

Finally, dive three was a night dive and both the Zookeeper and I were in our element. We enjoyed some nice lionfish action, a couple of moray eels and wide selection of night active fish.