Port Underwood
Sunday 9th March
It was a Sunday and the alarm went off at 4 am, AGAIN 4am. This is the point of time you think, why do we do this??.
Despite the feeling we crawled out of a nice warm bed and managed to meet up at 4:45 at Grant's place. Raymond was also there, ready for a day of blowing bubbles.
We headed down to the North road meeting point after topping up Grant's boat with fuel. There we met up with the rest of the gang, Rob, Nigel and Bryan. They had club boat ‘Down Time' hooked up and ready to go, so we hit the road to Picton.
About 7:45 and a bit of sleeping (not the drivers that we know of) we pulled into Picton where Mark H was waiting for a pick up and he jumped into Rob's bus. We all headed over the very steep and windy Port Underwood road. Forty five minutes later we made it to our final destination, the launching ramp at Port Underwood.
Rob, Nigel, Mark and Bryan were in their dive suits and onto the boat before Grant, Sofia, Raymond and myself were out of the ute. I think the reason for this is the fact that Rob had a Prado and Grant just had a Hilux (Ha Ha).
As we were all getting geared up Grant had to use the little boys room which was a porta loo, well all I can say is do not use it if you like your sense of smell, Grant was dry reaching for a time after running out of there. (you could smell the porta loo for some distance).
After all the fun and games we got away from the ramp in about half an hour. Both boats and crew all headed to the first dive site, with Grant following the club boat. We ended up just short of ‘Lucky Point' where Grant, Raymond, Rob and Nigel all jumped in to chase the cray's.
At this point in the trip I think everyone had woken up, the day was looking good, we had 10-15 knot nor-westers and high cloud which was burning off. Forty minutes later the lads popped up out of the gloom with a few cray's in the catch bags. The next dive was back towards Fighting Bay area. Myself, Sofia, Bryan and Mark went in for a splash.
Of course there was some of us that didn't like the temperature, which was 14 degrees (Sofia!). After this dive there were more cray's to measure, as you do at the Port Underwood play centre for crayfish!!
Rumour has it that at one stage Rob and Nigel saw something float past below Down Time, they took no notice of it until Mark surfaced looking for his fin. He lost it while putting his tank back into his BCD as it slipped out on his descent. They also misjudged the current and missed the reef that they were trying to get to.
There were a few more dive's made further towards Fighting Bay and on the Port Underwood side of Fighting Bay as well.
We guess the viz was about three metres, not the best but being the skilled divers we are.....we handled it.
The temp for one diver was too much and thought sun bathing was a better option. We won't say the name of this person!! But a clue.... it was the one and only lady on the trip!
Well all in all, in the end the weather turned out very nice.
There were a lot of cray's about, many cray's caught and many many more left in their rocky caves. We saw a lot of fish life and all divers were rewarded with just about their quota of cray's to take home.
I would have to say a very good trip. A few laughs, some good diving and a good time had by all. So on behalf of myself and Sofia I would like to thank all who came and those who organized the trip, and also a thanks to Raymond Biggs for coming a long to help make up numbers.
Paul Gardiner & Sofia Oskarsson
