The night before Christmas

Twas the night before Christmas
And out in the sea
Were some mad scuba divers
My buddy and me

Location: Eastern Kings – Type: Shore/Reef – Max Depth: 3m – Length: 8 mins – Surface: Clear

In the weeks leading up to Christmas I decided I wanted to dive on Christmas Eve. I roped in (without any difficulty) a willing buddy and prompted to stamp my feet and moan every time the weather turned bad and another day of diving was cancelled in the fortnight beforehand, concerned that I wouldn't get my festive dive.
The day before, despite a few days of heavy rain and flooding in some parts of the country, my buddy (also an instructor and far more experienced than me) gave our little adventure the green light. I was warned that the vis would be pretty rubbish though. I didn't mind; any dive would do me however little we could see. It was Christmas, after all.

The eve of Christmas arrived and we met early evening to get kitted up in time to make ourselves look festive. Serious stuff aside, which included setting up my new BCD and regs for the first time, we moved onto the fun bit. I'd planned on Xmas hat and tinsel. A text from my buddy earlier that day alerted me to the fact she may have bigger ideas; 'I'm going to parcel myself later, so I may need your help!'. Now I do have a bit of a reputation for enjoying fancy dress, but I had to raise an eyebrow at this thought. Nevertheless, I'm game for a laugh and you know how the saying goes - if you can't beat the nutty scuba diver, join her!

My buddy and me wrapped for a scuba xmas

Trussed up in wrapping paper and realising that wearing it into the water may not be such a good idea as it was ripping with every step, we hopped in the van and headed to Devil's Point where the aim was to dive Eastern Kings; a reef that drops off to 30 metres on one side and 40 on the other. A quick check of the water revealed a calm moonlit sea so we were good to go. After decorating our BCDs and tanks with glowsticks (necessary to be able to see each other underwater in the dark) and unwrapping ourselves (!), we made our way down the path, onto the beach and into the sea.

It felt a little chilly at first as the water ran down the back of my wetsuit while I was being helped into my fins, but given that the air temp was 11c and the water temp had only gone down another degree to 10c in the last couple of weeks it was surprisingly nice. We descended and immediately realised the vis was practically zero. I lost my buddy straight away, then found her by bumping into her. If I could have attached myself to her I might've done at that point. Instead I just stayed as close as I possibly could next to her. Even that wasn't 100% effective; after losing her once and finding her again by pure luck after spotting a very faint glow in the distance (in reality she was probably about two metres away) we surfaced. By that point we'd barely gone anywhere and only made it three metres down!

We decided the planned dive was most definitely not dive-able. In daylight it may have just been doable as vis often improves at greater depth but at 9pm it wasn't going to happen! Disappointing, but we weren't willing to up sticks straight away. We decided on going back down for five minutes bimbling along the bottom to make the best of a bad situation. I wanted to use my new underwater camera and even though it was obvious not much was going to come out it was worth a shot!

This was about the extent of what we could see!

Amazingly, in all that murkiness, I did happen upon a little white crab making his way along the sand and tugged on my buddy's arm to let her know it was there. Of course when the signals are by torchlight and you can't see much anyway there wasn't much hope of relaying that message and crabby was too fast for me to follow. As I was attempting to make a crab sign (I figured wiggling my fingers around could work) she put her hand down to steady herself, exactly where I'd last seen the crab. Given that she wasn't wearing gloves, I was worried about the crab either being squashed or clinging onto her hand so pushed her out the way! I was only able to explain that palaver when I could speak later!

Back on the surface we took a few photos as evidence of our Christmas Eve dive (or dive attempt at least).

As I was trying to stand up to start making my way out I managed to fall over backwards. Not the first time I'd done this except this time as we were in really shallow water I'd forgotten to inflate my BCD when I came up. It was enough water to cover me so this upended turtle had to do a bit of breath holding while righting herself! Must inflate BCD next time! It did give me a moment to appreciate the moon though, almost full in the sky making the water glow around us.

Moment of reflection over, we made our way back to the van. It was a good couple of minutes’ walk so I not only got to test the new BCD in the sea, I tried out its fit on land and I'm glad to report the ScubaPro Bella is perfect for me. It was so comfortable! Very happy as I was a bit concerned it wouldn't be right for me trying it on beforehand, but as I kept reminding myself, I've only ever worn them with cylinder attached so I didn't have anything to compare.

As we hadn't taken any festive props into the water we stopped to snap a few Christmassy pics.

 

It seems we attracted the attention of a couple of lads in a passing car who couldn't believe they were seeing 'diver chicks' (yes folks, girls do dive) and that we'd actually already been in the water. So impressed were they that one of them hopped out to take a photo of us as evidence!

We may not have managed to do the dive we wanted but it was certainly the most novel Christmas Eve I've ever had and couldn't have been any more fun! My buddy summed it up perfectly; twas an epic adventure!