Dragon's Teeth

All of us witnessed the marathon rain throughout the weekend from Friday 19 August 2005, I had my fingers crossed praying that the weather would get better on Sunday. With the weather forecast being cloudy with occasional rain and the gigantic tidal range (0.4m to 2.6m), Paul Bayne, the Dive Marshal for the day, decided that we should head off to Dragon's teeth. I was the Assistant Dive Marshal and I must say that I learnt a lot from Paul.

When we first arrived at the site, there was no rain. We were lucky to have the newly weds, Paul and Keiko, on the boat. Keiko tossed a bouquet attached to a 3 kg weight into the ocean. Paul said whoever found the bouquet would get the bottle of champagne he brought with him. We saw some black clouds heading our way, soon after, it started pouring. The 15 divers quickly kitted up and jumped off the boat (in an orderly manner of course) to get out of the rain and tried to complete our mission of finding the bouquet.

Underwater life was peaceful, you would not notice the terrible weather above you, except for the lower visibility. I recall one diver said he saw a lot of fishes in cages placed by the fishermen. Others reported they saw crabs, jelly fish and gurnard, but no trace of the bouquet.

We finished diving at 3pm and stopped by Tap Mun Chau (T€) or Grass Island to have our afternoon tea (or beer). The restaurant owner even dared a few of us to try some of his homemade yellow chilly sauce which would set your mouth on fire! When we returned to the boat, I could not tell whether the red faces came from the chilly sauce or alcohol.

We had a round of champagne on our return journey and it continued to rain. Despite the bad weather, I surely enjoyed this wetter than normal dive!