Long Ke Wan

Long Ke Wan Well this was our first Club dive of the Year of the Ox. After the Chinese New Year holiday, there was a predictably poor turnout. The brass monkey weather didn't help much either. Surprisingly I was the first person on the junk, where I waited patiently for my breakfast to turn up. There is a first time for everything, but this feat was made all the more remarkable as I had a bad hangover after Veronique's birthday party the previous evening. To make matters worse I had seriously under-catered on the clothing front and was already starting to get cold. The only real reason I was there at all was to try out a new pair of boots. At about 9:30 Tam, Malcolm and Pam turned up. Pam was just along for the junk trip, and had no intention to dive. The others had come up with a cunning plan to avoid driving all the way down to the compressor room to pick up cylinders. Tam had 2 empties in the car, and he decided to get them filled at the dive shop near Sai Kung. Unfortunately the shop was shut, which left us with one full tank between 3 of us. One of the empty tanks actually had about 80 bar in it, so we took that along. Fortunately Mr. Yip keeps a spare tank on the junk for his own use, and he very kindly offerred to lend it to us. This was probably because he was still in a good mood after being presented with Chinese New Year gifts of Cognac and cookies.

I slept through the trip to Long Ke Wan, but was rudely awakened and told to dive. After a recuperative cup of coffee, which didn’t help me recuperate at all, I started kitting up. At least I had all my diving gear, Malcolm had left half of his wetsuit in Australia. Since it is summer over there, I think that could have been a mistake. Anyway the 3 of us eventually got into the water and I found I had under-catered on the weight as well. Getting down was difficult, and staying there was worse. First we headed into a shallow cavern. When we got to 2 metres I grabbed a rock to try and keep on the bottom. Just then I was caught by the surge and executed an elegant and completely unplanned somersault. Once I had reestablished which end was up, got my breath back and cleared my mask, I had lost my buddies. I looked around for a minute before making a controlled ascent. Since I was underweight (believe it or not!) this was not easy and involved a fin first ascent.

Reunited with my buddies we tried again, this time a bit deeper. We've had some excellent dives in Long Ke Wan recently, but this was not one of them. It was a pleasant enough, but not spectacular. Visibility was around 5 metres. There were lots of Coral Shrimps, some quite big crabs and some very pretty soft coral - the purple broccoli variety. In addition I saw the obligatory clown fish, a scorpion fish, and schools of damsels. It certainly brought me back to reality after the Philippines. Well at least my logbooks will last longer as there is a lot less to write about in Hong Kong. When Tam had come close to exhausting his tank, and before Malcolm went blue with cold, we came up.

Back on the junk secure in the knowledge that we didn't have enough air for another dive, I conserved my energy to fight off the cold. When I woke up we were heading home. What about the new boots? Well I was very impressed with them. In fact I was so pleased with them that I am planning to get another pair - as these are too big for me. Still Pam made me feel a bit better when she told me she had 2 boots for the same foot. It's a bit worrying that our former training officer has 2 left feet. (Perhaps she should be playing for England).