Another early start meeting at the dive shop in Cairns just before 6.20am ready for the 5 minute drive to the boat. The weather looked ok but once out of the harbour the boat began to roll a bit. This was not as smooth as last time and about half way out to the reef the sky turned a dark grey, a similar colour to the water! There were no humpbacks this time but we did get a brief sighting of some dolphins.

By the time we arrived at the outer reef it was raining and still a little choppy, but that’s ok, you don’t notice the rain when you’re in the water. So breakfast and safety talk done it’s time to kit up and our first dive was a fun dive. I had an American chap for a buddy and we had a nice slow dive around one of the reef formations. It was nice with plenty to see including quite a few barracuda.

Fun dive over and our stomachs filled by Jo, the cook for the trip, it was time for our first speciality dive for the advanced certificate, namely Peek Performance Buoyancy. To say our instructor had us jumping through hoops is no exaggeration, he literally did, well swimming. This, as well as meditating in mid air, was really quite cool.

The next speciality dive was navigation using the compass. Now I have to say navigation is not my strong point at the moment but using the compass is pretty groovy. Between that and measuring distance by kick cycles I think I did ok.

That left the last dive of the day, the night dive. And it was pretty good. We practiced navigation and buoyancy and then just had a mooch around opting a ray and the largest shark I have seen to date. Pretty damn cool.

There also seems to be a good crowd on board so I think all things being equal I should be in for a good trip