Lars Hemel: Logbook

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Amazing Yongala Wreck, first real Deep Wreck Dive

This was my Deep Dive specialisation for the PADI Advanced Open Water course.

It was amazing and real exciting to go this deep. We saw huge fish, barracuda, sea snakes and plenty of huge colorful coral fish. When I went up, my dive computer started beeping, telling me that I went up to fast. Also, we couldn't use the table to calculate our pression group because we didn't stayed at one level and it also wasn't a real multilevel dive. So we had to use our computer calculated value, which is offcourse the most accurate pression group you can calculate.

We made two safety stops, one at 10m for 2 minutes and one at 5 meter deep for three minutes. In one word, a very exciting dive.

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PADI Advanced Night Dive

I was disappointed about the amount of marine life we saw. Different species such as the fluerescent plankton, crabs and lobsters, but most common coral reef fish were sleeping.

Interesting point was that 4 of the dive group got lost so we, together with the instrctor, had to surface and go down again for three times before we found them. On the way back we saw a huge cone which turned out to be some sort of snail.

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PADI Advanced Navigation Dive

The navigation specialty consists out of navigating in a rectangle, navigating with a slight curve halfway and navigating straight ahead and back. We also had to find teh way back to shore by looking at the sand composition. The sand ribbles are created by the waves and are therefore in general in the sam direction as the shore.  Other items we remembered were little rocks and small coral formations which we found on our way back, telling us we were still diving in the right direction.

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PADI Advanced Open Water Naturalist Dive

Yesterday, we had a whole day of reading and excercising, but today we finally go diving again. The naturalist dive is meant to give you an idea about the underwater marine life. One thing you are expected to do, is to remember the fish you saw. We saw surgeon fish, stingrays, painted sweetlips, batfish, baked coralfish. Coral life included sea cucumbers, nudibranchs, seaweed and seagrass.

It is a nice reef. Relaxed diving, just offshore, and looking at the fish you see and at the things the instructor points out to you. Back at the surface he told us what it was we saw.

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Diving with other beginning buddies

This dive was my first dive I did with other beginning PADI divers so without instructor. It was a very nice dive, but me and my buddy got disoriented quickly. We didn't know which way was to teh ocean and which way was to the beach. We ended our dive way ahead of our start point.

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First nightdive in Blue Pearl Bay

This was my first night dive and turned into an excellent experience. Fish is plentifull but you realy have to search for it while during the daytime you cannot miss it. Ofcourse I had a flashlight rather weak so I was better of looking where my dive buddy looked.

I had slightly buoyancy problems. Too much weights which resulted in air in my BCD to prevent me from automatically sinking. And this air was making it hard since it was expanding and shrinking each meter you dive deeper or shallower. I accidentally reached the surface twice during this dive. But hey, it was a shallow dive with quite a few big fish.

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First dive on my own in open water

We were on a liveaboard sailing trip around the Whitsundays when I did my first dive at Luncheon Bay. Unfortunately, my equipment didn't have any depth meter. Very bad, but I wanted to dive.

The aquatic life was awsome, a big change after my Hervey Bay experience, and my first dive on a coral reef in one of the bays of the Whitsundays.

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Last dive before receiving my PADI Open Water

This last dive was exciting as well. Because of my excitement I didn't wanted to do anything wrong again. But unfortunately I was breading very heavy and I ran out of air before the instructor could complete all the excercises with all the open water students. I told the instructor I had 40 bar left, but since he wanted to complete the excercises he continued. I told him again, slighly in panic, when I had 5 bar left. The instructor was slightly surprised about my air supply but took proper actions. Buddy breeding with the instructor we went up. But I succeeded all the excercises and now I received my PADI Open Water certificate.

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With too much air in my BCD I rocketed to the surface.

The third dive was exciting and not completely without accidents. We were planning to do our first safety stop, but because of me we all had to go up. On my way up to the safety stop, I forgot to remove air from my jacket. This resulted in expanding air and it wasn't possible anymore to prevent me from continuing to the surface. And unfortunately the whole group had to follow.

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Second dive was boring

My second dive was a boring one. Everything went fine, I didn't experience any problems and was anxious to go diving on the Great Barrier Reef to really see something.

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First open water dive

My first open water dive was great. After two days training in the pool and getting used to the underwater worls, signs and problems that might occur, I went finally on my first dive on Moon Ledge, Hervey Bay, Australia.

I had some problems with equalizing because I went down a little too fast. Besides that I was extremely excited and didn't have much time to look around.