July

Those of us who went to Al Sawadi in Oman in the last weekend of July had a couple of memorable dives on the Damaniyat Islands. As well as the monster rays and morays a whale shark came out to play with us put a few minutes. Thanks to Sergey the event was caught on camera and a few of these shots are shown below. This is just for your interest of course – I’m in no way trying to make anyone jealous.

While this was going on, Uwe was taking a boat out to the Mariam Express. I believe the divers came back with a crockery set each.

We dived the Neptune and Jumbo on the 24th - Derek (and family) did their best to entertain us by nearly losing a dive computer (dropped overboard – found on the seabed by Danny), a fin (dropped whilst getting into the boat – drifting off to Iran – retrieved by Marc doing a Michael Phelps impression) and a camera (found on the boat not having left it). This is not to mention coming up with – shall we say – a tad less than 50bar. Might take a while to tot up the fines for this one Derek!

On Friday the 17th we went to check out some co-ordinates of potential wreck sites. The first one was indeed a wreck but stranded half way up a beach in Umm al Quwain. Not so much a dive more like a stroll at low tide. The second one proved to be in 35m of water and provided a few tantalising shapes on the echo sounder. We gave up this time but a return visit may be in order to find out what it is.

After this we went to the nearby Dara where a couple of dives were rewarded by the appearance of a friendly turtle. While this was going on Mike Anthony was putting in some graft on the trailer which as a result is back in full working order – cheers Mike!

The dive on Friday the 10th seems to have been quite eventful. At least we can now say we've categorically proved that the boat floats a lot better with the bungs in. The viz on the Saraf wasn't too good either I gather. (the Red Sea was quite nice though).