Divers: Derick, Leo, Louis, Vikki, Puspendu, Youri, Chris, Ben & Mark
Surface support: Susan & Annyke
Our trip started with our first meal together as a group in a pub in Port Melbourne, then on to the ferry for our overnight trip down to the Apple Isle. This seemed more like an eating fest interrupted by some diving, because as soon as we disembarked the ferry it was into the cafe for the ‘all you can eat’ breakfast, on the road to Richmond & it’s lunch in the bakery. Friday afternoon we do a dive in the Cathedral Caves then back to the Lufra for a Counter meal. The weather has been very kind to us over the years & this year is no exception. Tassie is a hard environment, it has a lot history with shipwrecks & disaster and this is for a very good reason, when the wind blows here it really blows and even the most experienced of seaman need to be at their best. We had westerly’s for the entire trip which could not have been better and the viz was never below 10 metres. We dived all the usual suspects – the Nord, Cathedral Caves & the Giant Kelp, with a few lesser dived sites as well, Three Sisters, Cathedral Bluff & Waterfall Bay. Our hosts for the diving were Mick & Karen from Eaglehawk Neck Dive Centre, Mick as always was on the ball with the local conditions & his knowledge of the dive sites is unmatched. Karen with her organisational skills ensured everything ran smoothly and we were even lucky enough to convince Karen to give our group one of her ‘world class’ talks on the local marine life the south east Tasmania. I did notice the very next dive we did every diver spent a lot longer staring at the walls looking for invertebrates & sponges. We had made many plans to do many things but as always the time just gets away, with 3 meals & 2 dives a day we hardly had time for a beer, and all too soon it’s time to leave. Eaglehawk Neck has always been a popular trip, for most of us this was not our first time down here and I’m sure for all of us it won’t be our last.
Mark