Friday 4th March
Very early start on Friday morning. I was heading in with James to save money on parking at the MiCat terminal ($20 a night...) which meant I was leaving home by 5:50 am... Made it to the barge with plenty of time to spare and reshuffled gear into the two 4wds present (Liz' Prado and Ash's Landy) while awaiting Linton (with his Prado) Got a call and they were stuck coming south on the Bruce. Dead stop. They stayed positive but it was looking like they wern't going to make it. Graeme was also stuck in it, but he had already decided that there wasn't much chance of making it so pulled off for a coffee instead. Liz was in the ear of the Skipper to hold back a little but in the end we had to head off without Lynn and Linton. Luckily we had a credit for 1:30 that afternoon so they swapped into that slot. Just after the barge took off we got a call from the people bringing the boat over, our boat wasn't starting! After trying their all the decision was made to drop into Wynnum Marine who quickly identified the solenoid for the choke was playing games and it was an easy 2 second fix, no charge!
Despite the lag to start the trip over went well with Croissants for smoko. Cruised up the low tide on the beach but hit a little soft sand as we turned into the Cowan bypass road. The Prado bogged down a little but was able to back out of it and head back in. Unfortunately in this time someone went around them and got stuck just off the beach, blocking the path... Bunch of guys in hawaiian shirts, on a fishing trip by the looks of it, who had a pile of empties on their table on the barge over... Luckily they had other friends nearby and got out pretty quickly. We were creeping up on the Cowan turn off and then creped straight past it. Ash quickly pulled off to the side but John kept going straight past. Eventually we all made it to the house to find some very reasonable accommodation. Much better than I'm usually accustomed to over on Moreton.
After lunch we started to gear up for out first dive. Remember the old saying bad luck comes in threes? Well with the Traffic stopping people and the boat not starting it was me for the third. I forgot my single tank adapter! Woops. First time ever on a trip I have forgotten a piece of gear. Luckily as Mike was skipper he let me borrow his BCD so I could dive. As there will always be a skipper there should be one spare most dives. We dropped in for a gently drift dive on the pines. Heaps of bright orange Nudies and plenty of fish. A turtle some crabs and shrimp also were hiding amongst the coffee rock. Just as we started our safety stop we found a cool Couch Whip ray and a decent school of Cobia who hung about for most of the 3 min stop.
Back to shore and Linton and Lynn had made it over to join us. We went over the dive brief for the afternoon dive. Mostly a reckie dive, scouting sites and measuring wrecks. On the dive we also took the opportunity to start a little of the clean up. Amongst the scouting we probably cleaned 1.5 buckets worth of line, rope, lures and sinkers before heading back. Seeing a nice Honeycomb Moray and lots of other fish. I moored up the boat on the provided buoy and had a nice 100m swim back to shore.
Compressor was having some trouble with the release valve, what happened to the rule of three!? It all seemed to work out in the end. With 4 guys there, I was happy to sit back with a beer and watch. Alan D took D3's boat to pick up those coming over on the Tangalooma flyer which saw them showing up at around 7pm, just in time for the group dinner. Pete and John thought the steak was a little too much alive but managed to correct that with significant heat. With the salad, steak and sausages we weren't going hungry.
Saturday 5th March
I couldn't seem to escape the stupidly early mornings. I volunteered (why, I still don't know) to skipper the 6am dive on the proviso that someone else fetched the boat... Luckily Gary Snr and Alan D stepped up and I got my sleep in to the slightly less unreasonable time of 5:45am. Only slightly. Rolled out of bed got into my boardies grabbed a muesli bar and a can of V and jumped on the boat. Reports came back of a brilliant dive on slack high. A few buckets from the clean up to take back with us as well as more measurements looking for a suitable site.
Once back those scheduled for the next dive (quick turn-around) decided that Bacon sounded like a much better idea. I agreed, I jumped on the BBQ with an Assist from Nic to feed all the hungry divers. After our stomachs were full our attention turned back towards diving. It didn't take long to round up 7 divers and 3 snorkelrs for a trip up to Flinders reef. We headed off but as we poked our nose around the top of the island the call was made to turn back. Always better to err on the side of caution. With a little bit of wind and swell and a time limit for the arvo slack tide dive we doubled back and dropped onto the Combi Drop Off for a drift dive. We missed the wall at first but after 10 or so min of flying over the sand we finally saw some coffee rock. At this point James had already decided he was done with his dive (there was bad air in his tank) and he and Nic went up to the surface. Paul, the Garys and I followed the wall a little bit before The Garys went off in search of greener pastures. Paul and I stayed the course and found the main portion of the wall we were aiming for all along. We were heading pretty fast leaving little time to stop and capture a pic but we went past a few things including an Octopus swimming effortlessly through the current just after Paul deployed his SMB
As I hopped onto the boat I couldn't see Nic and James, they should have been up ~20min ago... Just as we finished securing the tanks Garys popped up nearby and we grabbed them quickly. Just on the edge of vision we could see a SMB fully deployed so we made a B-line towards it to find James and Nic very ready to get into the boat.
Just after we landed back Alan D returned from a run to pick up the Crew (Reporter + Camera man) from 7 News. As we're doing our Curtin clean up in conjunction with Clean Up Australia Day 7 news had got wind and Liz organised for them to come out and grab some footage.
[facebook url="https://www.facebook.com/7NewsQueensland/videos/1121570991189085/" /]
I had a quick rinse in the outside shower, grabbed a beer and sat down for my tenure on the compressor. There was another dive organised, drifting on the pines, but I went quite a bit into deco on the clean up so I decided beer and a seat was in order for the afternoon. A few people started sifting through the mess that we all pulled up. Separating salvable (Sinkers, Anchors etc) from rubbish (line, corroded hooks, rope) and other general waste. Including a pretty badly rusted spear. Spero would have been upset when they lost that! A few hours passed, the harmonic hum of the compressor filling the air, as we retired to the top deck for cheese and biscuits with the sun setting over Brisbane. Watching a cruise ship float north as the smell of Garlic bread cooking in the bbq started to make my mouth water. Looks like we'll be eating well, very well catered by Liz.
Sunday 6th March
A bit more reasonable this morning, but not by much. 6:30 on the boat for a 7am dive. I jumped on diver making 8 divers in total + Skipper. We had some difficulties starting the boat. Blaming it again on the Choke that was stuck on Friday. After some careful deliberation we discovered the dead man switch was unplugged... once that was rectified it kicked over first go. The came the fun bit, deciding where we were on Curtin. 9 people in the boat, 5 staying very quite. Pete going off old shore markers, Linton giving bearings and Me saying "You know we have this mark in the GPS... right? All with Mike saying I'm not picking a spot you throw the anchor when you want. Eventually we thought we were on something and dropped it over. Landing about the middle of the concrete pipes north of Kos 1. Not too far off the Melbourne (which is exactly where the GPS would have put us...Just saying)
We finally jumped in for a dive a bit more scouting for a suitable site, as well as collecting surface marks. 2 buckets were taken down and got some rubbish in them, unfortunately only 1 made it back. The other was put down to collect some line and drifted off. No worries, we'll grab that in next years clean up ;) All in all we came back with 4 anchors and almost 50m in chain so it was a net positive in either case.
Back to shore for quick breakfast and another boat load out for a drift on the pines. I skippered and, remarkably, was able to follow the GPS and depth sounded and find the right spot to drop in. The current was pretty strong on some of the dive, As I followed bubbles above I lost them in the wind. Couldn't pick them up again so just drifted along keeping an eye on the sounder for the right depth. I made it all the way to the Bulwer wrecks and thought it was a bit too far. When I couldn't see any SMBs at the 50min mark I decided that I should probably get moving. Started driving back north and just picked up Jo raising her SMB, which was slightly thicker ( and a brighter orange) and headed to pick them up. In the end they drifted near on 1.8k, I went about 2.5...
Back on shore again for lunch. Some of us that were leaving in the arvo and slowly started to pack and sort out gear. Others went out to fit in a sneaky last dive which sounded like it was a pleasant slow drift on the Curtin. Little bit more rubbish returned, but it's a bit harder with the current. After that we loaded our gear into Dive Dive Dive's boat (which they had graciously rented out to us for the weekend, really came in handy!) and headed home to Manley. Wind had picked up and it was a bit choppy so we got a bit wet on the drive back. We also had a slight problem with one of the engines, fuel filter or pump possibly. All was well though and we were back in the marina by 4pm.
Huge thanks to Liz for organising and to everyone that helped with Gear, Filling tanks and Driving boats. It's truly a group effort to pull off one of these weekends and in my opinion we did all right. Here's too the next one!
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