In our third week of being in Australia, we decided to take a 3 day/3 night liveaboard dive trip to the Great Barrier Reef to do a bunch of dives. The trip left out of a city called Townsville, so we actually had to take a 4 hour bus ride up there on Tuesday morning and hang out until the boat left, which wasn’t until 10:30pm. The trip included 10 dives, 2 of which were night dives and 2 of which were wreck dives. The reason we had to take a trip out of a different town than Airlie Beach is because most of the dive trips there go to the Whitsunday Islands’ reefs and not the Great Barrier Outer Reef. The Whitsunday reefs are nice, but that’s where we got certified for 3 days, so we really wanted to go to the outer reef, and since this dive trip had so many dives, it was the best value for the money.
We got on the boat around 9:30pm or so and staked out a cabin that we could have all to ourselves. We were pretty exhausted from our travels all day, so we went to bed right around the time the boat was leaving the docks. The wind was pretty harsh, about 25 knots, so the water swells were pretty bad. At times, I felt like I was going to be thrown out of the bed, so it made it hard to sleep. Eventually, probably around midnight, Paul and I both had to use the bathroom, so we got up and went. That was our biggest mistake.
Leaving the bed and going up to the deck to go to the bathroom really accentuated the rocking of the boat, and both of us began to feel sick. I had taken a Dramamine before we had gotten on the boat, but it wasn’t doing anything for me at this point. We both got back into bed, and Paul took a Dramamine to see if it would help him, but I was beyond help. I ran back up the ladder and shouted to someone for a bucket. I ran out on deck, took the bucket, and sat down on the soaked deck and puked my guts out.
It was awful. I have never been that sick in my entire life. And for those who know me well, especially in college, any of the times I got sick from drinking, even the time in Bahamas when I had the ulcer, was nothing compared to this pain. I spent the entire night out on the deck, half the night actually sitting on the deck, which was continually drenched with water since the deck had holes along the sides of it for drainage and the boat was rocking so badly. At times, so much water came up on the deck that it completely drenched me from head to toe, which I guess wasn’t too hard since I was sitting crouched on the deck hugging the bucket :) Halfway through the night, I was able to sit up on the bench so that I wouldn’t get soaked anymore, but that’s as far as I could move until we actually stopped and put down the anchor at the reef. The crew was very nice and kept watch over me from their bunks all night, which is all they could do for me.
Thankfully, the wind died down during the day and over the next 3 days, so I started feeling better that day (thanks to ton of Dramamine I took) and didn’t get sick again the rest of the trip. Plus, we went on a dive right away Wednesday morning, and being under water made me feel so much better than being on the boat. The one problem was that I could barely swallow because my throat was so raw and swollen, so I couldn’t really eat all day and barely drink even water, so it was a rough day. Even over the next few days and once we got back to Airlie Beach, my throat was still hurting, though it got better each day. I think now, a week later, it finally doesn’t hurt at all.
Despite how awful that was, it was totally worth it in order to experience diving at the Great Barrier Reef. It is absolutely beautiful there. So much sea life, and the coral is gorgeous. In some spots, the coral covers the ocean floor and creates big walls. One reef spot we went to was actually called “The Maze” because there was just a maze of coral that you had to swim through. We saw huge clams, barracuda, all kinds of beautiful fish both huge and tiny, some reef sharks, sea turtles, rays, and a sea snake.
The wreck dive was definitely the highlight of the trip, which we did the last day of the trip. The wreck is a ship that sank in 1911 because of something that happened during a typhoon, but they don’t know what happened because their radio on board was broken. Ironically, the purpose of their trip was to get their radio fixed. The ship sank to about 30 meters on its side, so one side of the ship starts at 18 meters and the other side is resting against the ocean floor at 30 meters.
When we got certified a few weeks ago, we got an Open Water certification, which only allows us to go to 18 meters by ourselves. The advanced course allows you to go to 30 meters, but we didn’t want to be taking a course while on the trip, so an instructor on the boat that was taking a couple of advanced students to the 30 meters for their course took us down too so that we could log ourselves as having a deep dive with an instructor, and then we were able to do the second wreck dive by ourselves. When we were down with the instructor, he showed us an empty water bottle he had brought down with him that was completely crushed from the pressure of the water. Then he cracked open a raw egg he had brought down and showed us how it didn’t spread apart because of the pressure of the water. Then we had to write our names 3 times backwards while he timed us to show us the effects of nitrogen narcosis, which are nitrogen bubbles that form in your blood when you are at such deep depths. After the dive, he timed us again and showed us how much faster we could think at the surface than under that much water. It was pretty cool. Of course, Paul didn’t have much trouble with it since his name is so short! :)
The wreck was really cool. Over the years, it has become an artificial reef because coral has grown all over it, so there were all kinds of huge sea life everywhere. All the fish were absolutely ginormous, except these tiny little neon yellow fish that were following us around and crowding in front of my goggles :) We think they were doing that to take a break from swimming because the current was so strong, they had to really move their tail fin to not be swept away. We couldn’t even make it to the front of the ship (the dive started at the back of the ship) because the current was so strong. However, we still got to see so much cool stuff swimming by us that could actually fight the current. We saw a huge eagle ray which has big black spots on its back.
(this is from the internet, and so are the next 2 pics, but since we didn't get pictures of these, we wanted to show you what we saw)
We also saw some big barracuda
a sea snake that was about 6 feet long (but he didn’t care much about us)
a shark sleeping in the bottom of the ship (we’re not sure what kind of shark it was, but it had a rounded nose and a thin tail), and Paul saw a huge Grouper that he almost ran into because it blended into the color of the ship :) It was so cool. Definitely the best scuba trip we have ever taken and definitely worth me getting sick the first night :)
Unfortunately, despite the fact that I have such an attention to detail for most things, sea life is not one of them. Every time we got back on the boat and started talking with people about what we had seen, I could never remember the details of any of the sea life. I knew I saw a big yellow and blue fish but couldn’t remember the exact markings, or I knew I saw a ray but didn’t realize there are a bunch of different types of rays and I had no idea what the shape or color of the ray was that we saw :)~ Fortunately, Paul was much better at that than I am, so he remembered a lot more and figured out that we had seen a couple of different kinds of angelfish, and the rays we saw at the Yongala was an eagle ray (we still don’t know what kind of ray the other one was that we saw at the reef), so that was cool.
This trip was so incredibly awesome, that we decided not to go on another dive while in Airlie Beach because it just wouldn’t compare to this trip. So, for the last week in Airlie Beach, we just hung out and I did some work. We were supposed to go fishing, but we decided to save that for New Zealand when my sister is with us because she wants to go fishing too.
Check out our pictures from the trip. Again, unfortunately, they aren't super clear, but they are cool.
