(photo by andrew simpson) me on the pinnacle outside southern arch
a few of us stayed up in tutukaka for the night and on board pacific hideaway in the marina. a huge thank you to denise and mark for doing some extra fills for us and letting us use the boat as accomodation.
the day after new years day we went out diving with noel and jo on yukon charters. anna, andrew, lee, alex, craig and i were joined by sonia, rob and rachel and a couple of others. also joining us was pretty much the whole yukon crew – noel, jo, paul and mary. it was a great boat load of people and we headed out with a lovely day.
i had a nice nap on top of the boat on the trip out. we headed out to southern arch which i havent dived before and jo got us organised into teams to make gearing up and getting in nice and easy. course with paulie calling the shots (team three, please report to the back deck) all hilarity ensured but it worked really well!
dive one – the pinnacle outside southern arch
max depth = 22.8m
bottom time = 62mins
craig had his camera and wanted to take photos and i was quite happy just to cruise around. we headed down to the depths and watched a lovely short tailed stingray swim through the channel. the side of the pinnacle had some beautiful small gorgonian fans and we met andrew who took my photo (as above) and it came out really well. thanks so much andrew!
there were a lot of yellow and grey eels around. craig and i dived in a zig zag pattern backwards and forth around the pinnacle and found a speckled moray down near where the boat was.
we came right back to the anchor line and spent a good 15mins just floating on top of the pinnacle doing a safety stop and just hanging with the fish and the nudibranchs.
dive two – eastern arch (and the cave)
max depth = 22.6m
bottom time = 50mins
i hadnt dived with alex the whole long weekend so i cheekily traded craig to lee and took her for myself. our gear was on the outside so we jumped the queue and got ready really quickly – to find that both of us had only about 160-170bar in our tanks.
we decided to do the cave first and headed down to find it. it was really easy to find but alex didnt have a torch. we went pretty far into the cave – just not all the way. we got to spend a good amount of time in the arch though.
the bubbles up bitches had a nice long dive just cruising around and checking out the walls. we’ll have to make sure we get at least once chance to dive together on each trip.
i managed to fill out the last page in noel and jos visitors book as i had been planning, make sure when you are diving with yukon that you do fill out the book and that you also take a look through noels albums onboard. he has some great photos in there. which you would totally expect from the man that knows these islands and the best spots to dive. and as he says – go somewhere you havent been before.
thank you noel and jo – and happy new year to the both of you!
