Similan Islands

Trip Start Jan 29, 2008
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Trip End Mar 04, 2008


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Sunday, March 2, 2008

Today was the second and last day of my liveaboard trip to the Similan Islands. We had three amazing dives today. I was with the same buddy I had yesterday, Anja, and Kelly and Scott were with us again. It was just the four of us with our dive master Vincent. Scott had his camera with him on all the dives and on the last dive of the day we spent most of it taking goofy photos. That's probably why we didn't see any mantas, we were too distracted by taking our regs out and showing our teeth for the camera. I have asked him to email me the photos so hopefully that'll happen!

Our first dive was at 7:00am on Ko Bon Pinnacle. Ko Bon means "Hope Island". The pinnacle is beautiful. We saw four leopard sharks and got right up next to one lying on the floor. The others were swimming around us. The visibility was outstanding this morning. Vincent figured it was 50 or 60 metres. We were down 36m and could see the surface of the water perfectly.

The dive boat picked us back up for breakfast. I have to say our captain is amazing. He comes and picks us up and gets right up next to us after every dive, maneuvering the massive dive boat perfectly. The first time I saw it heading right for us yesterday I was kind of scared actually but Vincent told us we have nothing to fear and the captain is tops.

Breakfast was delicious. Ko Bon
Ko Bon
 I could smell the bacon cooking before our first dive so I was thinking about it the entire time. I noticed I had some buoyancy issues on the bottom and when we surfaced I kept inflating my BCD and then I would start sinking after a few minutes so I told Vincent I think I had sprung a leak. He found a hole in the back of the BCD and fortunately he was kind enough to let me go to the bacon while he dealt with it. These guys rock!

After breakfast we did a second dive on the same island but on the ridge this time. Here we saw another leopard shark, some lionfish, a moray eel, some tiny octupi, and even some puffers. It was a spectacular dive and the ridge was amazingly beautiful and colourful.

Then we had lunch followed by our final dive on the same island, but the other end of the ridge. We didn't really see anything too exciting but it is a beautiful ridge anyway. I guess you don't need to see a shark on *every* dive for it to be good! There was still a ton of life down there and Vincent always knows how to keep things interesting. He had us hold on to the ridge in a strong current and then after a few minutes we let go and swam like mad to keep up with him.
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