My day started at 4:00 AM to Amanda D. waking me up for my solo hour long shift on anchor watch supervising the position of the boat in our bay here in Lombok. We were given a debrief from Tomer and new shift wheel last night explaining the task. My watch was accompanied by three different town’s call to prayer echoing across the bay under the full moon and the glassy ocean. After being replaced by Kiley at 5 I caught a few more hours of sleep. We all awoke for breakfast at 7:30 followed soon after by the uncertified scubadivers first dive of the day. We went to a different part of the bay for our second round of shallow water “confined” dives in an attempt to avoid the zero visibility conditions we found ourselves in yesterday. The plan succeeded and the visibility was incredible. My dive group made up of Ava and Hannah with Philip as the “baby dive master” and Ben as our instructor got in the water around 8:15 having set up our gear the night before. The second group headed by Gabe was made up of Juliette, Travis, Kiley and Ainsley with support from Will. With our scuba diving expectations set to the lowest of lows after yesterday, today blew our minds!! Indonesia has some of the best reefs left in the world and I now understand why. Our first dive in 10 feet of water surrounded by bombies of branching coral and colorful fish decorating their branches dotting the white sand bottom, and I’m told it’s only going to get better! We knelt in the sand and practiced safety skills like filling our masks with water and emptying them by blowing from our noses with our heads tilted back. We practiced controlling our buoyancy, dealing with malfunctioning equipment and sharing our air with our dive buddies. After a quick lunch and a refill of our tanks it was right back in the water for another few hours. Our next two dives were our first in open water which allows us down to 30 feet. The second half of the day was without a doubt the coolest combined 45 minutes of my life in the water to date. We swam face to face with beautiful fish, the deepest many of us have gone underwater, communicating with big grins, hand signals and Ava and Hannahs newly invented sign language to cover the areas PADI left out, like: turtle, starfish, mermaid and of course dance party! While the uncertifieds dove, those with more experience went ashore in the morning, walked along the beach and Charles picked me up some peanuts from a local vendor. In the afternoon they did check-dives under the boat to work towards higher scuba qualifications. During our Sea-shower before dinner we all talked about our dives and the beauty of the underwater world right up until people started getting stung by invisible jellyfish… Our dinner was accompanied by yet another beautiful sun setting behind the volcano on Bali in the West. The food today was so delicious, courtesy of Captain Tomer and the Sous-Chefs. All the meals were healthy, very good, and masterfully presented with unique colors, formats and names worthy of a few Michellin Stars. My squeeze question of the day was “what is your earliest memory?” and my appreciation of the day was extended to the little family of black and white clownfish my group swam past, living in a stand alone anemone made up of a mom, dad, two little children and a clutch of eggs that the parents very bravely protected from us. Huge shout out to Meg and the others that helped fill up our tanks between dives! As well as our instructors and divemasters for being so cool and keeping us safe!
I’m writing this Blog next to Tomer as we plan our passage tomorrow on our way to see some Whalesharks! We’re all so excited and greatful to be living such full days, in a stunning part of our planet, on the magnificent Argo.
Signing off for now,
Love you Mom and Pop!
Wishing you all the very best!
-Bodhi