A Miraculous Weekend

We went diving (again) this weekend – and, what a miraculous weekend!
Miraculous coz we were:
a) diving at Miracle Waters
b) it was injury free (pretty amazing with all that was going on!)
c) Shona and I only managed to loose a compass (me), cylinder (me) and ourselves (Shona’s navigation skills!)
After shoving a “miraculous” (sorry – I had to) amount of stuff into my car, we hit the road early on Saturday morning. And that is when Shona and I started laughing, which meant we were well on the way to mild hysteria by the time we reached Hartebeespoort for breakfast. When Alex pulled out her “Oppie Koppie” glasses, we were finished and Jerome (a new French member of the club) was beginning to think he’d made a mistake coming. By the end of breakfast with Anne and Meg involved as well, I think he was pretty convinced! Especially as we went back to the shops about 5 times to get things we had forgotten, despite my car already being overflowing! Anyway, onwards to Miracle waters!
We arrived and set up base, only to move base 5 minutes after we’d finished setting up. Our first dive was to about 15m to do navigation. So we needed to use compass, which would be fine, if somebody (aka yours truly) didn’t get to the descent point minus compass which was definitely in my hand when I left the shore… Luckily we had another compass and did a “search and recovery” and found it on the way back. However, I also “lost” my cylinder (2 dives in a row – am getting a complex – are my buddies trying to tell me something?). My cylinder was quickly re-secured but not without Shona (not my buddy on that dive) falling off the bus she was laughing so much – and didn’t stop when we hit the surface, leading Jerome to believe that we really are mad!
Despite most of the rest of the country having cold, rainy weather, Miracle was very warm – especially in a wetsuit so we quickly made shelter from shade cloth between 2 cars – and then proceeded to cram cooler boxes, people etc underneath for a whole 2 minutes before it was time to kit up again! This time we went to the bus and then plane and Shona and I did well – not loosing anything, not freezing too much, not getting narc’d… We make an awesome pair! Except, as usual, we hit the surface and burst out laughing at something, totally convincing Jerome that we were high.
Our next dive was a 30m skills dive, and thank goodness, we had moved around the dam so we didn’t have a huge long swim again to get to the grid. All went well, until Shona and I decided to move around the grid as we were getting knocked by the people doing skills… except that this little movement caused Shona to become so narc’d she was giggling non-stop and couldn’t get back onto the grid (distance perception!)! In true buddy style, I didn’t desert her, despite her mocking my graceful entries into the water, and we ended up having a great dive.
Then it was night dive time :) And a 30m night dive at that! I got totally narc’d and was quite relieved when Chris (my buddy)’s torch decided to die so it meant he had to hold onto me and lead me for the rest of the dive. At 30m, with no torches, it is pitch black! Again, a great dive. Thanks Francois! When we got to the surface, we realised Paolop (sorry, Paolo)’s torch had also died so he and Shona had a similar dive to Chris and I!
As usual, around a braai, there was much talking and laughing (and drinking). The conversation of the night though had to be Shona and Chris’s discussion of their “marriage” (they were talking at that stage and not "divorced" - Peter wasn't around to steal Chris!) to a 1* who didn’t know them. It was quite funny watching Slim trying to decipher what was going on! Basically good friends and nothing more, Shona and Chris also get “divorced” at the slightest hint of anything and both have other “interests” as well so to outsiders it could be very confusing especially when they both deny it being an open relationship. The other laughing points were Francois jokes…
Bed time called and ended up with Meg, Shona, Chris and myself all sharing a small 4 man tent, on a smaller mattress! Emphasis on the word small. This inevitably, with Shona, Meg and I involved, ended up in giggles, until Meg fell asleep and Shona started getting SMS’s from Paolop telling us to keep quiet! However, no sooner had we kept quiet than over-amourous doves started calling. Let me explain that they were in a cage, right next to our tent! Who keeps doves in cages? And why on earth did they start coo’ing at 2:30am again! And 3:30? And 4:30? Which then woke up an over-excited rooster and he proceeding to start crowing. By 6am, we were all awake, drinking coffee and plotting ways to get rid of certain birds!
But we did get the best dive of the weekend in (thanks Mike)! It was a 30m to a helicopter – much to the excitement of all diving as only Karen had been there before. So after a long swim out, we go down to 30m. And Shona gets narc’d. Again. In hindsight, maybe 30m wasn’t a great place to start diving with a slate and knife but it was only when I wrote how awesome it was and she agreed, but said what is it (to a rather large helicopter) and started leaving her mark that I realized quite how narc’d she was! But we have now left our names at the bottom of Miracle! After a quick explore, we headed back up.
Our final dive was another nav dive with Rob, from the bus so we could “explore” while people were doing their nav. Despite having no trail mix, I still managed to bounce on the bus, and Shona and I really made our mark! Then it was our turn to navigate and we ended up doing a 3-sided square… and getting slightly lost in the process (all Shona’s doing!). This of course caused more hysteria back on the surface. However, before surfacing we went on a little explore and saw so many whelks – WOW!
Then it was back to pack up and drive home… but needed to pack first - a car that was packed to the brim with 2 people on the way there now needed to get 3 people back... um, err. And then we were starving so to extend the weekend, a whole lot of us went for dinner as well :)
Once again, thanks to those SPECIAL people (you know who you are) who, despite everything else, made the weekend so enjoyable for me! And to those who organized it! BIG THANKS!
Pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/lancasterjenny/AMiraculousWeekend?authkey=Gv1sRgCInYufTg7Zi3_QE#