“Why do you think pirates could never be good divers?”
– “Because the eye patch messes up his depth perception!!”
– The Pirate Crew (Pirate Dive Trip, Pondicherry)
The Bible, a huge trawler boat cleaned up a bit to host the pirate divers for two days in the high seas, was all set to cast off. The crew, comprising of Tucker, Ishaan, Raul, Pascal, Karthik, Koshy, Bryan and Das, led by the first mate John Aj and our captain Jonah. Dessapan, our powder monkey was manning the dinghy/TA4 and navigated both the big and small boat out of the harbour. Once we were out of the harbour, it was time to suit up. Bring out the eye-patches, and the pirate hat, unsheathe your swords, and man the water gun? Oh and hoist the colours too!!!
That lasted for like 20 minutes 😛 But, we had some important business to attend to- in the form of the PADI Enriched Air Specialty course on the boat. The already nitrox certified guys were very happy to make themselves comfortable on the deck and on top of the anchor rope. Note to the Dive Center: We need Hammocks for the next trip!! There were two of the divers playing around with their awesome Scubapro Sidemount kits as well, which one of them apparently manage to mess up completely.
We reached the dive site after around an hour. We would be diving in one of the spots at the famous Aravind’s Wall. It was much fun to kit up and do some really giant strides out of the boat. For once, the Sidemount guys were not very happy with their gear. There was a bit of current, but we all managed to get to the descent line and swim down into the deep blue. The legendary March vizibility brought the Wall to life, with the Fan forest and deep beautiful cuts on the rocky bottom.
We did two dives at the wall and had some pre packed lunch, which will definitely be improved upon in the next trip. During the surface interval Jonah gave us a live demonstration / training on Pooping-in-sea-while-holding-a-buoy. Are we seeing the making of a PADI distinctive specialty? We decided to return to shallow waters for the afternoon and night dives. Word was that the boat captain had coordinates to a place which had a sunken temple at around 20 mts of water. The water was very silty there and because of the tons of fishermen around we decided not to go for a dive there. Almost everyone was heartbroken, and the captain was starting to smell a mutiny in his hands.
The afternoon dive almost turned out to be a dusk dive, as we descended to Temple Reef. It looked very different during that time of the day, with a huge bunch of swarming Jacks successfully chasing away the majority of the fish. We surfaced to a spectacular sunset and waited on the dinghy and some on the mother ship for the night dive. Details of that amazing dive was published earlier…
We got back up to find our mother ship being raided by some divers of Pondicherry, namely Rob a.k.a ‘Ghost Diver of Pondy’ . The barbeque was started very quickly and the food brought out. Nothing like a dinner of grilled chicken, roasted potatoes swimming in a million kgs of butter and grilled onions, with the Pondicherry city lights on the horizon and a cool breeze gently rocking the boat. We successfully managed to drive away the raiders back to the Temple tavern, so that we could have a nice peaceful sleep before the dawn dive the next day. The mats were layed out, with everyone trying to occupy whatever space they could find on the deck. The lights were turned off, with only the signal marker lights blinking brightly infront of a very beautiful starry night sky.
The dawn dive, and first words on Pirate Booty and Cabbage Patch to be continued next week. Follow our blog for regular updates and information about all the awesome stuff we keep doing here in Pondicherry.