Competition day 3

The weather is finally clearing up. I'm sure this place is windier than home though! Today the black hole was starting to turn blue and the visibility was better, however still just a mere 15m or so. At least there was minimal surface current, which has been one of the things concerning me when I do no fins as it seems to mess up the entry and then the dive just goes poorly. Today I nominated 41m without fins. I thought I'd start off with something fairly easy in the attempt to boost my confidence a little. It was a pretty easy dive, but I still need to work on relaxing under water. It's getting better but can be the difference between a sucessful outcome and not! Anyway I furthered my national record by another 5m, with plenty more left to go further.

Yesterday I tried to have a rest day. I coached Kerian through his 60m constant weight dive, then we went exploring. We went to Galloway's landing, which is a beach near Clarence Town. It was on the lea side of the island, so we were hoping for calmer seas. The beach was stunning and the waves weren't too bad. We hopped in and swam towards a dark patch that we expected to be a reef. The water was beautiful but there was minimal life. We found one tiny little reef and then went looking for a bigger one. We just kept on swimming over the top of beautiful golden sand, but no reefs came. We turned back when the electrical storm hit. The colour out there were amazing. The water was a stunning light blue which was really set off against the backdrop of purple-grey sky as the storm came through. We expected an easier swim home due to the fact that we felt we had swum against the current all the way out, but there was no such luck! It was quite an exhausting “dive” for my rest day!

After the big swim we went in search of some good food and found a bar and grille on the opposite side of the island in Clarence Town (remembering that the island is incredibly narrow). I branched out and ordered the snapper. The plate arrived with two whole snapper on it and lots of veges. It was pretty good. Later most of the divers here were going out for dinner at Chez Pierre's, however the boat hadn't arrived with the fresh produce, so he couldn't feed us and we were forced to look for a different retaurant. We ended up going back to the same place. I managed to eat a couple of quite large pork chops, so definitely had a good level of protein for today's dive. To be honest I felt more shattered after my rest day than I normally would after a big dive. Oh well, might just have to continue to take it easy over the next few days...