Trip Report - Nelson Bay
After a rendezvous in Tuggerah to pick up Caroline and devouring what can only be described as one of 'the biggest pizza in the world' we made our way up to Nelson Bay. The Friday night was pretty uneventful, just chilled out, had a few beers and listened to grandad Mike telling us stories from the war and from when he was a lad.
After listening to the wind and torrential rain hamming off the apartment roof all night, it was inevitable that the planned boat dive the next day to Broughton Island was called off. So not to be outdone by the weather, we decided to try our luck at one of the many shore dives sites that Nelson Bay has to offer.
After checking the tide times, we headed over to Halifax Point and waited in the car for slack water. We must have looked like a right bunch of weirdos/benders, sitting in a car in the woods in our wetsuits. After much deliberation we decided to brave the torrential rain and kit up. This is where Dave’s problems began. Problem 1 – The fancy digital pressure gauge he had didn’t work. Problem 2 – Both of Dave’s tanks had at least 275 bar in them (and no they weren’t 300 bar tanks) and Problem 3 – The regs he had were slightly free flowing. So after 20 minutes tinkering with the regs, donating a pressure gauge and reducing the pressure in the Dave’s tanks to 230 bar we headedoff to what can only be described as one of the shittest dives of my life. Vis was horrendous, we’d slightly missed slack water and Dave’s regs started to free flow again, plus he had the additional bonus of sucking in sea water every time he breathed in. So the dive was canned and we made our way back to the car with our tails between our legs, defeated!
Vicky and Jill arrived later that arvo so after enlightening them with the events of the day, we had a hearty dinner of Fish and Chips, played a bit of balderdash and sunk a few beers/wine, while it continued to rain outside!
The next day it had actually stopped raining, so we decided to try our luck one last time and dive the Pipeline, apparently there’s sea horses around the area, yeah right, we could barely see the Pipeline yet alone a sea horse.
So despite Dave’s near drowning, raining the whole time and the diving being terrible, we actually had a good weekend away!
Moral of the story, always check your dive gear before you go away especially when ‘borrowing it off a Mate’ and shore diving after/during torrential rain is not recommended! :-)
Gary