The club couldn’t miss out on a dive described as the best in New South Wales. So Steve W, Steve T, Sam, Gary, Hartley, Paul, Tim and Tony (a potential new member) headed out to Barrens Hut, off the coast of Royal National Park, on an Abyss organised boat trip. A tech diving trip run by Abyss had been scrubbed that morning due to strong current. However, this did not deter our would-be adventurers. Armed with two tanks each and an excessive amount of baby shampoo, the team climbed aboard for the short journey from Cronulla to the dive site.
The earlier reports of strong current were no exaggeration. A few divers found themselves a wee bit gassed from fining hard to the decent line. However, once on the bottom, Hartley and Steve T darted off to the cave, the main feature of the site, where they were met with a swim-through, a large blue groper and an equally oversized cuttlefish. After a short mooch around the site, and a noticeable increase in current, the team were directed to ascend by the dive master. Unfortunately, no one got a photo of the ascent line at the safety stop; crowded with divers looking like perturbed pigeons in a storm. Other divers forgot they were on a boat dive altogether. This group shot off to the shore with the current, probably desperate to get to the pub. Once rounded up, the skipper found a sheltered spot for the obligatory cup-a-soup surface interval.
Due to the aforementioned pesky current, the second dive took place at Marley Point. All agreed that this was much nicer, with comments about the architecture of rock and several sharks encountered, including a grey nurse not interested in mingling with a group of divers and a sleepy Port Jackson.
Some of the team went to the RSL after the dive, where Steve T was gifted a new nickname by the ID scanner and calories lost to the current were returned in burger and beer form.
A fun and challenging day of diving!
