Our new equipment arrived a few days earlier, and so we headed to Portsea to test it out in preparation for the rest of our Portsea holiday. The equipment included regulators, fins, computers, a compass and a cheap digital camera in an expensive underwater housing.

Everything in the dive ran pretty smoothly, although the camera ran out of batteries prematurely, a reoccuring problem that we would eventually fix by using much better quality NiMH batteries. The other dissapointment were a couple of 'Storm Whistles' that can apparently use be used above or below water. While you can certainly blow the whistle underwater, it's far from being audible. On the surface, however, the whistles are deafeningly loud.

While the dive was not very deep, it was our longest dive on record, at 54 minutes underwater. Some of this time was spent doing refresher exercises, which were greatly assisted by our new underwater slates.

A lot of our time underwater was spent chasing fish. It's amazing how normally docile sea-life will flee as soon as a bright-yellow camera housing is pointed in their direction. As such, we have many pictures of fish's rear-ends. This was good practice in learning how to use the camera, and certainly a good lesson in why it's important to stay still while photographing.

We found the reef off to the side of the pier, and spent a considerable time exploring it. I was more than a little nervous during this time, as the area is also used a mooring area for boats, and while it doesn't receive anywhere near as much traffic as the pier, it was also in much shallower water.

After the dive I was very pleased to show no signs of sea-sickness whatsoever. Taking ginger tablets before heading out was definitely a very good idea.

	Web pjf.id.au

Technical clue provided by Perl Training Australia

Copyright 2000-2008 Paul Fenwick. Copyright information