GBR and Yongala Trip Report

[WetPup]

It was a long weekend here, and I was bored, so I jumped on a last minute LOB out of Townsville with Adrenalin Dive to hit the GBR and Yongala for 3 days. Their LOB the "Sea Esta" is pretty basic, but meets the needs of divers well enough. There's hot water showers, marine toilets, a decent sized dive deck, and food is decent. About the only thing I think they could improve on is the lack of working powerpoints for charging gadgets (there's a couple in the galley/lounge area, but not in the rooms). I have lots of camera things to charge - it was annoying.

Anyway, diving was good The reef was in better condition than I had been anticipating, and the Yongala wreck delivered its usual awesome! Weather was rough as , so while it was atrocious on the surface, once you're 10m under the water, it was fine. Came home with a few bruises from being banged around trying to get back on the boat after the dive, but that's life.

Photos be here...

You can see the reef isn't in terrible condition. The dive boats know the GBR well enough to know where to take people, so please stop stressing about coral bleaching ruining your holidays Nobody is pretending it's not an issue, but you can still come and see the reef in pretty good condition.

All in all, it alleviated my boredom for the weekend

 

[Hemrick]

Looks good, how many dives did you get over the weekend?

I'm hoping for my first trip to the yongala sometime in the next month

 

[WetPup]

In theory you could do 10 dives. 4 dives on each of the 2 days on the reef (3 during the day, 1 at night), and then 2 on the Yongala on the last morning. I ditched the first night dive due to seasickness, so did 9 of the 10.

 

[Hemrick]

Seasickness is the one thing that really worries me about a LOB, going out on a day trip is one thing but having to be inside (to at least sleep) and eating is something else

That being said it is something i want to do

 

[WetPup]

Dramamine. Or similar. Buy some before you go. It works about 95% of the time, the other 5% is just when the weather goes above and beyond. We were literally being thrown out of bed one night due to the waves. At the end of the day, you can't control the weather. The forecasts we had for the weekend all said weather conditions were easing up - it got worse once we were already out there. These things happen, the BoM isn't always right. Be preared for it in advance and take appropriate medication with you.

 

[Hemrick]

Dramamine and i are old friends