Part three of my Indonesian Dive Trip following on from my North Sulawesi diving at Bangka and Lembeh.
Up early and at the airport by 05:00. Despite my best efforts to ensure I had no tools in my hand baggage the X-ray at security found an allen key. That’s three allen keys that II’ve lost to Indonesian airport security has. I also had my photo taken this time too! Perhaps I’m now in an Indonesian file of a consistent attempted allen key smuggler
@outofofficebrb and I wished each other farewell as both our flights were boarding almost simultaneously and I started my four hour journey to Denpasar on Lion Air via Makassar in South Sulawesi.
This flight was full, and no food or drink served and for some bizarre reason I had to de-plane at Makassar and go through security again with my hand baggage. The only problem was that there was no announcement about this in English, and by the time I realised what was happening it was too late for me to get anything to eat in the airport terminal due to the boarding process already in process, and almost completed. When I did board all of the overhead locker space was full where my seat was located too and it was an emergency exit seat with somebody else sit-in in it
I arrived at Denpasar rather hungry. The driver from Villa Alba was there to meet me and I popped into a small supermarket to buy edible stuff for the two and a half hour drive to Tulumben.
Villa Alba
The dive resort was not busy. There were six divers (two Belgians plus a German guy and his Indonesian girlfriend), who were leaving the next day as well as two Singaporean girls a day leaving later. After they left I was the only diver at the place for three days.
I had been assigned Big Wayan as my guide. Small Wayan was in charge of the Singapore Girls.
Big Wayan
I like to do a check out dive on the house reef if possible wherever I go just to make sure all my gear is working and I don’t have to waste time and miss dives or abort dives later.
Everything worked flawlessly and icing on the cake was a pygmy seahorse on the house reef. I did another two dives afterwards, one at Kwanji for some donut nudis and another back at the house reef to get more shots of the pygmy seahorse.
The following day, small Wayan mentioned that there was a rumour of a Rhinopia at one dive site, and the plan was to go there.
When we arrived at the dive site in question, Sidem, it was busy, probably all the divers in Tulumben were there - about 20. The dive gear was then transported by porters around the beached outrigger fishing boats to the entry point, and we followed carrying only our fins and camera.
Sure enough there was a Rhinopia and a queue underwater to photograph it, where I spent 11 minutes waiting for one guy to take his shots and two minutes for myself as one of the Singaporean girls was also diving with us, and I felt that five or six shots is sufficient especially with other people waiting. However I have noticed that other people do not observe this etiquette.
In fact I felt a bit rushed and given the depth (32m) we had limited time. That aside we did have other subjects to photograph. Later when reviewing my shots I kept only one shot as the others were rather poor. However there is always tomorrow.
The next day We went back to Sidem with my TG6 and the place was empty of other divers ….. and no Rhinopia!
My guess is that with too many photographers around it sought out a more peaceful resting place.
I did have another issue to deal with though. I was descending faster than normal and initially put it down to using a heavier camera rig for this dive (no float arms on this rig) but realised pretty soon that my wing was not inflating.
A quick inhalation and breath hold slowed me down followed by a manual inflation of the wing helped. I stabilised around 25m and watched Big Wayan search for the Rhinopia but to no avail.
Back on the surface I disconnected the LP hose and opened the tank valve. Gas was free flowing out of the LP hose!
Simple solution, replace the LP hose so we returned to Villa Alba to do that then on to the next dive site, Melasti, which always has lots of small stuff. More issues, this time with my strobes, intermittent flashing and I resolve this problem underwater by switching one of the strobes off and using one only which worked.
This was going to be one of these days
Back at Villa Alba I started playing around with the strobes. One was an older Sea&Sea YSD2 (black made in China) and the other a newer YSD2J (yellow, made in Japan)
I initially thought I had an issue with the double cable. I carry a back up single cable and both strobes worked fine with it. The weird stuff was only happening when using the double cable. So all was not lost as I had my TG6 in a Nauticam housing that I was using occasionally with BackScatter MiniStrobes, but I do prefer using my Nikon.
The TG6 in the Nauticam housing uses fibre optic cables and I experimented with them and the Sea&Sea strobes but neither fired - I have subsequently been informed that I need to use thicker fibre optic cable for this purpose (e.g. Sea&Sea) and not the BackScatter cables.
So I was now down to using one strobe.
On the next dive, the one strobe I was using started randomly firing but wouldn’t fire when I pulled the trigger after about taking 20 shots. In the end I just switched the strobe off and just observed for the rest of the dive feeling very frustrated that I couldn't take any shots.
Back at Villa Alba and after a Bintang or two talking to myself, muttering and cursing I decided to connect the two BackScatter Mini Strobes using the fibre optic cables and everything worked perfectly.
On my last day diving I used the Nikon in the Sea&Sea housing with the Mini Strobes and had the best dives of this part of my trip with some amazing action from a pair of mating Wonderpussies as well as loads of nudis at Melasti.
Up early and at the airport by 05:00. Despite my best efforts to ensure I had no tools in my hand baggage the X-ray at security found an allen key. That’s three allen keys that II’ve lost to Indonesian airport security has. I also had my photo taken this time too! Perhaps I’m now in an Indonesian file of a consistent attempted allen key smuggler
@outofofficebrb and I wished each other farewell as both our flights were boarding almost simultaneously and I started my four hour journey to Denpasar on Lion Air via Makassar in South Sulawesi.
This flight was full, and no food or drink served and for some bizarre reason I had to de-plane at Makassar and go through security again with my hand baggage. The only problem was that there was no announcement about this in English, and by the time I realised what was happening it was too late for me to get anything to eat in the airport terminal due to the boarding process already in process, and almost completed. When I did board all of the overhead locker space was full where my seat was located too and it was an emergency exit seat with somebody else sit-in in it
I arrived at Denpasar rather hungry. The driver from Villa Alba was there to meet me and I popped into a small supermarket to buy edible stuff for the two and a half hour drive to Tulumben.
Villa Alba
The dive resort was not busy. There were six divers (two Belgians plus a German guy and his Indonesian girlfriend), who were leaving the next day as well as two Singaporean girls a day leaving later. After they left I was the only diver at the place for three days.
I had been assigned Big Wayan as my guide. Small Wayan was in charge of the Singapore Girls.
Big Wayan
I like to do a check out dive on the house reef if possible wherever I go just to make sure all my gear is working and I don’t have to waste time and miss dives or abort dives later.
Everything worked flawlessly and icing on the cake was a pygmy seahorse on the house reef. I did another two dives afterwards, one at Kwanji for some donut nudis and another back at the house reef to get more shots of the pygmy seahorse.
The following day, small Wayan mentioned that there was a rumour of a Rhinopia at one dive site, and the plan was to go there.
When we arrived at the dive site in question, Sidem, it was busy, probably all the divers in Tulumben were there - about 20. The dive gear was then transported by porters around the beached outrigger fishing boats to the entry point, and we followed carrying only our fins and camera.
Sure enough there was a Rhinopia and a queue underwater to photograph it, where I spent 11 minutes waiting for one guy to take his shots and two minutes for myself as one of the Singaporean girls was also diving with us, and I felt that five or six shots is sufficient especially with other people waiting. However I have noticed that other people do not observe this etiquette.
In fact I felt a bit rushed and given the depth (32m) we had limited time. That aside we did have other subjects to photograph. Later when reviewing my shots I kept only one shot as the others were rather poor. However there is always tomorrow.
The next day We went back to Sidem with my TG6 and the place was empty of other divers ….. and no Rhinopia!
My guess is that with too many photographers around it sought out a more peaceful resting place.
I did have another issue to deal with though. I was descending faster than normal and initially put it down to using a heavier camera rig for this dive (no float arms on this rig) but realised pretty soon that my wing was not inflating.
A quick inhalation and breath hold slowed me down followed by a manual inflation of the wing helped. I stabilised around 25m and watched Big Wayan search for the Rhinopia but to no avail.
Back on the surface I disconnected the LP hose and opened the tank valve. Gas was free flowing out of the LP hose!
Simple solution, replace the LP hose so we returned to Villa Alba to do that then on to the next dive site, Melasti, which always has lots of small stuff. More issues, this time with my strobes, intermittent flashing and I resolve this problem underwater by switching one of the strobes off and using one only which worked.
This was going to be one of these days
Back at Villa Alba I started playing around with the strobes. One was an older Sea&Sea YSD2 (black made in China) and the other a newer YSD2J (yellow, made in Japan)
I initially thought I had an issue with the double cable. I carry a back up single cable and both strobes worked fine with it. The weird stuff was only happening when using the double cable. So all was not lost as I had my TG6 in a Nauticam housing that I was using occasionally with BackScatter MiniStrobes, but I do prefer using my Nikon.
The TG6 in the Nauticam housing uses fibre optic cables and I experimented with them and the Sea&Sea strobes but neither fired - I have subsequently been informed that I need to use thicker fibre optic cable for this purpose (e.g. Sea&Sea) and not the BackScatter cables.
So I was now down to using one strobe.
On the next dive, the one strobe I was using started randomly firing but wouldn’t fire when I pulled the trigger after about taking 20 shots. In the end I just switched the strobe off and just observed for the rest of the dive feeling very frustrated that I couldn't take any shots.
Back at Villa Alba and after a Bintang or two talking to myself, muttering and cursing I decided to connect the two BackScatter Mini Strobes using the fibre optic cables and everything worked perfectly.
On my last day diving I used the Nikon in the Sea&Sea housing with the Mini Strobes and had the best dives of this part of my trip with some amazing action from a pair of mating Wonderpussies as well as loads of nudis at Melasti.
