Back to dry land.....

Aha m'hearties and all other pirating blurb!

So i'm back from the Red Sea after all sorts of aquatic and some not so aquatic adventures.....

First things first... getting to Sharm el Sheik - Monarch Airlines.... Now some of you did point out before i went that Monarch Airlines might not quite be what i was used to in an airline - never have things been so understated. I get to Gatwick at 6.20am for a 9.15am flight to be greeted with what only can be described as an anaconda of a queue. It stretched from the Monarch check in area half way around Gatwick Airport and i quickly realised (being at the very back of the 368 people trying to check onto MON 2865) that this was going to be a rather long morning. Eventually checked in at 8.40 - managed to barge through security as somehow Monarch had decided the flight was still going to leave on time and the board said it was last call, to be greeted with the same 368 people now queuing to get on the flight. Not good. Things really didnt improve from there. If anyone can tell me how many seats you can possibly squeeze into an Airbus A300 i would gratefully like to know, the only thing i can tell you is the answer isnt 368. I know being of a larger frame that things are often a little tight but this was ridiculous, it was cramped beyond belief and i still had a five and half hour flight infront of me before i could lever myself out of my chair and off the plane. The plane itself was general half term chaos - the great British public off on hols.... i can see why foreign nations frown upon us so much now. This wasnt Blighty's best advertisment (however the chap making the shirts for Manchester Untied or Chelsea would have been very pleased, as would anyone involved in the tattoo industry, it would appear that in these credit strapped times that these particular parts of the econmy are still doing very well.) Screaming kids, tired annoyed parents (i did actually move seats twice to accommodate families who had been spread all over the plane, who to be honest were well within their rights to be more than a little miffed) moody teenagers, 30 something city types on sabbaticals - i'm sure you can imagine the scene. After settling into my chair next to a very polite elderly couple who "Always go to Egypt at this time of year because its such great value" (not wrong there...) we had the option of paying £5 to "rent" a pair of headphones to watch the inflight movie. I obviously refused to do so given all the grief we'd had getting onto the flight, proving to be a mistake as it was rather bizarre watching Mamma Mia on silent, whilst the only screen sountrack i could remember was Grease! Quite comical (well you had to be there...!) The real only upside to all of this was that a very kind hostess decided to reward me with two bottles of the inflight wine for all the moving i'd had to do ( i must ask my vinter chum Marcus where in France Chateau Similia is, because it has fallen upon rather hard times it would appear..) but it did provide some welcome alcoholic relief my rather uncomfortable situation. The only other thing of note from the flight was falling asleep with my head on the chair infront of me and waking up with what can only be described as some sort of third degree burn on the top of my forehead. I still cant really work out what happened there, but thankfully the saltwater of the Red Sea seemed to sort it out so no harm done.

So after five and half blissful hours we arrive at Sharm. More chaos (at least i was expecting this) - i particularly like the way that there were at least 10 people doing 1 persons job. Bloke to stamp your passport, another bloke to check that the first bloke had stamped your passport, another bloke to check that the 2nd bloke had checked that the first bloke had stamped your passport etc etc... but given we were off the plane it didnt seem to bad. It was at this point i was thrown together with the other 19 people i would spend the next week with on the boat, Typhoon. And here comes the answer to the question i set in the last blog, who goes diving in the Red Sea on a liveaboard in February. Well the answer is allsorts. A quick summary.....

a) My buddy for the week and cabin mate was the editor of a classical music magazine. Hadnt been diving long and was almost driven to violence in the first couple of days as he'd obviously never experienced a noise quite like my snoring. (not many people have...!) Did feel slightly sorry for him, but thankfully one of the other guests had brought earplugs, resulting in him being able to sleep through Bod's late night symphonies!

b) Hippy chick who was recording sounds of the ocean to use in her musical work... was also learning how to film underwater as was off to the galapagos to film sharks.

c) The Cornwalls. Group of proper die hard divers all on rebreathers (the things you see on underwater documentaries when people are at the bottom on the oceans filming creatures that have never been seen before) - at least a couple of thousand dives between them.

d) Mother and daughter on bonding exercise. Bit of an odd one as the daughter obviously didnt really like diving (she spent most of the time sunbathing), but really was a little stuck as there wasnt really much else to do...

e) Happy go lucky group of 3 divers from a diving club near london. Again lots of dives between them, one had the unusual habit of producing florescent orange snot at the end of every dive (and it really was very orange!) I have to thank this group for supplying earlier mentioned earplugs....

f) Pre wedding couple brushing up on diving skills before honeymoon

g) Famous (well apparently) diver tesing new equipment for various magazines. Had a very flashy new camera he was testing out (which took considerably better pictures than mine...!)

h) Norweigen couple who were used to diving in ice cold water looking for wrecks in the North Sea (takes all sorts...)

i) Family of 3 on diving holiday. (very nice they were too...)

It really was a very happy boat and as i've found before, if you throw a very random group of people together who really have very little option but to get on with each other then thats what happens. It did help that we had an ultra cool dive couple (are dive couples ever anything else?) that smoothed over any problems we had with dodgy kit, broken straps, ear ache and the other real killer on the boat, Egyptian Belly. I certainly cant blame the food, which given we were on a boat in the middle of nowhere was fantastic, or i dont think i can, but throughout the week we all came down with it, resulting in immodium being in very high demand (even writing this blog now, having been back 24 hours, i have to say i'm not altogether 100% in the stomach department) I personally blame the fact that you dont use toilet paper on a boat (something i dont really feel i should go into here, but if you want more details please drop me an email and i will elaborate...) which again is something you get used to far too quickly.


We quickly settled into the daily routine of up before sunrise, throw dive gear on, dive at whichever site we were at (many of them famous wrecks in the region) - back on the boat, eat breakfast, sleep, wake up at 10.30, thrown dive gear on, dive another site, lunch, sleep, wake up at 2.30, throw dive gear on.... i think you can guess the rest. Dive, eat, sleep quickly becomes a way of life and not a bad one either i have to say. The diving was simply awesome - wrecks such as the Carnatic and the Thistlegorm inparticular are really beyond description in a blog. I have posted some of my pics on facebook but they really dont do justice to all the things we saw. I have to mention Susie and Thomas our dive guides for being absolutely amazing (and for Susie getting me through my advanced Padi - even if its plainly obvious that i really cant navigate underwater and as for my neutral buoyancy test, well the pictures of me trying to hover crossed legs underwater, lets just hope they never find their way into the public domain...!)

The week passed far too quickly and before i knew it we were cruising back into Sharm with six fun packed days of diving behind me. I have to say that if you want to get some great diving in (i did 19 dives in my six days) that a liveaboard is definitely the way forward. And at this time of year it really is very cheap (you have to suffer the torture of Monarch, but with hindsight even that doesnt seem so bad now). Grab your BCD and get out there would be my advice (but then as lots of people keep on pointing out to me, i'm not actually at work which makes it all a little easier!!)

So now off to sunny Spain to survey the building site that will become CB3 and then back for my birthday drinkathon in Dublin (no forfeits please boys as i am getting rather old, but at least its still a year before the big one..;-)) ) Then the Alps where apparently the snow conditions are excellent which should help me in attempts to learn how to snowboard ( i'm going to spend alot of time on my arse i'm told) - the clubs or Morzine and Chamonix really wont know whats hit them - bring on the Bodigy.....

Catch you all v soon

B