A social dive at Oak Park today in 30 degree temperatures was an interesting experience.
Because summer is here and the beaches are full we had to park practically near Bass & Flinders and walk down to Oak Park from there.
I was using my new Aeris Epic dive computer with transmitter for the first time. This was the "NEW" I was ringing in from the title.
It took me a few tries to get the transmitter set up but once I had done it it seemed pretty straight forward and should not have presented too much of a challenge if I had read the manual correctly. Thanks to Sam who quickly got things sorted.
Down at the site I was buddied with Mike and Jody and we arranged to meet at 11 am at the stairs.
I realised when I got back to the car that I had forgot my weights again. Too much teaching open water makes me reliant on the trailer for the heavy stuff and today i didn't have it. After a full circuit of the dive block I found some weight. Luckily Mike had a spare 15lb so I used that.
Heading into the water for the first dive my fin strap broke, and in a way that I could not fix. This was the "OLD" I farewell-ed from the title.
So I asked Mike and Jody to go ahead without me given my car was >500m away. I saw Sam with the DM led group on the way out and I asked her if it was OK if I joined them once I fixed my strap. She said OK and I told them not to wait and I would find them. Oak Park is so easy to navigate that it would be harder not to find them. I trudged all the way back to the car and got my spare strap and returned.
I headed down to by Split Rock and waited for Sam and the group. While I was there I found this nice little sponge and took a few pics.
I was also visited by a curious Comb Wraisse who either thought I was too close to home or thought there may be a feed.
I met up with Sam and the group and followed them through the rest of the dive. We did find some nice Nudibranchs on the way back and I snapped some pics.
After the first dive we had lunch and a diver from another group had twisted his ankle on the way down to the beach. Sam was going to drive him to the hospital to have it looked at as he could not walk on it, so I led the second dive.
After lunch and a briefing we headed in for our second dive. I had 4 people in the group. Adrian, Rob, Kelvin and Jonathan. We headed out slowly along the reef wall and found many interesting things, Nudi's, Moray eel, Blue Grouper, Old Wives, Bulls eyes, to name a few.
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| Rob |
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| Adrian |
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| Johnathan |
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| Kalvin |
At Split rock I checked on their air and they all have over 150bar so we swam on to the second reef. As we neared the urinal Rob indicated to me that he was @ 110 bar so we turned around and headed back. We had a brief photo session to capture the moment.
All up 2 very good dives and although the visibility was only 3M Oak Park never fails to deliver a great dive.
On the new Aeris Epic:
I loved the transmitter and having my air gauge on my arm, it took a bit of getting used to but seeing your air in 1 bar increments is really a whole new world of detail. I am used to glancing at an analogue gauge and never really take much notice of the value the needle is pointing at as much as its general direction.
Also I have some great dive profiles That I am just learning to play with. Here is a snapshot, I'll see if I can animate these in the future. I was skeptical of the transmitter devices for all the old school reasons (battery loss, failure etc) but now having used one I can see the extra information far outweighs any possible data loss risk.
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