Broulee Cave. NSW South Coast Diving

Australia Day long weekend 2012 and we headed down to Eden for a wreck diving extravaganza.
On the way down the coast just south of Batemans Bay is great little dive site at Broulee.
Broulee is inbetween Mogo and Moruya on the coast off the highway

You park as close to the Ocean as the road will allow, there is a small carp park at the end of the road. At the end of the car park are some steps and you head SSE to any suitable entry point. The cave location is shown approximately here.




View Broulee Cave in a larger map 

This is a great little cave dive and is suitable for open water divers and above. We found a 2 meter long Wobbygong  shark in the cave and he wasn't too happy with the attention he got from 16 scuba divers.

 

Jane gearing up!

 This is a great dive and if you are traveling along the South Coast of NSW I would highly recommend a visit here.

Kellie pointing to the cave from the car park steps

16 of us on the trek to the ocean

Friendly sting ray

Not so friendly sting ray

Ben at the beach exit

 The exit is on the beach and there is a nice little shallow swim around an interesting reef to get there.

Bare Island

Double dive at Bare Island with Jane trying out her new Delta regulator and a Hera BCD.

Bare Island pre-dive briefing

Jane getting ready in the new car park

kitted out with all the new gear

Nudibeanc

Friendly and hungry Moray eel

Nudibranc

In between dives R&R

You looking at me?

Oak Park

Double dive at Oak Park and 4 Scuba reviews, I need to get back into blogging the dive straight after to keep it up to date. Scuba review with Kat, Daniel, Wayne and Claire,
A nice dive at Oak Park unfortunately no pictures this week.
Looking forward to Eden next week!

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Open Water - The Connellan's

Over the break I had the pleasure of teaching the Connellan family to dive. They really were very comfortable in the water and had no problems with any of the skills required for Open Water Certification.

Well done Rob. Michael and Jack (nemo)

Rob, Michael, me and Jack

Ring in the new and farewell the old at Oak Park

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.

Rob

Adrian

Johnathan

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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Bass & Flinders Point

Windy Point was the original destination but the surf was up and it was way too rough to attempt it. We went around to Oak Park and there was a surf competition on and the water was full of surfers. This obviously made things less than optimal so we headed to Bass & Flinders Point.

First dive, I took Lisa and Andrew who were using their equipment for the first time. I took another two gentlemen who had just met each other and my buddy for the day was Camilla.
Kane gave the dive briefing and we headed in for our first dive

The dive was fairly interesting and I do think this is a great little dive site if you don't set your expectations too high. It never gets deeper than 6 meters so this can disappoint the gauge watchers.
There are some interesting areas with a swim through near the end of the reef. We called this dive the Transgender Groper dive. We saw a huge brown groper that was just starting to turn blue. It was in the process of changing from a female to a male. I accidentally knocked a sea urchin off and the blue/brown groper wasn't sure how to go about it. It took him/her several attempts to eventually get a feed.

The second dive we went to the end of the reef and through the swim through and had a nice Little play with a curious octopus. At first he was scared and thought we were going to eat him, once he realized we were not going to eat him he decided to have a try at eating us. Lots more fun than it sounds :)

Forster Shark Dives - a conglomeration of forgotten

A great weekend in Forester and the summer holiday season was quite evident with 30+ temperatures, and the beaches and restaurants full of tourists. The diving did not seem quite as good as May but the ocean is fickle and luck of the draw may be a bigger factor than time of the year.

Getting ready at Seal Rock

 Blunder number one for the trip was forgetting my wetsuit. I had to hire a 2 piece 7mm  with a 'Joan Collins' off the shoulder number (modelling above) covered by a crutch hugging 1960's James Bond top jacket.

Jane and a Wobbegong (carpet Shark)

Wobbegong from above (perfect camouflage)

 We had two boat dives on the first day. We drove down to Seal Rocks from Forester and picked up the boat from the beach, it took about 40 minutes to drive. We went out to little rock for the first dive but the visibility was only about 4M. We saw a few grey nurse sharks and plenty of Wobbegongs. The Wobby are everywhere and the really deserve the name 'carpet shark' as they literally carpet the whole area.

Port Jackson Shark

Curious Puffer fish

 We had a great night out on Saturday with 10 of us in The Aztec Mexican restaurant. The food was very nice and they had a live band playing that kept us very entertained for the whole evening.

Wobby and PJ best of friends (until dinner time)

Grey Nurse at Seal rocks - Big Rock

Day 2 was a little 'special' and is probably a dive that I will never forget for a very particular reason.
We headed out through the bar from Forester and the boat was almost swamped in a huge wave, but that was just good fun. We went to The Pinnacle but there was rag weed everywhere so we decided to go out to 'Spot A'. There was a 3M swell and everyone was starting to look very green by the time we arrived at the dive site. The DM jumped in and checked out the site and said the current was too strong for us to dive. He went down the anchor line at the front of the boat and his bubbles were surfacing about 10M behind the boat so the current was very strong. A blue water ascent would have seen us needing our safety sausages for sure.
Whilst this was happening at least 2 people threw up, Mexican food, red wine and a 3M swell are not a great combination. We headed back to The Pinnacle and it just seemed that we had been on the boat for too long at this time.

Grey Nurse

Close encounter

 At The Pinnacle the DM jumped in to check out conditions and we started to gear up. Whilst gearing up another 3 people threw up and I started to feel very ordinary. I decided to get in the water as soon as possible. The 3M swell was making conditions difficult on the boat and the feint aroma of bile was starting to fill the air.

I decided to jump in and as I was filling my BCD, just before I stepped off the boat, I realized that my air was off. I quickly asked Jane to turn on my air as I was only just holding everything together at this point. With the air on I leapt into the ocean and started to feel much better. I watched several people throwing up over the side of the boat as it bobbed like a cork in a washing machine.


Eventually everyone got into the water and we decided to descend as quickly as possible because some people were feeling rough on the surface. I deflated my BCD and still stayed on the surface? I duck dived and swam down to 5M but as soon as I stopped swimming I noticed I was returning to the surface. That was when I realised that I had not brought any weight. I kept swimming down and after a few minutes found a large rock that I cuddled like a baby. I was able to continue the dive and spent 40 minutes carrying this large rock around the dive site. We saw a huge Eagle ray just meters away. The visibility was quite poor with al the weed in the water and we did hear that the other group almost bumped into a 3M Grey Nurse shark.

You looking at me?

Great Experience and a lesson learned to trust the marine forecast- When they say 3M swell I suggest doing something other than a boat dive.

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