Chapter 1
Today the 24th September 2016 Terry rummaged through draws containing things of his around his mum’s house. Most of the stuff was rubbish which he threw away. But amongst it all he found a selection of old dive log books, including ones with the dates and his thoughts on his first dive courses. He also found some diaries he kept whilst on his travels, once again these will be good to jog his memory and put exact dates to certain happenings on his adventures.
It is now the 1 October 2016. Terry is now looking through another selection of his old dive logs. So far he has found out that they start in Thailand and finish in Sri Lanka meaning they will cover such countries as Israel, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, South Africa, Malaysia, Belize, Mexico, Brunei, Indonesia, Burma, Australia and the Philippines. Terry and his girlfriends (later to become wife as they got married on the Island of Malapascua in The Philippines) journeys around the world are quite extensive Hopefully reading through these will give him more ideas to type/dictate into readable format and then post them onto his websites. This will probably be quite long and infuriating work as a few of books are water damaged from the flood of Terry’s parents’ garage where the books were in storage. This means that reading them will be a touch difficult, but hopefully he will be able to work things out and then record them into a “word” document for future reference.
Excerpts from Terry’s first dive log book
Theses are excerpts from Terry’s first dive log are as follows;
Open Water Training Dives Nos. one and two. 12th July 1994.
Open Water Training Dives Nos. four and five. 13th July 1994
All dives at Swanage pier. Dorset, England.
Looking back in Terry’s log book things seem a touch confusing as it seems there was no training dive three logged. Just some smudged writing from where the book must have got wet. It is such a long time ago that Terry can not remember exactly what happened. In hindsight the way the course was taught quite badly. Especially the instructor tying Terry’s girlfriend to a pier leg to stop her from being able to make a dash for the surface if she experienced panic whilst carrying out a particular skill that she was having trouble mastering.
After these dives are logged the next entries are from February 1995. When Terry was doing His Advanced Open water course on a ‘live aboard’ dive boat whilst on holiday with his girlfriend at the Great Barrier Reef off Australia. His dives were three ‘core’ dives consisting of ‘Night’ ‘Deep’ and ‘Navigation’ plus two other ‘elective dives ’ including ’multilevel and search and recovery. Once again Terry had a rather blasé instructor who seemed to come across as that diving was for ‘adventure seeking tough guys’. Luckily there was another person on the course who did not get on very well with the instructor either, so it was not just Terry who had the problem of the “macho” way in which they were being taught. And on another plus side is it had come to the end of the instructor’s time aboard the dive boat and he would be replaced by another instructor. So under the tutelage of the new instructor Terry carried on and passed his Advanced Open Water Diver certification. Then Terry tried his hand at a bit of wreck diving back in England on the shipwreck of the Luis. Terry went out on a fast R.I.B for the dive on the 1st July 1995.
Next there was a ‘’fun dive’ diving in the Ionian Sea through some caves in the island of Zakynthos in Greece on the12th July 1995.
After that there was dives in England on the 18th and 19th of August 1995. One of these dives was on the wreck of a German submarine called the UB 1195 and the other two were just dives in sand and rubble to look at the marine life which consisted of mainly crabs, moray eels and lobsters.
Terry’s next dive was on the 22 October 1995 just after he had bought a Dry suit from a dive shop in Portsmouth and was taken out to learn how to dive in it. He dived once again on the wreck of the German submarine U B 1195. This wreck was quite a deep dive for Terry in those days being at 29 to 30 m deep. In those days Terry was just beginning his diving and the depth of the dive mixed with the experience of diving in a dry suit combined to make his air consumption increase. It looks from his dive log that he did not stay down for very long as he emptied his tank of air fairly quickly.
It also looks like that was the last of his diving experiences in England as the winter had come on and the conditions out to sea would be too rough to go out in to dive. Also he would be working as many days of the week he could because he needed to save up for his planned one-year trip around the world. So days spent out diving would eat into his savings.
The next entry in the dive log was when he dived in the country of Belize on 7 August 1996. This would have been about a month after he had started on his first world travel. He had intended on diving in the first country he started in which was Canada but this proved rather difficult to organise as most the diving was done in lakes up in the Rockies mountain range and were rarely dived. So Terry left it until he made it to the nice warm tropical waters of the Caribbean. He did three dives that day the first of which was in the famous “blue hole”. The “whole” is a very deep dive site. Terry made it to 40 m probably his deepest dive to date. But in the warm and clear waters of the Caribbean it is easy to go deep without knowing it. On the dive he saw a myriad of colourful reef fishes, some nice corals and a couple of giant barracuda swimming through the stalactite/archways in the hole. These dives were completely different from what he was used to diving in England and little did he know then that this would be the kind of environment he would be spending quite a few years of his life ahead in.
His next entries in the dive log book were from when he dived on the wreck of the Rainbow Warrior which was sunk in the bay of Islands in New Zealand. He did two dives in total in that area. One dive on the wreck and the other on a reef/rock wall looking for lobsters to catch and to take home to the Youth Hostel he was staying in for his dinner. Writing this now has bought back a lot of memories from his time spent in New Zealand which he will write about in a short while.
The first of which is a story about Terry’s stay in the town of Pahia on the North Island of New Zealand. Terry went to the only dive shop in town to enquire about going for a dive on the Rainbow Warrior shipwreck. As it turned out the dive shop only went there once a week and they had only just gone the previous day. Which meant Terry would have to wait a week to dive the wreck. This would involve spending money on accommodation during his stay; Terry was on quite a tight budget and had to seriously consider his options. His first option was to ask the hostel he was staying in if they had any work he could do in exchange for his night’s accommodation. As it turned out they did have some work for him. The work would be tending to their overgrown garden, so as it turned out for a bit of manual labour pruning bushes, cutting back overgrown trees and generally doing some pruning and cleaning out of weeds for a couple of hours a day he got his accommodation thrown in for nothing. Terry soon realised that this was a good plan to carry on with on his travels as hostels always need menial jobs doing such as gardening, cleaning toilets and kitchens, changing bed linen, painting and general tidying up of the premises. There was never any money to be gained from these jobs but it meant that Terry was saving money not paying for a night’s accommodation. The money saved could be saved for more adventurous activities such as SCUBA diving and drinking beer. One thing that Terry realised was no matter ‘hard up’ the average ’backpacker was they could always afford a beer or some other alcoholic drink.
19th September 1996. The time quickly passed and it was soon time to head out and get on with the dives. After the first wreck dive they then headed back towards Harbour. Stopping at a dive site on the way back in. On this dive they looked at the marine life and then proceeded to try and catch some lobsters. Terry’s guide made the job of catching a lobster look easy but when Terry tried it he found out how difficult it actually was. Eventually he caught one and pulled it out of its hiding whole and put into a “catch bag” he was carrying with him for just that purpose. Once dive was over Terry got back on the dive boat and they had water buckets ready people to put their catch in to keep them nice and fresh on the journey home to port. Once back in town Terry went to the local bar with his fellow divers of the day and his lobster. After a couple of drinks there he then headed back to the hostel for a shower, change of clothes and something to eat. This is where the hard bit of the story comes in. After he had showered and changed it was then time to prepare his evening meal. The meal was to be mainly consisting of the lobster he had caught. But during the journey home and the couple of beers consumed in the bar Terry had become quite attached to his lobster didn’t really want to eat it as he thought it was a touch cruel. The girl he got to know in the hostel took over from Terry. She boiled a pot of water and threw the lobster in. Therefore killing and cooking it at the same time. Terry has to admit he feels a bit guilty about doing that to his diving “friend” but it tasted very nice.
Having done his dive on the Rainbow Warrior shipwreck his time in the town of Pahia was up and it was time for him to carry on with his travels. On these travels he managed to squeeze in another couple of dives in the Marlborough Sound on the south Island of New Zealand both these dives were on shipwrecks on the 16th November 1996. The first dive was on the shipwreck of the KOi in Double cove. The second wreck they dived was on a much smaller shipwreck of a concrete built fishing boat Terry managed to scavenge a few scallops off the Second wreck they dived which he cooked up for his dinner on his return to the hostel he was staying in at the time.
