Wednesday, Aug 27, 455am. Woke up to pouring rain outside my window. I was hoping that I wouldn’t get a text from anyone saying they’re backing out of the dive! We had been planning on doing a weekday dive trip for a couple of months already and some little thing called a tropical depression (TD Lawin) wasn’t gonna stop us!
We met up at the Caltex (or Shell?) station on the NLEX, had a quick breakfast in DeliFrance (well, as quick as 4 girls can be over breakfast and a pit stop). The new highway to Subic (called the SCTex – exit thru Dau) is awesome!! Wonderful drive, fantastic view and super fast!! We got to Subic in record time: it wasn’t raining and the ocean was super flat! Once at the dive shop, we quickly analyzed our nitrox tanks, set up our gear and went diving!!
DIVE NUMBER 1
Our first dive was at the LST (landing ship tanker) wreck. This was a US supply ship that was sunk during the 2nd World War. It is 80 meters long and lies upright at 32 meters with it’s doors open. There is a resident school of barracuda and school of yellow tail snappers always patrolling the ship and stingrays all over the deck floor. A big bull shark has been spotted here on several occasions as well as some eagle rays and cuttlefish!
We descended along the buoy line through a shallow layer of muck in the water and as we broke thru it, several large batfish came swimming to us from the deep, seemingly to welcome us! When we got to the wreck, the schools of barracuda and yellowtail snapper were just hanging out like a cloud over the deck at 28 meters. We entered the main hold of the ship and swam through it. It was dark and eerie but you could see light shining through parts of the ship’s deck that had fallen through. Very very cool. There is another narrower entrance on the wreck that leads to the crews’ quarters – you can still see the frame of their bunk beds. I’d done this on a previous dive but we didn’t do it this dive cos I don’t think Cris’s camera would be able to fit through the doors, hehehe… We saw some large snappers and a few small stingrays. We were all diving on 31% nitrox but still managed to hit deco. As we hung out on the buoy line doing our deco stop, the batfish came by again to say goodbye…
We did a one hour SIT on the boat and since we were all girls, everyone brought snacks!! Yey! We spent the very short hour chatting with our divemaster Dante.
Our second dive was to the USS New York. This was a battle cruiser built in Philadelphia in 1891 but had already been de-commissioned by World War 2. It had 4 big guns and was by this time being used as a training vessel. The US armed forces were forced to scuttle it as they were leaving the Philippines to avoid the big guns falling into Japanese hands! It is lying on it’s portside in 27 meters and is about 120 meters long.
The viz on this dive was worse than the first. On the surface, I could barely see my fins through the muck. But the viz got a bit better as we went deeper. We went to see the massive propellers and checked out the bathtub. Then we went to the big guns. We also went inside the wreck and swam through the first and second decks. This is a really fun wreck to explore – there is always not enough time to see everything I would like to on one dive and on a single tank.
One funny note: I’m so used to checking how much air everyone has in their tank during the dive. And what usually happens on a normal (working) dive is that even before my tank is half empty, someone in the group is low on air and we have to end the dive too soon (for me anyway)… So, some 40 minutes into the dive, I checked my gauge and noticed that I had less than half a tank left (90 bar or 1300psi).. So out of habit, I asked the rest of the girls how much air they had. Marge had 1800 psi, Cris had 1500psi and Ma-an had 1600 psi!! Wow! I had the least amount of air hahaha…What a treat!! The funnier thing was, when we surfaced, our divemaster Dante said “di ko makakalimutan tong araw na to – naubusan ako ng hangin!!” hahaha… i love diving with these girls!!
LATE LUNCH!
After rinsing our gear and showering, we went to Meat Plus for burgers. We were so hungry so we wolfed down our lunch.. Cris and Marge went home ahead cos Cris had obligations in Manila. Ma-an and I raided the duty free shops first and then had dinner in Quattro in QC (yumyum) before going home.
After rinsing our gear and showering, we went to Meat Plus for burgers. We were so hungry so we wolfed down our lunch.. Cris and Marge went home ahead cos Cris had obligations in Manila. Ma-an and I raided the duty free shops first and then had dinner in Quattro in QC (yumyum) before going home.
Some people find it funny weird strange that on my free day i would choose to go diving cos isn’t that what I do for a living? But even though teaching diving is my work – when i’m diving with the right peopIe, I still enjoy it as much or even more than when I started! Especially wreck diving!
