Manoj and Anya has somehow managed to work their schedules and the cars such that they could give us a ride to Adelaide Scuba - meeting before 9am for our prep for our dive.
Mark’s favorite underwater creature that he’s ever dove with was a leafy sea dragon. These large seahorse relatives have branch-like growths that hide them well, but their appearance isn’t very practical for swimming. Rapid Bay was determined as the site for the day, so we geared up. After getting our 7mm wetsuits, Mark also asked for a hood for us - which was good forethought. The dive shop acted like it was cold, but not too bad... which is all relative.
We hopped into the dive shop’s twin cab truck for the 90 minute drive to Rapid Bay. I scouted for kangaroos (with no luck), and we learned about our guide, Darrill, and his similar story to ours - meeting his partner while he was helping with a dive class she was taking!
We stopped at a bakery (Yar-something?) on the way to the bay and grabbed a donut for now and a pie (literally a mini pie for me, but a hand pie for Mark) for later.
It was nearly 11 when we cruised up. We set up gear, changed into our suits, and soaked up the last of the mid-70s and sunny external weather.
Rapid Bay had an old wooden pier that declined over time, rotting and becoming unsafe. The connecting section to the beach was destroyed to prevent people from walking on it, and a new metal pier was built more recently. The old pier, parallel and longer than the first, ended in a T that split out to both sides.
Walking out the 200 meters on the new pier to the steps with all the equipment (and 8kgs of weight to hold my wetsuit down once I was diving) was rough - my waistband was not tight enough to take the weight off my shoulders, which dragged the already tight neck of my wetsuit even tighter. The fisherman and their catches (specifically the cuttlefish, whose ink they were using to graffiti the slate of the dock) were a slight distraction that I was grateful for as I felt like I was choking.
The shock of the cold water couldn’t frighten me enough to not get that heavy weight off my back, so in I went, inflating my BCD and putting on my fins. Good thing we had gotten practice in the cold pool at the Deep Blue Hotel’s hot springs!
Down we went, with cold water flooding my suit and hood. I (per usual) was a little slow at going down, but releasing the pressure from the hood helped. We followed a set of spikes drilled into the sandy bottom to get across to the pier, and, at the pier, the sea life greeted us.
The red corals and starfish, the old wood along the bottom now covered with blues and greens of plant life - it was so colorful, and in an individual way. Along a tropical coral wall, everything bleeds together. Here, the separate species made each seem more intricate and more colorful. The hermit crab walking along with its found shell. The sand crab, moving sideways along the sand between the beams. The “fancy” crab, with a long, dangly, frilly bit off its head and one claw that was bigger to snatch anything that would come to investigate. The starfish were of multiple types and colors, and every so often I’d see a sea urchin.
The guide hasn’t seemed worried about old fishing line (instead, he had talked about blue ring octopus that have a venom that will kill you... thanks), but I saw some pretty significant lines. As I was packing for Mark for diving, I had restricted him to just a few pieces of equipment. His line cutter was not one of them, since I believed our guide would have one.
Looking back to check on Mark about ten minutes into the dive, he motioned me over and had me look at his fin - a piece of line had gotten caught under his heel. It was easy for me (with two hands and perfect vision of his foot) to extract and didn’t require cutting, but I’m sure all that both of us were thinking about was that line cutter that he didn’t have.
After extracting him and checking that he was doing ok, we moved along the old pier for twenty minutes before reaching the T-shape and heading right. Mark took pictures galore, swimming over to this or that thing that was tantalizing - and he’s a man, so his air tank was emptying slightly faster than mine. In this case, my hands were also starting to get numb - really, I was just cold all over. We turned back not long after getting past the T.
You know what we didn’t see? A leafy seadragon. If we had, I’m not sure I would’ve gone in for a second dive.
The walk back wasn’t as bad - the general numbness, the exertion adding some warmth, and, the trick I kept in mind for the next time - a very inflated BCD that gripped on my hips to better balance the weight there and not just on my shoulders.
We got back to the car and Darrill fired up the heater. I wasn’t going to fully get out of my suit as we switched tanks, ate lunch, and took care of bodily functions, but I unwrapped my torso from the suit and used a towel instead.
An hour later, re-warmed, we started all over. The trip down the dock was easier with an inflated BCD, and now, we were going to be strategic with our air. We were going to snorkel (or just swim on our backs, as I did) mostly to the T, then find “the grid” - a I-bar grid that had turned into a good place to find sea dragons.
In the car ride, Darrill said he had only not seen sea dragons on a day that was so turbulent and such low visibility that he couldn’t even see his face, so he had a lot of confidence in us seeing one.
We got our with five to ten minutes of swimming, then headed down. My ears were worse than the first dive, so I swam above as we headed toward the grid. About five or ten minutes into the dive, we got there. We each took a row and swam along, looking on the leeward side (and the “windward” one too, really - not going to not look somewhere). The surge wasn’t very rough, but it was a consistent rocking motion, and sea dragons aren’t good swimmers, so they stick to the calmest water they can find - like sheltered between I-beams.
It was twenty minutes into a 40-45 minute dive, and we hadn’t seen a dragon. The grid had been searched, and Darrill just headed out along the pier and - fist pump! - he spotted one.
It was pretty outstanding - this frilly green thing hovering over a mix of sand with some coral polyps, but not the waving sea grass I was expecting that would complement them. The poor thing was being controlled by the water - mostly upside down and resigned to its fate. The little fins were working, and it poked at a rock or two with its beak, but mostly we just drifted along with it for ten minutes, taking pictures and enjoying the ride.
Darrill turned us back, and we did the fastest swim I’ve ever done while diving to get back to the steps. I don’t know if it was the cold or the air that caused the speed up, but my legs churned all the way back. I was breathing very regularly - not out of breath, but definitely working. We made it to the steps, rejoiced for a second, then we launched ourselves toward the car to get out of our suits, dry, and packed up.
I had become more accustomed to going from salt water to dry recently, but the salt residue was a big pet peeve of mine for a while. Given that the closest showers were at the shop (and we didn’t have a dry towel anyway by the time we got there), I switched into dry clothes and called it good. Well, I did the bottom half of switching when we got to the public restrooms by the bakery... and Mark got me a mini custard pie.
We drove back, talking about wine and spotting a few kangaroos here and there. I can’t remember if I decided to nod off or not...
Back at the shop, Anya was coming to pick us up, so we chatted with the owner, who talked about wreck recoveries in the Philippines, as well as some apparently well-connected US divers that we hadn’t heard of (unsurprisingly - Mark doesn’t actually read his PADI magazines).
Anya pulled up and graciously offered to take us the 25 minutes back home to shower and change, but with a dinner reservation in an hour downtown, it would’ve been tight. Mark just continued wearing his hat, and my sunglasses became a headband.
Anya’s parent live in a condo right near the CBD (Central Business District - a beloved acronym in Australia). We looked for street parking and, finding none, took advantage of the open garage door under the condo to park in a neighbor's spot.
Up at her parent’s place, her dad was watching some “footie” (which is a generic term for rugby in the north, Aussie-rules football in the south - though in this case, it was Aussie-rules), and I learned more about the game that I had picked up slightly for the night before.
Manoj met us at the apartment, and we all walked over to a great Asian tapas restaurant - really, the way better version of Wah Wah Gee in Geelong. We had duck pancakes (after harassing the girls about pancakes shaped like ducks or made of ducks in the car), chicken, prawns, rice, wine, and, yet, still saved a hint of room for dessert at the family’s favorite gelato place. I had bread and butter bread pudding gelato (the raisins didn’t take away too much for the flavor).
On the way to dessert, we had lost Anya’s father when he popped into a bar to check the score. There was fifteen minutes left in the game, so Manoj, Mark, and I joined for the ending before taking a borrowed car back to south Adelaide. As exhausted as we all were, we again started pouring some wine and talking. A small fire was made (which took much more effort this time), we started our laundry, and the first load got hung to dry as we headed to bed.
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