Golden Horseshoe Expedition: Khao Lak
Technical divers descend on the port of Similan Islands
Khao Lak, Thailand – Big Blue Tech arrived in the small town of Khao Lak on Januray 7 2010 to begin the next phase in the expedition which featured wreck diving and a liveaboard trip.
Arriving at the Big Blue Khao Lak office we quickly arranged accomodation, logistics, oxygen, tank filling facilities, gps coordinates and a boat to get us to the wreck.The wreck in question is the recently submerged Sea Chart 1 sitting at 40m in unlimited visibililty, we’re planning on 40-50 minute bottom times to take full advantage of the dives on the 85m long wreck. It won’t be until the 9th when we actually get the chance to go diving which will last for several days until we board our liveaboard the Mv Pawara for a 4 day/4 night liveaboard in the similan islands.
With the afternoon of dive planning finished we headed out on the town to the only bar in miles called Happy Snapper. This bar is quite different from typical Thai drinking places with features like a world globe painted on the ceiling, air conditioning and a live band. In the happy snapper we ran into lots of old friends who left Koh Tao to work on the west coast for the season and it was a great chance for us to catch up with them. This was also a great chance to unwind to celebrate the end of the Cavern Course and the start of something new.
A special thanks to Marcel of Wicked Diving and Keith of Liquid Diving for their support.
Golden Horseshoe Expedition: Khao Sok Cavern Course
On January 4th 2010 Big Blue Tech arrived at Rajjaprabha Dam on Chiew Lan Lake in Khao Sok National Park to head out towards the raft house which would accommodate use for the duration of the TDI Cavern Course and BSAC/TDI Compressor Operator Course. The course was taught by James Thornton-Allan for students Andy Cavell, Mark Slinn, Emily Billingham, Piotr (Peter) Paulo and Malgorzata (Margaret) Babiak
As the team arrived at the resort we set up the area for the compressor and charging of the torches and then it was time to head out to the diving area to start the skills of the course.. The course needed to be staggered to maintain a ratio of 4 to 1 for the instructor which meant James took Peter and Margaret for their first training dives while Emily, Andy and Mark practiced their buoyancy in fresh water with their technical diving gear. The buoyancy and control came naturally to Peter and Margaret who come from Poland where the majority of their diving experience is in freshwater, additionally both Peter and Margaret are diving professionals who own Asian Divers in Phucket. Peter himself is a PADI Course Director and a Tec Deep Instructor Training for PADI/DSAT. For all divers the skills which need to be performed with comfort include using a reel and line to run a continuos guidleline, propulsion and finning techniques, loss of visibility and primary flashlight / torch failure and various other skills to make the diver comfortable in this ovehead environment. Addition to these skills all diver require 2 sources of artificial light, to reels and 2 sources of air supply.
On the 5th Peter and Margaret completed their course and received their certification followed by Andy, Emily and Mark on the 6th.
For Andy, Emily and Mark these newly developed skills would be further put to use in the coming days of the expedition when we explore shipwrecks on the west coast of Thailand. The Advanced Wreck and Cavern skills are quite similar as they both illustrate the procedures for dealing with an overhead environment.
On the 7th of January the team heading off the lake after a few thrashings of rain where Mark commented “I started the day off with possible heat stroke and now I think I’m coming down with hypothermia!”, we loaded the truck and headed off to Khao Lak which would the our base for diving for the next week.
