Day 164! What a day! As the title says, I did my first double boat, which I’ll explain more in the blog. I’m beat after such a long day, but it was totally worth it!

Gooood morning!

I think most days for the next two months are going to start like this… but 6am rolled around and it was time to get up!

I got ready for the morning, grabbed my snacks I bought from the convenience store the night before, and then headed over to the Taco Shack lobby to wait for the other divers.

This morning was a big one for me. I was heading back to the dive site, Southwest Pinnacle, where I had my panic attack. I was determined to have a better dive and was looking forward to the challenge.

We got on the boat and I prepped my gear.

The morning dives were going to be lead by my fellow DMT, Albert, and Kit was my dive buddy on the dive.

Something fun, all the dive masters in training were on the morning boat today! We neglected to take a picture, but I’m sure we’ll have one soon enough. It’s such a fun group of travelers and it’s a very warm, goofy, and welcoming environment.

Albert took us over the briefing for our first dive and we strapped up and dove in.

I could already tell this dive was going to be exponentially better than the last one at this site. I was able to equalize better on the descent and my breathing felt calm and collected.

While we were diving, we swam past beautiful corals and sea anemones, massive schools of fish (I’m talking thousands in one school), and swam through alcoves in between the corals.

When we reached the school of fish, we swam through it and they wrapped around us engulfing us in their horde. Albert was enough ahead of us that the fish almost made a wall between us where we couldn’t see him. But a flick of the hands and they parted for us to pass through.

We even hit a tiny current when we came around a corner… but today, I didn’t panic. It wasn’t anywhere near the strength of the last one, but I had a better understanding of what to do and how to maintain composure!

Kit and I had a blast on this dive! We were swimming around each other, pointing out cool fish and corals (I saw a mollusk as big as a basketball), and there were a lot of laughs while diving around.

This affected our air consumption a bit, but we still had a great 28 minute dive!

I was stoked to have over come this dive site and prove to myself that I could do it. I’ve never really been one to back down from a challenge after a setback, but this was a big one to overcome!

But the diving didn’t stop here, as we made our way on a long boat ride to another dive site, “No Name” or HTMS Suphairin 313. I was at this dive site the other day. It’s one of the ship wrecks around Koh Tao to explore.

One of the DMTs, Ami, caught this picture of Albert and I getting ready for the dive.

On this 29 minute dive, we cruised down to 23.2m and explored around the middle to the top of the shipwreck. There were two parts of the ship we were able to enter. The first was the captains quarters, like I did last time, but Albert then took us to another swim through that was the ships control room!

This room was super tight and had sharp turns which made it difficult. But in the end Kit and I both passed through.

While we were diving we saw more beautiful coral and decent sea life. Albert also took a picture of Kit and I on this dive. This marks my first underwater picture of my dive career!

Going upside down is such a cool feeling under the water. It also makes for a fun picture opportunity!

This dive was really nice as well, and I ended off my morning of diving feeling VERY accomplished.

We then road back to Taco Shack for lunch, because today, Kit and I were doing our first double boat.

A double boat is doing the morning boat and then the afternoon boat right after. A triple boat is morning, afternoon, and night dives. These aren’t mandatory, but I paid to dive! So I want to dive as much as I can!

I wasn’t originally double boating, but the dive instructor, Theo, suggested I continue on with my try divers into their day two of their open water course. I loved the sound of this idea and asked my mentor, Chris, and luckily there was a spot on the boat for me!

Lunch was chicken and fried vegis and then it was back to the dive boat we go! Kit and I did get one game of pool in, which I snuck in a victory just as we needed to leave… so it’s now 6 to 3, with me in the lead.

The first dive was at Aow Leuk. This is my favorite beach on the island, but I hadn’t dove there yet! I was excited.

The two open water divers in our group were happy to have me back with them and they were excited to dive! We got into the water and made our way near the shore again to work through the day 2 open water skills.

I was watching the skills, but at the same time I was focusing on my breathing and buoyancy. We spent a long time at a very shallow depth working through all the different skills, ensuring they understood what was going on. One of them was turning off the air of their tank… which Tom had me do to one of them, it was an interesting feeling to be turning off someone’s air.

After we finished going through the skills, it was time for a nice and short dive around the beautiful coral and back to the boat.

There wasn’t a ton to see, especially because my mask kept fogging up, but just before we went from skills to diving, I saw a baby reef shark swim by us.

Once we got back to the boat, we made our way around a bend to a beach I haven’t been to or dove at, Tanote Bay!

This dive had no skills involved and was strictly a fun dive… and fun it was! My mask again was fogging up a bit, but I’ll fix that later. During this dive we saw a school of fish in the thousands again, and underneath it was a blue spotted stingray! It was so cool and I was happy we got to see it for the open water class.

We wrapped up day two of their open water and they both were already chatting about how excited they were for day 3! This has been such a cool experience going through the class on the other side. I’m looking forward to many more classes, open and advanced!

We went up to the top deck and I showed the two divers how to log their dives from yesterday and today. Tom was happy to see me doing this, as it was one less thing he had to go over!

We chatted all the way back to the pier and then made our way back to Taco Shack. Originally my plan was to go shower and eat with Kit. But plans changed as my friends wanted to go watch the sunset at our new “secret” spot. The one that Kiki showed us.

Kit and I were glad we delayed dinner to enjoy a beer and a view, especially with good company.

After the sun set, we both went home to shower and then met back up at Taco Shack. We walked to the famous Koh Tao restaurant, 995 Duck, and waited for Kit’s friend, Sam, to arrive.

I got the same thing I always get here, a large spicy noodle and duck bowl.

It was superb as always and after a wonderful night of chatting and good food, it was time for me to head to bed!

Tomorrow I should just be doing the morning boat to finish out the open water course. But Sunday, I’ll be doing my first triple boat! It’s time to get some rest, but I’m still super excited about it all!

– Elie