April 29
The Pro-Dive bus picked us up just before 8am. We headed totheir training centre. We spent the morning watching training videos and being taught rescue stuff in a classroom. The afternnon was much more fun. We were in their 4m deep pool in scuba gear acting out various rescue scenarios. It was much easier for James to drag me out of the pool than it was for me - as my back would tell you. He had it easy!
We got back both feeling exhausted, but had to read the Rescue book that was given to us that day and we had to know the stuff by the next day. We both gave it a fair go but fell asleep with the books in our hands.

April 30
We woke up excited of the prospect of our next adventure - which was lucky as we got picked up at 6am.
At the dive shop James picked up a new Mask as his last one kept misting up and he didn't want to viwe the Great Barrier Reef through mist. We got onto the boat with another 20 or so divers, but we were the only 2 on the Rescue Diver course. We headed 3 hours out of Cairns for our first dive site. Our first dive was a fun dive, but the reef we found to be quite average - think its a bit too close to Cairns.
Dive 2 we practiced some skills on the surface - towing each other and panicked diver - we finished off with a fun dive in which we saw a blue spotted ray.
Dive 3 was spent practising bringing an unconscious diver to the surface, played inturn by James and I. Finished the rest of our air by going for a fun dive in which we saw a 1 1/2 metre long white tip reef shark. We returned to the boat, both of us needing the loo and tired. However, just as we got up onto the back of the boat there was a shout from person on lookout for "rescue divers". Both of us knew that this call could come at any time and we were to act as though a real emergency was taking place and we were getting marked on it. We got back in to the water to find 2 of the instructors acting
distressed. As I was out first and had heard about Anne-Lyse being an absolute nightmare to save I chose the other one, and left Anne-Lyse to James. During this rescue both of us got cramp in our calf, masks and regulator knocked off and pushed under the water several times. We finally managed to get them onto the boat and give them oxygen and appropriate first aid. We were absolutely knackered! They really didn't want saving.
For the evening we summoned up all of our energy and joined in the night dive. This was the first time we had to navigate ourselves in the dark - quite scary. While we were swimming a Large red bass quickly shot across our faces - making us pap ourselves!
After we got back around 8.30pm we had cake and went straight to our cabin and fell into a very deep sleep.

May 1
First dive was at 7am which was a nice relaxing dive around Flynn Reef.

Big Old Turtle

May 2
Due to the amopunt we wanted to fit in, the first dive was at 6.30am. This was as the sun was rising. All of the nocturnal fish were going back to be and all the daytime fish were waking up and having breakfast. It was very busy on the reef. James got a cool video of a turtle eating the coral.
For our second dive we heard those fateful words "rescue diver" (think I may be hearing this in my nightmares). A diver had gone missing (again). However it was our dive intructor, Jason. We set of in a North-Westerly direction using the same search pattern as before. Trace found him playing with a Nemo fish when he realised he was supposed to be unconsious. We got him to the surface where he woke up and started shouting out his leg was impailed with some coral (a stick - goodness knows where he got it from we were in the middle of the sea!). We did the usual of First aid etc... Then we Passed our Rescue Diver - Hoorah! Went for a bit of a fun dive with the rest of our air. Where we found another shark, sleeping and swimming around the bottom.
Our last dive was completely fun. We hardly used any air as we were completely relaxed and not on edge waiting for a rescue to be required.

Trace Cruising