Friday, May 3, 2002 - Papua New Guinea
The engines started around 5:30 and we moved to the middle of the channel. We got a nice view of the volcanos, including "Father", the smoking one, and a lovely double rainbow over the channel.

For our morning dive we went to "Ake's Reef." Pretty dive, with some nice anemones.

Breakfast was highlighted by my dropping a pat of melting butter in my journal - yea. The AC in my room was icing over, so they are working on it. Second and third dives were at "Midway Reef." Went down to see a red anemone at 75 feet and while I was looking at it spotted a young white tip shark under a ledge trying NOT to be seen. Huge schools of batfish - they are so unafraid of divers that I petted one.

When we came up the local dug-outs had arrived. A woman was selling nautilus shells for 5 kina (less than $2) so I bought one. I sat out the third dive and worked on my tan, but could only stand it for half an hour before I was sweating as if I were in a sauna. I took a wonderfully refreshing dip off the back of the boat. Charlie did a free dive and recorded a personal best - 92.4 feet.

Lunch was tortilla soup and a variety of quiches, after which we moved to "Belinda's Reef." Lovely deep dive with beautiful anemones. I found two wonderful white nudibranchs that I coaxed out of their little niches so that Gary and Mark could get pix of them.

Finished "Road to Mars" and am reading "Rise to Rebellion", the first in Jeff Shaara's series on the American Revolution. Gary did the night dive and had some great pictures, including a pair of "Two Spot Lionfish."

Dinner was corn soup, pork cutlets in mustard sauce with baked potatoes, carrots and beans, and chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce for dessert. My AC still has "issues."

Saturday, May 4, 2002 - Papua New Guinea
Up around 5:15 - thought we'd have a good sunrise over "Father" volcano, but no go. We dove "Killibob's Knob" again - I was the first one down, following the anchor line when I suddenly found myself surrounded by six sharks - four white tip, 2 grey reef. They thought I was there to put out the fish for the shark feed - yikes! Again, a pretty reef.

As I was swimming, a remora somehow became unattached from the shark it was riding - remoras have big suckers on the tops of their flat heads and they attach themselves to large creatures like sharks and rays. So he looked around and decided I would be the next best thing and tried to attach to my mask! I tried to fend him off, and finally swam over to George hoping he'd go pester him for a while. Instead, the remora spotted Brit Mark and Elsie and made a bee-line for them, actually attaching to Mark's leg for a moment. He was very agitated (I meant the remora, although Mark was a bit agitated too) and kept frantically swimming from person to person - I had to swing my dive computer at him once to get rid of him - but eventually he found a new shark and they lived happily ever after.

The second dive was a shark feed at the same spot, but I decided to sit it out and read and slept instead. They all said it was a nice dive with quite a bit of action - Nelson swam down put put out a line with a bunch of fish heads on it. Both Mark and Gary got some good pictures.

The boat began moving back to the southern part of Kimbe Bay, so we only had two morning dives. Lunch was chicken/egg drop soup, stir fried pork and chicken with rice, beans and potato salad. I caught some rays on the bow as we moved and did more reading.

We continued on and did our afternoon and night dives at "Inglis Schoal." Again, a pretty deep dive - reef top at 12 meters (36 feet). Great lionfish, morays, a nesting clown triggerfish protecting her eggs. Mark went off looking for sharks and went into deco - he ran low on air while doing his deco hang (about 15 minutes) so Elsie had to stay with him and buddy breath off her tank.

In the evening, a storm came up - thunder, lightning, wind, but the night divers went anyway. Gary found some nice anemones and a moray eel with his troupe of cleaner shrimp. Mark got some nice shots of a sea turtle, nudibranchs and some great fish.

Dinner was carrot/potato soup, and beef stroganoff in pastry bowl with sticky date pudding and ice cream. To bed early.