16th. March 2014 – 14:30: A.O.W.C. - SD what?

Due North-East of Crystal Bay, on the North Coast of Nusa Panida is a site called SD. Slated as one of Bali’s top three dive sites,

“SD” is such an unimaginative name for a site so rich in natural beauty. Historically, “SD” stands for Sekolah Dasar’, the Indonesian word for ‘Primary School’, named after  the school building that was located near the beach in front of the dive site.

Not-withstanding the name and although the currents can be quite challenging, on the day we arrived, conditions at SD were excellent for us to be initiated into the world of Drift Diving.

The sea bed slopes gently away from the beach to the first of the two Eastward Drift lines running parallel to the shore-line. The second, a more difficult line, also runs eastward in much deeper water where the sea bed falls away sharply from the first line. Our Drift line was exactly between these two lines.  There was another reason for the choice of this path; there is a known thermo-cline below which the second Drift Line runs. Choosing to dive between the two lines meant that we were just above the thermo-cline so that the water, although noticeably cooler was certainly not uncomfortable, even for the 3mm wetsuits.

It is a sign of a great if not excellent instructor to be able to impart understanding and knowledge to novices without them knowing it because they were too busy enjoying what they were doing to notice that that is exactly what was happening. This was such a dive. Lifted straight out of the text book, we, well, drifted effortlessly towards the exit point. Except for one self inflicted mistake that was totally my fault and which I was able to recover from very quickly, we were oblivious to the challenges of Drift Diving because we were way too busy having such a wonderful time observing the abundant marine life.

The only drawback to Drift Diving is that it ends way too soon. We knew that we were at the end when we watched the inflated and deployed signal tube start to slowly float upward. Our safety stop was spent peacefully tethered to the ascent line or cocooned within the meditative tranquillity of practicing buoyancy control. When we reached the surface, the boat was already in the offing, a testament to good coordination between our diving instructors and boat crew. Within a few minutes we were back on the boat at the end of a successful completion of the A.O.W.C.