Diving on Ikei
Jason had today off for a Memorial Day/4 Day weekend (nothing beats working for Uncle Sam eh?) and so with beautiful weather and calm waters it was time to dive in again.
Summer is officially here on Okinawa, for the first time this year the AC is running. It hit over 86 degrees today and I promptly started wilting. Okay, well, I start wilting at roughly 66 degrees, at 86 degrees... its more like spontaneously bursting into flame.
And so with summer here, its time for two things. First the high electrical bill that comes with running the AC (as little as possible believe it or not) and second my face being constantly in the water. The time for things above water has past, because no one likes heat stroke.
So with that, today we rushed out to Kadena Marina as soon as they opened and rented our dive gear for the weekend. The Marina also sold out of dive gear in the first 20 minutes they were open, so it seems we were not the only people with this idea. Seeing all that dive gear being rented out reminded us that we would perhaps like to avoid the places where most divers go. Unless you enjoy swimming in a sea of humans... which I do not.
So we headed out to Ikei Island out near where we live to try to find two potential dive spots listed in one of our books. Trouble with 'listed' dive sites is the directions to them, are often not updated. So the 'follow any dirt road to your right' often turns into a block of appartments or the like. So we drove and drove with no luck.
We expanded out search to just any where we could get into the water and still had little luck. There was just no way through the tree line and no parking to be found any where. As we about gave up we found a spot that we could park and and looked diveable with a little beach area too.
We grabbed the snorkel gear to have a look and see how the water was first. Sure enough the site wasn't to bad, but very shallow! Even at high tide we only had about 15-20 feet of water to be swimming in. But wanting to use our dive gear and get better with it, we decided to plunge in any way.
Almost an hour and a half later Jason was running low on air and I hadn't even used 1/3 of my tank. But having seen what we came to see, we decided to pack it in for the day and head home for some food. After discovering Justin was home from his TDY in Mainland Japan and cleaning our dive gear it was time to end the day fat dumb and happy at the Garlic Rotisery Restaurant.
Life is really hard on a tropical island I tell you, diving all day and eating amazing food for cheap. Other than the insufferable summer heat, I couldn't ask for more.
P.S. I am working on making an Online Divelog that should summarize my diving experiences in much more depth. When its done I will make sure to post a link, even though I know most of you don't really care ::wink::
Summer is officially here on Okinawa, for the first time this year the AC is running. It hit over 86 degrees today and I promptly started wilting. Okay, well, I start wilting at roughly 66 degrees, at 86 degrees... its more like spontaneously bursting into flame.
And so with summer here, its time for two things. First the high electrical bill that comes with running the AC (as little as possible believe it or not) and second my face being constantly in the water. The time for things above water has past, because no one likes heat stroke.
So with that, today we rushed out to Kadena Marina as soon as they opened and rented our dive gear for the weekend. The Marina also sold out of dive gear in the first 20 minutes they were open, so it seems we were not the only people with this idea. Seeing all that dive gear being rented out reminded us that we would perhaps like to avoid the places where most divers go. Unless you enjoy swimming in a sea of humans... which I do not.
So we headed out to Ikei Island out near where we live to try to find two potential dive spots listed in one of our books. Trouble with 'listed' dive sites is the directions to them, are often not updated. So the 'follow any dirt road to your right' often turns into a block of appartments or the like. So we drove and drove with no luck.
We expanded out search to just any where we could get into the water and still had little luck. There was just no way through the tree line and no parking to be found any where. As we about gave up we found a spot that we could park and and looked diveable with a little beach area too.
We grabbed the snorkel gear to have a look and see how the water was first. Sure enough the site wasn't to bad, but very shallow! Even at high tide we only had about 15-20 feet of water to be swimming in. But wanting to use our dive gear and get better with it, we decided to plunge in any way.
Almost an hour and a half later Jason was running low on air and I hadn't even used 1/3 of my tank. But having seen what we came to see, we decided to pack it in for the day and head home for some food. After discovering Justin was home from his TDY in Mainland Japan and cleaning our dive gear it was time to end the day fat dumb and happy at the Garlic Rotisery Restaurant.
Life is really hard on a tropical island I tell you, diving all day and eating amazing food for cheap. Other than the insufferable summer heat, I couldn't ask for more.
P.S. I am working on making an Online Divelog that should summarize my diving experiences in much more depth. When its done I will make sure to post a link, even though I know most of you don't really care ::wink::
Labels: Diving
posted by Crystal at 8:38 PM
1 Comments:
You could post the divelogs through Earthdive.com - they also receive fish & scientific data from you and work in association with the UN and Projext Aware to log dives worldwide and find fish patterns.
Alternatively, if you've got a PC interface from your dive computer, a graphical profile of your dive logs usually goes down well. The SmartTrak interface from Uwatec works particularly well.
Glad you managed to get some good diving in.
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