nicolaoutdoors » Portsea

Breathing underwater again

nicola — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:42:21 +0000

It seemed like forever since our last dive. A winter of snowplay and a spring of climbing had somehow almost erased the memory how wonderfully relaxing floating underwater looking at fish can be. We had a nice, leisurely dive at Flinders on Saturday. We only had half a tank of air left from last season, but it was plenty. Later, we dropped our tanks in for a service, ready for a summer of diving adventures :) Being ‘tankless’ on Sunday but still beside the beautiful, still and warm ocean, we kayaked from Sorrento to Portsea, peeking in at the millionaires bayside houses and snorkeled. My cuts and abrasions from climbing all healed up in the salt water and I remembered how special the ocean is. Sadly, while having lunch close to Point Franklin, we saw a group of people spear a medium sized ray and drag it ashore, still alive, to taunt it with their spear tips and throw rocks at it until it finally gave up thrashing around and lay black and glistening on the bright, wet sand.

Visitors

nicola — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 01:10:41 +0000

It must have been a good weekend because at breakfast this morning I couldn’t bring to mind ANY of my tasks or deadlines or ‘things to do’ for Monday :) Work last week was tough for both me and Ross so we deserved to switch off our computers and our minds for 48 hours.

So what did we do? Climbing Friday night. Market (very) early Saturday morning. Then I did some painting (sorry not finished yet so I can’t post it) and waited for our house guests, Mike and Audrey, to arrive from the Arapiles. We headed over to (my work friend) Noriko’s for a party (which turned out so well, there was good food, Japanese liquor and dancing :)

Sunday we all went down to the Portsea. Ross and I dived Portsea Hole. I experimented with taking wide angle shots, which I only usually do on shallow dive because visibility is often better, and when there is some kind of man-made structure. I think they turned out OK.

There were also walks on the beach, kangaroo, red wine, Trampoline, cookies & chatting. Hooray weekends. … of course now I am at work and Mike and Audrey are on their way to the Australian climbing festival.

Lonsdale Wall

nicola — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 06:22:19 +0000

Sun was a diving day. Lonsdale wall on a 2pm slack (to flood) with MUUC. We found an amazing part of wall to drop down on and great boat skippering (thanks Dave) meant we descended right to the top of wall at 18m with the drop-off (to 40m) just a metre away. Ross, Martina and myself ambled (if you can do that under water) along the wall at about 20 metres until the slack was over.

Visibility wasn’t fantastic but we saw some stuff, including a sea-spider, which I have been watching out for for ages!

New Year Diving and Fishing

nicola — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 06:00:19 +0000

Blue-ringed octopus, Rye Pier

Thursday night (Dec 29th) Ross and I picked up dive gear and headed down to the beach for the New Year. We did a couple of fantastic dives. Friday night we dived under the Rye Pier and saw heaps of seahorses, dumpling squid and sand octopus and also, the highlight of the week, a blue ringed octopus. The next day (New Year’s eve) was extremely hot and after I exausted myself trying on a few new semi-dry suits, we snorkled, jumped off the pier, wathed the rich kids with their jet-skis and lazed on the beach until it was time to go back to the beach house and drink champagne ;)
New Years Day rained hard all afternoon, but we spent an hour on the Portsea reef, where the highlight was a stargazer that wriggled its way to freedom from under Ross’s knee allowing us to get a couple of good photos!

Stargazer, Portsea

I also got a chance to try out my Christmas present (a rod and squid jigs). We caught three squid. The first two we brought onto Portsea Pier at the exact same moment… although Ross’s emptied its ink-sack onto his face before it hit the deck!! We stuffed the squid at home the next day with dilled rice and baked them in chopped tomatoes Greek style. Yum.

Portsea Night dive – (a.k.a. The Nautilus Dive)

nicola — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 05:16:26 +0000

Saturday morning we zipped down to the Mornington peninsular and called in on the fabulously named Doctor Fear (an s.c.u.b.a. supplier with all the dots) to drop off my faulty light. We picked up some native tree-seedlings (tea tree, moonah and sheoaks) and had a working-bee.

And after reviving ourselves with sausages and baby-cuddles we slipped (well, more like wrenched) ourselved into wetsuits in time for dusk and slipped under the Portsea Pier. Fabulous night dive despite me being slightly under-weighted, Ross being under-neoprened, and us both being a little under-lit. We saw several octopus, an eel and, incredibly, a paper nautilus!!!!
It must have been the luxury of a hot shower and a real bed that made us jump up in the morning ready for more… Ross went for a fly over the sand-dunes and I went for a coast walk.

The night dive was so shallow that we made a second dive, this time under the Rye Pier, on the same tank after lunch. The water was teaming with baby things, but the highlights were the regal Tasmanian blennies peering out from brightly coloured spongy dens.
We zipped back to Melbourne where I fell asleep instantly for an hour. Feeling slightly dazed, I accompanied Ross, Nick and Robyn over to Matt’s new place where he fed us, and several others, with great cheeses and wines, and ‘La sauce’ (which included four bunnies, a litre of wine and six hours of stove time). Yum. Still, Monday was something of a write-off… I felt sicker and sicker through the day, and by 3pm was vomiting and taking pills for fever and headache. Bleuugh. Some kind of flu-cold-exhaustion thing, it is supposed. Better today though… although a second rest day is needed.