I booked the trip through Castaways. It's advertised as a 5 day trip, but there's no actual diving on the first day. It leaves about 5pm from the wharf in Cairns. The boat, Taka, is a converted prawn trawler and so it's a big, solid vessel. Its top speed is only about 8/9 knots, so after leaving Cairns, it travels all night to the final destination, the reefs north of Cooktown.
On board were a dive supervisor, a couple of instructors, a Japanese instructor, a captain, an engineer, a videographer, a cook and an assistant. As soon as we arrived, bowls of chips and dip were laid out and I soon realised that the food onboard was very good. Everything was included apart from cans of soft drink and beer, which were available via an honour system.
There were about 24 guests, of which about half were Japanese. This is apparently unusual and the Japanese instructor was complaining about how much extra work he'd had to do by the end of the trip. Since most of them were young females, you can imagine how little sympathy he got from the rest of us. The dive briefing always seemed to take twice as long in Japanese. The rest of us never understood why. The rest of the guests comprised of a couple of Victorians and the rest were Europeans. I was to dive in a three with a couple from Switzerland.
I had most of my own kit with me. The only thing I hired was a wetsuit, which was a two piece 5mm, fins, tanks and weights. The tanks were the usual 200 bar aluminium 12 litre with A-clamp only valves and filled with air. So I needed my adaptor with my DIN regs. The boat would tie up on a fixed mooring and there was a small boat on hand if somebody got into difficulties and needed picking up.
Our first dive was at a site called Challenge Bay. We were well offshore with only a few mountains on the mainland visible over the horizon. Obviously the first site was chosen as an easy one for people who hadn't dived in a while, but it was a good dive. The dive brief included the usual ridiculous Queensland approach to making sure your first dive is your deepest. Basically, if you go any deeper on your second dive than your first one, you have to stay out of the water for several hours. But it's perfectly acceptable to bounce down to 30m, do the rest of your dive at 10m, and then do another dive where you spend most of your time at 25m. As a result, every dive brief includes instructions on where to go to get your maximum depth. The whole thing is a perfect example of why politicians shouldn't get involved in diving and of how to enforce a rule without any understanding of the underlying reasons.
On the dive itself, there was some nice staghorn coral, table coral, needle coral and some big clams. I watched some groupers being cleaned, found a couple of lionfish, some puffer fish and saw shoals of trevally and chevron barracuda. The visibility was good at around 20m and I had maximum depth of 24m and a dive time of 50 minutes. It was a good start to the trip.
Our next dive was at a site called Pixie Pinnacle. This was a coral pinnacle rising from the sea bed. There were shoals of big eyed trevally, clouds of small anthias over the coral, loads of fusiliers, more lionfish, sweetlips, pipefish and many others. The visibility was better at this site. I thought it was around the 30m mark. My maximum depth was limited by the early dive, so I stuck to 23m, but much of the dive was shallower as we circled around the pinnacle getting gradually shallower. Dive time was 52 minutes.
Our next dive was to the world famous Cod Hole. There was a bit of a current running and I found myself regretting that I didn't have my Mares Quattro fins with me. The hire fins I had made fighting against the current tricky. A fish feed was organised and about four big potato cod turned up, as did loads of red bass and a white tipped reef shark. I'm not a fan of fish feeding, but when they tried to stop it at the Cod Hole, the potato cod got aggressive when they weren't fed. As they grow to about 2 metres (6 feet) and about 100 kgs (220 lbs), they're worth keeping on the right side of. This dive was shallow at about 14m.
Our final dive of the day was a night dive at the Cod Hole again. There seemed to be a lot of surgeon fish, some squirrel fish, a free swimming moray out hunting and a white tip reef shark. It was probably the same one that we'd seen earlier. After four dives in one day, I was starting to feel a bit chilled even in the 25ºC water.
That night we were supposed to head east out into the Coral Sea to Osprey Reef. Sadly it was not to be. The wind had picked up and, whilst it wasn't rough when we anchored in amongst the reefs, the open ocean was too rough. It was a shame, but there isn't much you can do about the weather.
The boat moved a bit to the south and our first dive of the day was the Clam Garden. I went down to 31m to “get my depth”, but it was just sandy down there. The good stuff was shallower with some good staghorn coral, lots of it a brilliant blue shade. There were loads of anthias, assorted other small tropicals and a cuttlefish. The visibility was around the 25m mark.
Our next dive was called “Andy's Postcard” for some reason. The highlight of the dive was seeing shoals of fusiliers being hunted by mackerel. I doubt the fusiliers saw it quite the same way. This was quite a deepish dive at 28m, hence my need to touch 31m on the previous dive.
After that we went onto the Temple Of Doom. This was another pinnacle, with lots of soft corals on the top of it. I saw a grey reef shark, a giant moray, a blue spotted stingray, barramundi cod, the first turtle of the trip and some flowery cod. The visibility was still around the 20-30m mark and we briefly hit a maximum depth of 25m.
Our last dive of the day was the night dive at a site called Big Boy. I didn't ask. It was OK, though there wasn't that much to see. It was mostly squirrel fish, some surgeon fish and a big parrot fish preparing to go to sleep in the staghorn coral.
The first dive of the third day was at 2 2/3 Ribbon Reef, which meant it was between the 2nd and 3rd Ribbon Reef. The ribbon reefs are a collection of ten reefs which stretch down south from the Cod Hole. This was another of those sites which was sandy shallower than 20m, though again we went to 30m just to satisfy the stupid rules. There were lots of small fish in and around the staghorn and needle coral.
Our next dive was some of the crew's favourite. It was called Steve's Bommie in memory of someone who died from shallow water blackout whilst snorkelling along the coast. It's another pinnacle, but this one is covered in clouds of fish. There were big eyed trevally, fusiliers, chevron barracuda and some blue lined snapper. Then there were big blue fin trevally hunting the smaller fish. It was a really good dive, though the visibility was down to around 20m. We kept above 30m, though there was plenty of scope to go deeper. Our dive time including safety stops was 56 minutes.
Our next dive was quite eventful. The crew had arranged with another boat to use their mooring. It wasn't one they usually visited. They were having to use different sites because we couldn't make it out to Osprey. It was another pinnacle, called Escape Reef, and there were the usual clouds of fusiliers and some tuna. I was swimming around when I looked up. There were creaking noises and suddenly all the fish swam away. This is usually a bad sign. It was this time too, as the mooring broke loose and a coral block weighing about a ton came loose and rolled down the side of the wall. Fortunately I wasn't too close, though it was only a few metres away. Clouds of silt shot up and I wondered what was the best thing to do. Then I heard the anchor on Taka go down and decided to carry on the rest of the dive and give them time to sort things out. When we got to the surface, the cover boat was out and we just had to do a slightly longer surface swim than normal. The visibility before the rock crashed down was about 20m and we kept to a depth limit of about 20m.
The night dive was at a site called Beer Garden. There were lots of squirrel fish and a large turtle. Turtles are frequently seen at the site. Like all the night dives, it was pretty shallow at 14m. The visibility seemed worse, at 15m, though it's pretty hard to tell in the dark.
Our first dive of the next day was called Hog's Breath, part of Opal Reef. By now we were much further south, closer to population centres and unfortunately it showed. The visibility wasn't very good, just 12m. This wasn't a real problem, but a lot of the staghorn coral, which had been such a feature of all the other dives, was dead and covered in algae. The brain coral was OK, and there was a grey reef shark and a flowery grouper.
The next dive was at Milne reef and called Three Sisters. By now, my sinuses were aching a bit, so I gave it a miss. My buddies weren't impressed. It was apparently the worst dive of the trip. I dived Milne reef back in 1998. My log shows that the visibility was 20m and there's no mention of any dead coral. Sadly it seems the dive sites have suffered badly in only a few years.
The boat got back in around 2pm, which left them only about 3 hours to turn it around and go out again. Most of the crew weren't on the next trip, so we did the traditional meet-up at the Cock and Bull that evening for some food and a few drinks.
I thought it was a good trip. We were given reasonable freedom to plan our own dives and most of my dive times were around the 50 minute mark. It was disappointing that we didn't get out to Osprey Reef where the visibility would have been better and there are some really nice walls and drop-offs. That said, the diving on the Ribbon Reefs was good. Having done a couple of dives on the more southerly ones nearer to Cairns and Port Douglas, there is no way that I'd do a trip there.
I'd use Taka again, however, it wouldn't suit people who can't sleep through the engine noise. Because it's a slow boat, it travelled a lot at night. Other, quicker boats do go out to Osprey Reef, though they tend to be more expensive.
The next morning I caught the bus south to my next stop, Mission Beach.
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