This was the major Free Flow Divers Liveaboard trip of 2005. Having enjoyed the trip so much in 2004 twelve of us decided to return, with four of us from the 2004 expedition. The Free Flow Divers on this trip were:-
Paul & Sheila Blackburn
Goetz & Gitta Von Dresky
John & Gwen Gillies
Steve & Jane Meech
Marcel Eckhardt & Alison Wilson
Paul Barfield & Nigel Gibbs
As previously we chartered the SMY Shakti run by Dave Pagliari. From Singapore we flew out on Friday late afternoon on Emirates to Jakarta and proceeded to take connecting Merpati flights during the night to Manado then on to Sorong arriving around 6.00 am on Saturday morning. In Manado airport there is the chance to crash out for a couple of hours sleep broken by the loud announcements every half an hour! Food on the Merpati flights arrives in cardboard boxes and is not particularly edible. If you follow this itinerary it would pay to have handy a selection of snacks and drinks to get you from Jakarta to Sorong. By 8.00 am we were on board Shakti making our way north to commence diving on Saturday afternoon.
Shakti was launched in 2000 from the famous Bugis boat building beaches of southern Sulawesi where she was designed and built by her owner David Pagliari. Her design is based on the classic ‘Pinisi’ schooner with many modifications for dive liveaboard purposes. Shakti is 32m long with a 7.2m beam. There are two chase boats.
There are seven comfortable cabins mostly below deck with two cabins off the main lounge. Charters are normally for 12 guests with two or three dive guides. On this trip our guides were:-
Dave Pagliari
Andy Miners
Will Postlethwaite
All the cabins have air conditioning and there are twin round pin sockets for chargers. The TV room is generally where batteries are charged and cameras attended to. There are three toilet/shower cubicles. They are a little primitive but acceptable. On long trips such as ours water is a scarce commodity that must be used sparingly. There is oxygen on board. The nearest decompression chamber is probably at Bali. The boat has a satellite phone which was under repair at the time of our trip. Mobile phones will not work in Raja Ampat.
Dive kit is permanently set up in individual stations on the main dive deck. After each dive a new recharged cylinder awaits and your BCD etc is simply transferred from the used cylinder to the fresh ready for the next dive. All the heavy lifting to and from the chase boat is done by the boat boys. All divers have to carry is a mask and fins. Even cameras are carefully passed down to the chase boat by the staff.
Most dive sites are within five minutes of Shakti so it’s a quick transfer on the chase boat, kit up and backward roll in. Your equipment should include two torches, safety sausage and reel, and also a reef hook as there can be strong currents.
Back on Shakti there is a small dining area alongside the galley. Over the course of two weeks the meals can become a little monotonous but there is always plenty of fish to eat! Take any special home comforts that you may desire like HP sauce, marmalade, chocolates, biscuits etc. The only alcohol on board is beer so you may wish to take wine, spirits (and corkscrew). Soft drinks are on board though there may not be any tonic water. There is a constant supply of tea, coffee and iced water.
Unless you are a very sound sleeper take ear plugs to block out the many sounds that seem to break into your night – engine, flushing toilets, weight belts dragged around the deck – always it seemed at peculiar hours of the night. Anyway if like me you do not get much sleep at night you can always snooze during surface intervals.
We generally did three dives per day with the option of a fourth night dive on some days. As I write this I’ve done 37 dives already with hopefully 8 – 10 more before the trip finishes. Dives are generally no more than 30m and a lot of the stuff for filming or photography can be found is less than 10 metres.
Some of the dives can be a challenge involving current and are not for the faint hearted but generally the current was quite manageable and of course we want some current to increase the fish action!
A thorough briefing is given before every dive by Dave who explains site layout, current action, the intended dive plan and what we might expect to see by way of marine life. Prior to every dive the guides check the site for current and fish action to determine the best place to enter the water.
Awesome, Awesome, Awesome. The diving is fantastic with just so many fish. The schools seem bigger than anywhere else, even the fish seem bigger. There are huge varieties of fish types and the reefs themselves are simply stunning – teaming with life, it's really difficult to find a piece of bare rock to place a finger to steady oneself. During this trip we have had the following sightings:-
(See the Trip Gallery for photos of these sightings)
The list is almost endless and if you spend time diving here you will doubtless locate many more finds.
Full details of each dive site is proprietorial information held by the dive operator. Each site has GPS co-ordinates and very detailed drawings of underwater topography together with details of fish action and items of special interest. We shall not therefore publish here all this information, but based on our dive log entries we list here the names of the sites used by the operator that proved to be really great dives offering spectacular photo and fish opportunities.
These sites are scattered throughout the four islands that comprise the Raja Ampat, meaning four kings, region – Waigeo in the north, Batanta, Salawati and Misool in the South, with most of our diving in the north and south.
This was not just a dive safari. The two weeks of our diving were interspersed with various side trips such as:-
Dave, his guides and crew work hard to provide interesting experiences both below and above the water.
Our thanks go to Dave, Andy and Will who worked hard to both entertain and guide us throughout this trip. They patiently found even the smallest pygmy sea horse at 25 metres and took divers one by one to photograph and film the little critter. And on 8 November, our 25th Wedding anniversary, they also proved that they could entertain when, dressed as Pirates they held a court of prosecution with yours truly as the accused and walking the plank into shark infested waters as the inevitable punishment!
Thanks also to the crew who fed us, got us to the sites, waited for us to surface safely and generally carried all our kit and cameras with care and consideration.
www.tribaldiving.com
www.cityseahorse.com/rajaampat.html
Rating Guide for Videographers
***** Has everything
**** Many photographic subjects
*** Good site, lots to photograph
** Some photographic material
* Little to photograph
15 November 2005
