Chapter 20

My first experience of scuba diving was when I was 20 or 21, when I accompanied my brother Pete and his mate Bob Steele when they went diving in a flooded quarry somewhere in the midlands. Bob was the expert, and my brother was using borrowed kit. After they had done a couple of dives I was offered a go. So, without any training whatsoever I put all Pete's kit on, which was a bit tight, and got in the water with Bob. I struggled to submerge because I was more buoyant than the other two and actually needed more weights. Amazingly I survived the experience, but it didn't really capture my imagination at the time since that quarry was cold and murky and devoid of any fish life. I shelved scuba diving for a while, but always thought it would be good to dive in warm clear tropical waters one day.

Twenty years later, I was looking for a holiday, but as usual I needed an activity. Just sitting on a beach somewhere was not for me, so I spotted a beginners scuba diving course in Eilat in Israel and booked it for September of 1998. I already had a mask, fins and booties so I packed these and turned up at the airport. What I had not realised was that I was flying on Yom Kippur which is the most important Jewish holiday in their calendar. The fact that I was also flying EL AL meant that everything was subject to intense security checks. So, there I was, trying to check in with my bag open on the floor beside me and three people taking turns quizzing me about why I had chosen this particular day to travel, and me not having a clue what they were talking about. Eventually they must have figured out that I was ignorant and let me board, and I didn't find out what all the fuss was about myself until I arrived at the hotel and noticed the holiday bunting.

That first holiday involved a lot of classroom work, since the goal was to get a PADI open water qualification, but there was enough time spent in clear warm water and sitting at bars on the beach to convince me that this was an excellent holiday activity. Just snorkelling in the harbour and seeing the shoals of brightly coloured fish was enough to get me hooked. Now that I had an open water certificate, I could dive almost anywhere I wanted.

An appealing thing about scuba diving is that it makes a great singles holiday. When you get there the diving sites allocate everyone to a boat of about ten divers. You will always be buddied up with somebody, and there are enough people in exactly the same situation to make it an interesting and enjoyable time. I did about six diving holidays on my own in the Red Sea at Hurghada and Sharm El Sheikh. To add an extra bit of structure, I also followed the PADI progression process by enrolling on a course for almost every trip. After four trips I had worked my way up to a Rescue Diver qualification, which was one level below the top level of Master Scuba Diver.

No two days were the same on a Red Sea diving holiday, but they mostly followed the same structure which I shall describe here.

The day started when everyone met on the jetty where the boat was moored overnight. Waiting there were a dozen boats or more which were chartered by the various diving companies in the town. The boat design always followed the same pattern. It was about 50ft long with a lower enclosed cabin and an open deck above. The rear of the boat was designed for divers to be able to kit up and enter the water over the stern. At the very top of the boat was the captain's chair where the boat was steered from. The crew consisted of a skipper and perhaps two crewmen who also prepared the food for lunch. They were always local Egyptians. As well as the crew there were two diving instructors who were usually British or whatever nationality the holiday makers were on that particular boat. It was rare that there was a mix of nationalities, so I always dived with other Brits.

There were usually two dives arranged for each day. This could be at a coral reef or a wreck or a sea cliff. The boat often had to motor for a couple of hours to reach the first site of the day. After anchoring up we were briefed on the topography and dangers we might meet, and then we kitted up and got in the water. We all stayed together during the dive and mostly followed the instructors on the planned route. An exception to this was when we visited a wreck which were numerous in the Red Sea. The boat anchored near to the wreck, and we explored it independently as buddied pairs. My focus on all these dives were the fish. Everywhere you looked there were brightly coloured tropical fish of all sizes, I saw parrot fish, tuna, lionfish, angel fish, wrasse, grouper, octopus and even saw a turtle once. I was told there were sharks in the Red Sea, but I never saw one. Each dive lasted an hour if you managed your air correctly. The more inexperienced divers ran out of air long before the hour was up and had to go shallow or swim back on the surface. I had mastered the art of the shallow economical breathing techniques which are necessary to make your air last.

Being sub-tropical, there were fish everywhere in the Red Sea. Sometimes they collected into vast shoals of sparkling silver which circled above us, and sometimes you could just watch a colourful individual searching the reef for scraps. When diving wrecks you could often be surprised by fish emerging from the hatches. My favourite wreck fish was the nudibranch, which was a small but colourful and extravagantly shaped worm that clung to the rusty surfaces. Most people missed them if you weren't specifically looking for them.

After the first dive was lunch, and it was always a highlight of the day for me. The quality and the quantity of tasty Egyptian food that was prepared in those tiny galleys always amazed me. We often had a bit of time to try diving off the boat or snorkelling if we were at an interesting shallow reef.

After lunch it was off to the second site where the process was repeated, and then the long motor back home. If we were lucky there would be dolphins playing in the bow wave at the front of the boat.

Sometimes there would be a special trip arranged to break the routine, one of these was to the wreck of SS Thistlegorm. The Thistlegorm was a military transport ship that was sunk by German planes in the Second World War. It lies at 30 meters deep, so is a difficult dive. What's interesting about it is that its holds and decks are still covered with its cargo of trucks and motorbikes and tanks, and even a steam engine. I have dived it four times and always found it interesting since you could dive inside the holds of the wreck fairly safely due to the number of people and the big holes in the hull caused by the bombs. Because of the distance from home, and the depth of the dive we could only dive it once per day, but it was always a great trip. The long motor both ways was a good opportunity to talk to the other people on the boat, a lot of whom were divers who started in the cold waters of the UK and came out to Egypt to escape the winter storms. Some people were just like me, and only wanted a relaxing activity holiday.

The evenings were always very social times. There were groups of people going to restaurants and bars that you could tag along with, usually from your boat or the PADI course. Even the instructors would come out in the evenings and join in. The instructors were mostly European and were also on an adventure, so needed very little encouragement to have a good time. There were a couple of bars in Sharm that gave the instructors cheap drinks if they brought tourists with them. The bar staff gave the instructors a book of tokens that could be traded in for cheaper prices. One night, one of the instructors told me that to get a book, all you needed to do was go to the bar and say that you were an instructor, and you would be given one with no other proof necessary. This I promptly did, and it worked. So, for the rest of the holiday, I was on half price beer.

I met a couple of girls on these trips but nothing ever serious arose. There was one that I saw once after the holiday but that went no further. I don't know why I had not realised this a lot earlier, but for me, holidays are not a good place to meet people on anything other than a transitory basis.

Diving was a regular annual holiday for me until the events at the end of this book. After that, I would do a few more dives on other holidays but never a dedicated diving one. This was a very enjoyable activity for me, and I would not hesitate to have another go if given the opportunity, but due to world events, perhaps not in an Islamic country.

Chapter 20: Scuba Diving