We ended the night as planned- grilled dinner and a few games of bags. Relaxed and headed to bed in preparation for the early morning ahead.
We were up before sunrise and headed out to Scarborough Marina to catch the boat for diving. On the way there, we were randomly selected along with a couple other cars for the breathalyzer! This is typical in Australia. Although it was 6:45am, and we had no reason to be pulled over, it is NOT considered an invasion of privacy! They do random sobriety checks at any time of day. Luckily, my dad blew under the limit : )
We took about an hour and a half boat ride out to Moreton Island. After a scare of Justin not having photo ID and pulling up his old passport on some nice man's phone, everyone was cleared to dive.
A quick refresher on their dive computers
The first dive my parents, Justin and one other guy came up REALLY far away from the boat and had to use their "safety sausage" in order to be seen. The dingy went and picked them up and brought them back to the boat.
(This is actually zoomed in!)
lots of people on that little dingy
Justin was the first off!
The dives here are not led by a dive master. It's very different. It's a good thing they are experienced divers, because it's a free-for-all here. They dump you in the water, tell you what to look for and where to go, and then expect you to find your way back within 53 minutes! After my mom begging a dive master to come with them on the next dive, they got their wish. The second dive they were taken to a cave, played with a couple octopus (my mom got inked on!), pet some sharks and all the other stuff I don't know too much about. My dad was still trying to recover from his eye injury, my mom wasn't feeling well, and Justin was over his dive time, so they didn't go on the last drift dive, but apparently, they didn't miss too much. We got back to the house 12 hours later. We ordered dinner and relaxed on Justin's last night here.
