Monday, May 7, 2007

Musandam En Masse

The Grumpy Goat has already penned a brief entry on this trip but I thought I’d add my own (selfish) notes:

An early start again on Friday as we made our various ways to Dibba for another of our monthly dhow trips to the Musandam. Marion had done an excellent job of arranging two dhows to transport over 60 divers and non-divers for the day. Our usual double-decker dhow was out of service but the replacement boats were comfortable and spacious enough for our purposes.

We headed north at 7:45 and, once we reached Fish-Head Rock sent out a fast boat from the larger dhow to get the first wave of divers onto Lima Rock – luckily my buddy and I were in this group. We arrived at Lima to find there was no current running and that the visibility was excellent. The stingers that have plagued divers over the previous few weeks were much less in evidence and the water temperature was now up to 28 centigrade – luxury.

My buddy and I rolled into the water on the southern side of the rock close to the western edge. The tip of the rock is normally swept by very strong currents and can be dived with a reef hook and a lot of care. On this occasion we took a leisurely dive down to 40m then gradually ascended up the flanks of the rock then over the submerged ridge and onto the northern side. I have dived this only once before in slack current and on that occasion found a surge hole and vertical cave system running through the cliff. On Friday we found it again and made full use of our time to check out all of it’s nooks and crannies.

The cave starts at about 16m and looks like a shallow crevice in the cliff face. Closer inspection reveals wide cracks rising to right and left with sunlight visible through the former; so up we went. The crack opens up again at around 8m and leads further up and into the cliff. This leads into a surge hole and another crack leading down with the seabed visible far below (about 35m depth at this point). My buddy and I decided that this chimney-like hole was also worth investigating so down we went again ending up in the cave where we started at 16m. This may sound like a roller-coaster dive but both of us were using computers and had plenty of air and at no time were we compromising our dive profiles.

Swimming back up through the cave we decided to swim through the surge hole and complete our dive with a leisurely safety stop on the westerly tip of the island. The surge hole is over a metre wide and about two deep and was tricky to fin through at first until the surge changed direction and spat us out on the other side with huge grins on our faces.

On the rare occasion that Lima is current free I would strongly recommend diving this area and keep an eye out for this cave, provided you’re qualified and experienced enough to dive it.

After the exhilaration of our first dive we had the opportunity to relax on the dhow (which had now caught up with us) whilst the second & third waves enjoyed their go at Lima.

Once everyone was back on-board, enthusing about the 20m visibility and all the things they saw, we headed south with the intention of diving The Cave. Once again the fast boat headed off with the first wave and deposited us at Fish-Head Rock about 100m north of the cave itself. This area is strewn with giant boulders that have fallen from the cliff above and at 10 to 15m provides an easy second dive with the benefit of dozens of swim-throughs under the house-sized rocks. For those not wanting to swim in these rock caves there is excellent reef life and colourful corals to admire. My buddy and I spent fifty minutes swimming into holes in the rock, photographing fish and generally enjoying the dive – including spotting a turtle swimming above us.

A relaxing dhow trip back to Dibba passed in a very short time as we “power napped” in preparation for the drive back to Dubai.
An excellent day and two of the finest dives ever – we really are spoilt being able to dive as we do every weekend. Thanks to Marion for a grand day out.

6 comments:

Amazing Musandam said...

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musandam dibba said...

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jony said...

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Johan Silver said...

Musandam Dibba is a lovely place for the family trip .

Anonymous said...

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