Brother Islands on MY Hurricane

[John Gulliver]

Originally Posted by Tim Ingmire

Hi John,

some very nice pictures there. Given your previous experiences I was almost expecting to see that you'd been diverted to other sites again. How many people were on the dive boat? It seems to me that boats like Excel and Hurrican have too many divers on board which means a lot of em in the water. How did you find it?

The boat was full, which means 22 divers. However, we never experienced any problems with too many divers on one spot at the same time. The Hurricane has two RIBs and they never put more than 6 divers in a RIB at once. They departed from the mother ship in two waves. It all went very smoothly.

[Lou]

So glad you got there in the end! I was worried for you, you seemed to have the worst luck with the Brothers.

The photos are great. I really liked the bannerfish and the Aida shots - well done.

Wetted my appetite for the southern itinerary in September, that's for sure.

Lou

[davepazzer]

Nice pics John, tried to get to the Brothers in March on Mv Excel but got blown out, that's the second time now, maybe I'll try Hurricane next year and get better luck.

[Justin Owen]

Originally Posted by davepazzer

Nice pics John, tried to get to the Brothers in March on Mv Excel but got blown out, that's the second time now, maybe I'll try Hurricane next year and get better luck.

Aye, the Dave Parry curse strikes again....!?

Nice pics John, love the porcupine fish photo....!

[PW1664]

Originally Posted by John Gulliver

Five friends and I came home last Friday morning after a wonderful trip on MY Hurricane to Elphinstone Reef, Brother Islands and Daedalus Reef. This was my fourth attempt to get to the Brother Islands over a period of 10-12 years, so it was not before time.....

John,

I'm really pleased you made it, I know you've been trying for quite some time. We had quite a chat about it last year on another thread.

Did it live up to expectations?

We were very lucky weather wise in 2003, the water was flat calm. We even had sharks fins breaking the surface (check out the pic below), a little nerve racking when surface swimming onto little brother during the day!

[John Gulliver]

Yes, Paul, the trip did live up to my expectations. In fact, all six of us were more than satisfied with all aspects and one of my friends, who is a professional u/w photographer and has been to the Red Sea about 20 times, says it was his best dive trip ever. We definitely did not have flat calm seas, though. At the Brothers and Daedalus, the winds were quite strong and we had 2-3 m waves all the while and I estimate that they were as big as 5 m at times. That made getting into the RIBs from the mother ship's dive platform and climbing back onto the RIB after the dive a hazardous procedure at times. And climbing up the Hurricane's ladder the few times we dived from the boat wasn't easy either. In fact I got a very nasty bang on my left shin on one occasion and still have a nasty cut and a lot of swelling, although it is gradually healing. However, I'd willingly put up with it all again, the diving was that good.