First Night Dive / Hurghada / Easy Divers / Tony Blackhurst

[thehappychappy]

Julie (my GF) & I booked a bargain holiday via Tony Blackhurst Scuba Tours

We had a nightmare journey getting to Hurghada involving closed runways, late flights, missed connections, seriously ill passengers, diverted flights & extreme rushing to make connections.

Originally booked Edinburgh to Gatwick and Gatwick to Hurghada ended up doing, Edinburgh-Gatwick-Heathrow(By Bus)-Athens(re route)-Cairo-Hurghada.

After nearly 20 hours travelling we arrived with very little sleep at the hotel (The Sunrise Hurghada) at 07:45 am, we being the daft divers we are went straight to the dive centre and went out diving for the day. Well we had to didnt we, it would have been rude not to seeing as the boat was leaving at 08:15am.

In the seven days we where in Hurghada with easy divers & Oxygene.se I managed 14 dives and Julie managed 13.

We had a fantastic time and where well looked after at all times by the Tony Blackhurst staff, the local reps & the boat crew and dive guides.

We met some nice people and had some amazing dives, Julie nor myself have an underwater camera.

I would like to try to tell you about one of my favourite dives of the week.

After an eventfull day trip to the Abu Nuhas reef and diving the Chrisoula K wreck and the amazing wreck that is the Giannis D. We headed back to our hotel ready to be picked up at 19:30 to head for our one and only shore dive of the week.

Dive 11 of the week:
My First Night Dive My Dive: 69 - 04/07/2006
Dive Site: Empire Beach Resort - House Reef.


We get to the Empire Beach resort around quarter to eight and meet the guide for the evening, Julie had a holiday in Hurghada four years ago and remembers the guide from this very night dive site back then.

We have a good chat to Mustapha and he briefs us about the house reef, the phrase "sometimes if you are lucky you might find a seahorse" is said and at that point Julie and I both get very interested as we where told this the other day when we dived "Marsa Abu Galhwa" from the easydivers boat "Marine" and we had spent 15-20 minutes with our heads almost buried in the sand and seagrass searching to no avail.

This time we hope it will be different.....

We suit up and do our buddy checks, I have my trusty F2 & tristar plus head, Julie has a rented torch and Mustapha has the same as Julie.

Just after the sun sets at quarter past eight and the area plunges into darkness we walk along the shore to the far away edge of the bay, walking slowly into the warm red sea, which my Vytec registers as 27oC.

This is my first ever night dive and I have butterflies in my stomach, I am excited and a little nervous, so far this week we have had amazing visibility and I do not know what to expect.


Torches on, Masks on, Regs in Ok and dive signal given.
The two rental torches have a faint orange glow, the Tristar has a lovely white, wide beam, I am a little uneasy as its very dark, nothing like a low visibility daytime dive in the UK, my breathing is a little quick, I can only see the faint outline of my buddies and their torches, we descent but within a few minutes we are stopped at around 6 metres and gathered round watching a tiny little brown cuttle fish swimming in a little clump of rocks and corals, I also see lots of rope and Julie is pointing at it giving me the OK, I respond Ok and we fin along, another few minutes later we stop and there are three still redsea needlefish:


I am calming down now and my breathing is much more relaxed, this night diving lark is really good fun.

Next we come across a rather large Puffer fish:


Afer stopping and watching the Puffer fish for a few minutes we gently fin along the sandy bottom, we come across some very small almost transparent crabs, some urchins (Sand dollar & Parsons Hat) lots of the black prickly Urcins, these seem to be all over this bay meaning our buoancy control has to be damn good in the shallow sections or we are going to get rather sore.

we come to the sea grasses and we all start looking carefully, Mustapha starts wildily swinging hsi torch around and Julie and I fin closer to him to find he has his beam pointing at a little green thorny seahorse:


WOW! Just amazing, this is so cute and it moves so funny in the sea, hold on whats Mustapha pointing at now, wow a second one! This time this one has a bulging belly and little blue bump..(I find out later the pregnant Seahorse is the daddy and it was the mummy that was swimming around) The first sea horse kinda wobbles closer to me and I just hover transfixed watching it move around.

These two little creatures are the same green colour as the grass around them, its pitch black and bay is large and they are only around 10cm tall each, I have no idea how Mustapha found these wonderful creatures but he did it!

Julie and I just hover and watch the sea horses for a while longer.

We find some sawtooth Feather star, an erect edible sea cucumber some tube worms & then Mustapha starts flashing his torch again, he has found yet another Seahorse and another!

We find a swimming Moses Sole:


We come across the remains of an old metal pier and some corals, lots of those dodgy black prickly urchins and some schoaling fusilers.

we come across a small group of puffer fish which we play with our torch beams with.

We find a couple of anenomes and the red sea anenome fish (Nemo!). a gentle fin back and we surface two very happy dive tourists and one smiling guide.

A superb little dive and a great way to spend an evening.



Time: 20:41 Duration: 72 Minutes Max Depth: 14.1 Metres Avg Depth 8.7 Metres Water Temp: 27oC Mix:
21% 12 Litres Gas in: 200 Bar Gas out: 70 Bar

NOTE: All photos used in this report are for illustration only, they are existing images already on the web.


Id like to say a huge thank you to everybody who made our holiday especially Helen from Tony Blackhurst for being at our beckon call right thorugh our nightmare journey to Egypt expecially as she was meant to be on holiday herself and still took calls from us!

Considering Julie & I only paid for a £295 (prior to our extra dives and Edinburgh flights) seven day special offer holiday we recieved service second to none and both of us cant wait to book our next dive holiday via Tony Blackhurst.

[triplefin]

Glad you had a good time and all the hassle was worth while - nice report

[thehappychappy]

How could I not have had a good time:

Great Viz: Check!
Warm Water: Check!
Sexy Dive Buddy: Check!
No Work: Check!
Varied Marine Life: Check!
Great Wrecks: Check!


oh and the rope I gave an OK signal turned out to be Synapta Sea Cucumbers

[B]

great report... we have as yet not taken the plunge to do a night dive (the female price is scared) but it sounds fab...