Friday 3 June Diving Rainbow Reef, Vanua Levu

Giant clam

At 9.00 am we were joined on board Jackster by Patricia and Dick from Geramar, Karen and Frank from Tahina and Jack our guide for the day. Jack helmed us out through a gap in the reef only passed with local knowledge and showed us where to drop the anchor in 10m of sand and coral heads. We all kitted up and he took us to a site called the White Wall. I was first in the water only to find we'd drifted off the wall and had to hang on while being towed back. Note to self – don't be too quick to get in the water but it was so hot sitting in the dinghy I had to get in before I melted.
Eventually we were all ready and dropping down through the blue to the reef. First I discovered the battery in my dive computer had expired, I adjusted and opted to stay above David for the dive to stay within safety limits. It was a wall dive, the white wall with white soft corals. There was plenty of hard and soft coral and plenty of fish to see.
Over lunch we had to fill a couple of tanks for Geramar which was when we discovered we have a problem with our compressor. It couldn't create enough pressure so we got creative on tanks. I used my morning tank which was half full, David had a new tank and we gave my spare tank to Dick from Geramar. The afternoon site was Purple Wall.
The Stray Kitties dinghied out in the afternoon to join us for snorkelling on the reef and set a new record for the number of persons on board. I counted nine adults and three children.
Back in the anchorage in the evening David pulled out the compressor for a full investigation to look for the fault. It wasn't easy to spot and a couple of false leads first until he found a hairline crack in the pressure sensor manifold. The remedies were to fit a new block but where do you order one here?, mend the crack, impossible, or blank off the automatic pressure sensor. That turned out to be our only option. Until we can get a replacement part, which might be when we return to NZ, David's going to have to watch the filling gauge and switch off when he sees the tank is full.
Poor guy had dived all day, hosted the other divers on Jackster, fixed our compressor and then spent until nearly 10 o'clock filling our tanks and tanks for Tahina and Geramar. I must say – David is a mechanical genius amongst his many attributes.
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