Wednesday 29 August Awesome diving Tinanja island

Awesome is word used too frequently and not always in it's true sense. The diving on the outside of Tinanja island, Taka Bone Rate is awesome in my humble experience, possibly the best diving we've enjoyed since we've been cruising.

Ronald has secured a larger dive boat for us today – 9 divers, 2 dive guides and 3 boat handlers. It's still basic but all part of the adventure. Eleven divers putting together kit and preparing to dive on a narrow and rolling boat is a challenge if you are not to slip or knock an important bit of kit overboard before it's attached to your body (and you're ready to go).

We all got in the water safely although Dick from Geramar had forgotten to attach the low pressure inflator hose with his BCD and immediately sank to the bottom at 3m. A small panic attack, a fright and he chose not to do the dive. The rest of us enjoyed a drift along a superb wall of the biodiversity you see on TV documentaries – sublime colours pristine, fish galore, superb clarity. Exceptional diving and David and I had the OK from the dive guide to continue for a full hour instead of surfacing when the first person became low on air, our only proviso was to return to the boat. I've switched from breathing from my air tank to my gills so low on air is a very rare reason to finish a dive.

After lunch and our required surface interval we continued along the second half of the wall. Again, fantastic. We were very, very happy divers today.