Ali's Boat Diving

After a couple of sessions in the pool, Ali progressed to Kata beach for his first ever dive in the sea. This is a great place to start as the beach slopes very gently down to seven metres. The bottom is sandy with a coral reef running north to south. This reef is packed full of fish life and is a pleasure to dive as novice divers can stay on the sand but follow the reef along giving the benefit of a safe dive with no knee battering plunges onto the coral.... and there's plenty to see. Now we (Steve, Ali, Janey and me) are off to sea to visit two offshore islands for Ali's first boat diving experience.



Ali's first boat dive. I hire a local long-tail boat with Captain Ta Wan for our boat diving. This makes it very cheap (£30 for the day for the boat) and gives us two dives with lunch on an offshore island inbetween dives. Good value....and we have the dive sites completely to ourselves.

Here's Ali's first ever backward roll off the boat.....


There has been a lot of wind and rain in Phuket. The sea has been churned up and the visibility is poor by Thailand's standards. It is starting to get better now....but still not good enough for underwater photography. But none of this matters when you are learning.....your first dives are always full of excitement. There's lots to remember and it's enough to just be in the sea and experiencing those first sensations of being weightless and flying underwater.