Diving at Sail Rock, Koh Tao

Diving at Sail Rock, Koh Tao

Lamai Beach, Thailand, Asia

I got up early this morning and the Easy Divers taxi was at my hotel at exactly 7am to pick me up. We picked up a few other people on the way to the pier and got on the boat just in time for our 8am departure time. I was under the impression that it was going to be about an hour and a half to the dive site, it turned out to be about three hours. That gave us plenty of time to enjoy the cooked breakfast onboard the ship and I met my dive partner for the day, Virginie. She is a very nice French girl with about the same dive experience as me, so it was a good fit for a partner.

About 15 minutes before we got to the site, we all got our gear on so we could hop straight in the water when we got there. We got to the site and luckily another guy in our dive group, Don, noticed that my BCD wasn’t full of air, even though I had just filled it. It turns out my BCD had a leak and it wouldn’t hold any air, so if I had jumped in the water, I would have sank like a stone! All of this gear is supposed to be checked at least twice before we put it on, and it was pretty obvious that our dive instructor, or one of the dive masters didn’t check the gear very well. Our dive instructor, Oh, got a new BCD for me so after a few minutes of getting my gear off and back on again, we were ready to get in the water.

We got in and had to fight the current to get over to the rock to start our decent. We all went down together, and Don’s mask was defective and kept filling up with water within three seconds after clearing it. He and Oh went back to the surface to try and fix it, and a minute later Oh signaled to the rest of us to come to the surface. The current was so strong that it brought us about 200m (600ft) from the dive site, so we had to swim back on the surface to try again.

We all decended together again, and four of us saw Oh and Don go straight back to the surface, but this time Oh signaled us to stay under. We didn’t see or hear anything from Oh for about two minutes, so we all decided it was a good idea to go back to the surface to see what was happening. This time we came up about 300m from Sail Rock, where Oh was sitting at the surface by himself. Don couldn’t get his mask to work, so Oh told him he had to go back to the boat and miss this dive. I have no idea why Oh didn’t get us to surface a lot earlier, but after another 15 minutes of swimming on the surface against the current, we finally decended for a third time.

We got under to a maximum depth of 14m (42ft) and the visibility was terrible. We could only see 3m (9ft) and because the current was so strong, we could only stay on one side of the rock. We swam through a chimney within the rock, but there was nothing impressive inside or outside of it. The coral wasn’t particularly colorful, there were not many fish compared to most of my other dives, and the ones we saw were not unique to this site at all. We stayed under for about 40 minutes and then surfaced for another 15 minute swim back to the boat. It was the most disappointing dive of my short career.

We got on the boat, and because of all the shenanigans in the water, we got onboard about 45 minutes later than all the other groups, so there wasn’t much left for us to eat lunch. They had served two curries with rice, but when we got on board there was only rice left. After the 45 minutes of swimming we’d just done, we could have used a lot more energy than what the rice gave us. Oh also told us that because we took so much longer than the other groups, that we would only have a 30 minute break before getting back in for a second dive. Half of the group, including me, decided not to go back in for the second dive. I figured if I’m paying to go out diving and I’m not having fun at all, there’s no point in going back out. I’m glad I never went back out because I heard that the second dive was no better than the first one.

Finally everyone got back on the boat and we made our way back to Koh Samui. After another three hours on the boat we arrived at Big Buddha pier, and that’s when I realized I had just spent nine hours on a boat, to go on a 45 minute dive. I was not impressed. Luckily, the taxi driver that picked us up from the pier was the same one I had this morning, so he knew exactly where my hotel was. Of course, I was the last one to be dropped off again, but by 6pm I got back to the resort and met Lynne for dinner. It has been such a long and disappointing day, I didn’t feel like doing much when I got back. We had a couple pitchers of beer at the restaurant and then called it a night. Tomorrow is our last full day on the island, so I am determined to enjoy that to the max!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *