Nudi Gal: Lemme Esplain You

I have started picking up the little nuances of the cruise directors. Lisa likes to rub her hands together as she talks (sorta like “goodie goodie goodie”). She also says “no problem” a lot. For instance, if there is going to be lots of current, it’s “no problem”, we’ll just go to the other side of the rock.

G and Jose say “lemme esplain you” a lot. In other words, “let me explain to you”.

We started trading many stories about serving as a crew. They have very high end guests who will rent out the whole boat for just one or two families. Then they will change the schedule and mess with the routine of the crew. Some of them don’t even really want to go diving. Can you imagine?

We took a group photo of our boat in our wetsuits.

G superglued one of the little guys I brought in with the nudibranchs they have.

The chef made homemade donuts yesterday. That’s pretty advanced for a liveaboard chef! They were good, but not great.

I’ve been having Mie Goreng every morning for breakfast. It is so good.

I keep trying to get a good “Fly the W” flag photo on the boat with the islands in the background. I’m failing miserably. Here’s the best I could do:

Many mobula rays showed up on the first dive. I got some footage. On the third dive, a coral started spawning and releasing this thick pink goo that looked like a ghost. It was really cool and I tried to get some video but I think the specialness was lost. We also saw a crocodilefish.

Oh, and I think I FINALLY figured out how the manual mode on my strobes work! Although the labels say “Lighter” and “Darker” which to me mean that if you turn the dial to lighter, your picture will turn out lighter. No. It means exactly the opposite. So if your picture is dark, turn the dial to “Darker” and the picture will be lighter. WTF? The funny thing is that I’ve looked through all of the instruction manuals that came with the strobes and have read online and nothing seems to walk me through what to do. I guess trial and error is always the best way.

I’d like to get a little more artsy with my photos. Which means staying with a cool subject longer. If I find a cool subject, I need to just shoot shoot shoot. Especially now that I feel like I have all my tools figured out.

A few more nudis showed up today…

33 - Philinopsis gardineri