Little Guys in Speedos

The boat is amazing.  It’s like a nicer Cheng Ho.  There are 16 divers and 22 crew.

Deb and I are roommates again and she gave me the big bed.  So awesome.

There aren’t many photographers.  I got a whole tabletop to myself and a whole bunch of outlets.  I probably won’t really even need my power strip, except for maybe downstairs in my room for my laptop.

We aren’t diving today (boo hoo), but I have set up everything and it all seems to be working so far…

The boat briefing was at 11am and Lisa spoke for an hour.  There was at least 20 minutes on food and drinks.  Whoa. 

We’ve already had two meals on the boat and it’s only 1:13.

We have another dive briefing at 4:30.  I’m trying not to sleep during the day today.

There is a lot of buzz about Nudibranchs here!  I’m super excited.

There is also lots of shark talk.  Epaulette (walking) Shark and Wobbegong.  Whatevs.

My dive boat is with Joni.  It is Cheryl, Yuvonne, Deb and Me.  I cracked out the little guys in speedos for our boat and I brought a little Chicken Stu to put on the D ring.

It turns out the boat also has their own rubber chicken that one of the dive groups brought to them in 2014.  Its head is red unlike Chicken Stu’s.

Dinner was sashimi then tomato soup then lasagna or fish and then flan.  Yuck (on the flan).  Flan is like snot on a plate.  Ewwww.

But the afternoon snack was fried bananas so I got that instead of flan!

Oh, and the diet cokes are free!  I’m just worried the boat is going to run out of them.  I always list my dietary needs when registering for a liveaboard: diet coke and chocolate.  When Lisa gave us a tour of the room, she actually showed us that there was a refrigerator in our room and that there were a few bars of chocolate in there for me.  Ha!!

The Arenui has a great use of technology!  They have a couple of iPads hooked up and are using the navigation app (the same one I used when I captained the boat a couple of summers ago).  They are also using the two flatscreen TVs to project our dive sites and give the briefing.  Cool.

Raja Ampat means “four kingdoms”.  There are four islands near each other that represent these four kingdoms.  We are on our way to Masol which is in the South and is one of the best places to dive.  Supposedly the other liveaboards went North first so we should have this place all to ourselves.