Australia, Great Barrier Reef, Liveaboard

Author: Brent Dalrymple

My wife and I just returned from a four-day liveaboard trip to the Great Barrier Reef on Mike Ball's Supersport. It was a wonderful trip and anyone contemplating a similar trip might be interested in a few details.

Supersport is a 90-foot aluminum, catamaran-hulled, vessel with a 34 ft beam and twin diesel engines. It will accommodate a couple of dozen guests. On our trip there were 21 divers, two non-divers, and about a dozen very attentive crew. The cabins were spacious and comfortable and there was sufficient room on the boat that it never felt crowded. The food was outstanding, there was plenty of it, and there were always a variety of things to eat at every meal. The kitchen staff was more than happy to accommodate those guests who had special dietary requirements. There were snacks between meals and during "cocktail hour". Wine was served with dinner and beer, wine, and soft drinks were also available for purchase but drinking before the diving for the day was completed was a no-no and having more than a couple of alcoholic drinks in the evening was frowned on. Since nearly everyone on board was a diver, everyone understood the wisdom of this advice and complied without complaint.

The dive deck had ample space for the number of divers so there was plenty of room to "gear up". Besides the usual tank racks and benches, each diver had a large plastic tub beneath the bench in which to stow fins, gloves, mask, etc. between dives. The tanks were filled in place between dives so for the entire trip there was never a need to remove one's BC and attach it to another tank. They provide aluminum-80 tanks so those of us used to diving with steel tanks had to add a few additional pounds to compensate for the extra buoyancy. There was an entry platform about four feet above the water in the center of the stern of the boat, and two stern recovery platforms, one port and one starboard, at water level, each with a long ladder that made getting back aboard a snap. A crew member was always right there to take fins and cameras and to give a hand getting back on board. At each dive site, a long safety-stop bar was rigged at a depth of 5 m. There were also two 10 m long weighted descent lines at the stern, port and starboard, and a long float line rigged from the stern. There were showers and toilets on the dive deck, which added to the convenience. Clean and dry salt-water towels were provided after every dive.

We dive with our own gear but the rental gear appeared to be good brands in good shape although, as is typical of most rental gear, it was not long on bells and whistles. They had virtually everything one would need for rent, including Uwatec dive computers, cameras, and dive light.

We were impressed by the safety consciousness of the crew. There were four instructors in the crew and a couple of dive masters. Novice divers and divers who had not dived recently were given a skills check and evaluation by an instructor on their first dive. Everyone was logged into and out of the water by a crewmember, with time and maximum depth, and every diver had to sign the log personally before the boat left for a new site. There was absolutely no danger of being left behind, which is a nice feeling at all times but especially when out of sight of land. The pre-dive briefings were detailed and thorough and there were constant reminders to make the required safety stop at 5 m for 5 minutes before surfacing, either on the safety bar or on the reef. As far as we could tell, everyone happily complied. An instructor accompanied divers who were making their first night dive and there was enough crew so that those who wished to could be accompanied by an instructor or dive master on any dive.

The weather wasn't great but it wasn't awful either. July is the beginning of winter but the latitude of Cairns is about 18 deg. S so it is a tropical winter. It was cloudy for the entire trip with winds of 25-30 kts most of the time. Most of the dive sites, however, are on the sheltered (landward) side of the reefs so the surface conditions were pretty good, and currents and surge were minimal or negligible at all but Steve's Bommie and Cod Hole, both of which are slightly more exposed than the other sites we visited. Vis varied from 15-20 m at one site to 30+ m at most sites. Air temperatures were invariably in the mid- to high 70s, so we were always comfortable in shorts and tee shirt, and water temperatures were 75 F at the surface and 74-75 F at depth. Both my wife and I wore 3mm full wetsuits with fleece vests under. She also wore a fleece hood and both of us were comfortable on all of the dives. Apparently the very best time to dive the GBR is in September and October, after winter has ended and before the summer rains begin.

This particular Mike Ball trip (Trip #2, Cod Hole) left from Cairns and ended at Lizard Island, about 220 km to the north. We selected it because we were told that it was suitable for divers of all levels, and since we are novices it seemed the best thing for us to do. We selected Mike Ball because of their excellent reputation, which we found to be well deserved. The guests included some divers with a lot of experience, some who took the AOW course on board, some who took their OW certification dives on board, and some, like us, who have only had a few dives since certification. Everyone seemed to enjoy the diving and the trip as much as we did and I didn't hear any complaints so apparently all thought the diving was suitable for their particular level. Most of the sites vary in depth from a few meters to 35 meters or more, so it is easy for different divers to dive every site beginning at whatever depth suits them and still see plenty. None of the sites required a deep dive to get to the interesting stuff although the depth was there for those who wanted it.

Cairns is a tourist city but the town itself doesn't have a lot to recommend it for anything but a short stay. Downtown is full of shops, galleries, and restaurants and that is good for a day or two but that's about all. There is no beach-the waterfront at Cairns consists of mud flats. There is a casino but since we're not gamblers we didn't bother to see the inside. Mike Ball picks up at the Cairns Colonial Club so we decided to stay there. It is a few miles out of downtown, in the suburbs, and is a multi-acre, self-contained destination resort with swimming pools, restaurants, bars, and gardens. It is quite a nice place and is a good place to chill out for a few days, which we did after the dive trip. They have bus service into town on the hour and once in town everything of interest is within walking distance. There are several large hotels in town but the advantages of staying in town are not obvious.

We left Cairns on Friday morning and spent four hours or so steaming 100 km northward to the first dive site at Great Escape, which is about 30 km south of Ribbon Reef #1. This gets most of the serious travel out of the way at the beginning of the trip. After that the dive sites are not far apart so there is no need to travel at night. Sleep is definitely better when anchored! Over the next two and a half days there were 11 dives at 6 different sites on the outer reefs, including two night dives on Friday and Saturday. I suspect (but don't know) that the 11 dives might have been distributed around a few more sites if the weather had allowed diving on some of the more exposed sites, but the sites we did dive were excellent so no complaint. From Great Escape (one dive) we slowly worked our way northward and dove twice each at Flare Point, Steve's Bommie, Challenger Bay, Pixie Pinnacle, and, finally, Cod Hole. We left the boat at Lizard Island Monday morning and flew from there back to Cairns. Lizard Island is a national park that contains an airstrip and a posh resort that, according to the listings, has rooms for two starting at $AU1100-1200 per night, but it does include meals. Apparently the resort doesn't like non-guests wandering about the grounds so we only saw it from a distance up the beach.

The diving was fantastic. This part of the GBR is a marine reserve and is vigorously protected by the government so the reef is in good shape and divers don't have to worry about fish hooks, lines, and the like. Mooring buoys have been put in at many of the dive sites to prevent reef damage from anchors and we never saw a bit of trash. At every dive site except Cod Hole Supersport was the only dive boat there. The dive boat from Lizard Island takes a trip to Cod Hole every other day and we saw them but only for about an hour and they left before our second Cod Hole dive.

I'm convinced that Walt Disney designed the GBR-it's almost too perfect and the abundance of colorful and unusual animals is impressive. There were so many things to see that I got sensory overload on every dive. In addition to a bizillion colorful reef fish, moray eels, hard and soft corals of all colors, nudibranchs, anemones, shrimp, gorgonians, feather stars, huge sea cucumbers, sea whips, etc., etc., we saw giant clams, potato cod (grouper), white tipped reef sharks, barracuda, minke whales, lion fish, puffer fish, turtles, and on Pixie Pinnacle a flame fileclam, which lives in a hole and puts on a brilliant red-orange light show with bioluminescence. On the one hand it was hard to know where to look but on the other hand wherever we looked there was plenty to see.

Every dive was memorable, but the two pinnacles (Steve's Bommie and Pixie Pinnacle) and Cod Hole were particularly special. Steve's Bommie and Pixie Pinnacle are slender coral pinnacles, swarming with fish and other marine life, that rise from sand bottoms at 35+ m to within 5m and 2m of the surface, respectively. These we dove by descending to 20 m or so (some folks descended to the bottom) and then slowly ascending while swimming clockwise several times around the pinnacle. The pinnacles are plastered with all sorts of marine life both on the surface and in little holes and caves. The top got a little crowded toward the end of a dive as most of the divers preferred to take the safety stop near the top of the narrow pinnacle rather than hang on the safety bar. It was a friendly group, however, so we just schooled like the fish and it worked out fine.

Cod Hole is a shallow dive (10-15 m) noted for the one or two dozen large potato cod (100-200 lbs) that inhabit the place and enjoy being fed. It was really exciting having those huge animals, plus a couple of dozen large red sea bass, swim among us as we sat in a circle on the bottom watching them consume the afternoon snack provided by the crew. After the cod feed there was time to explore the reef and swim with the white tipped reef sharks that inhabit the part of the Code Hole site called Shark Alley.

I can't say enough good things about diving on the GBR and Mike Ball's operation. I certainly encourage anyone thinking about diving the GBR to go do it-it is certainly worth the very long plane ride.