Journey to the World

January 2008. Temperatures are dropping to five degrees at night. The cold doesn’t leave the city the day after. Fifteen degrees. I went to my dive club Coral Sea Divers for guided dives after my plans to dive with a friend didn’t work out. I was told at the dive club that under the water the temperature will be twenty one degrees, I got a full 5mm dive suit and we went on an open jeep toward the Egyptian border. The main suffering in winter dives is riding in an open jeep. Cold winds are freezing your bones and I could barely feel my fingers.

First dive site – Egyptian border in front of Eilat Princess Hotel

Twenty one degrees under water with 5mm suit which includes a hat, an item which helped mainly on the jeep rides. We got into the water at 9:30 AM. Visibility was excellent, over 15m. The site is characterized with nice corals. We’ve seen the following:

Small Moray eel, Box fish, giant Grouper, Sting ray with phosphorus spots, Lionfish and two octopuses mating which was nice to see.

No strong currents, and you can barely feel it’s winter outside. The site is suitable for morning dives. Maximum depth was 24.7m. Time was 40min. I had enough air for more.

Second dive site – “The University”, Migdalor beach

We went in the water at 12:15PM. Temperature didn’t change. I was a little disappointed because last time I dove at that site it looked much reacher in corals than this time. We almost didn’t see any fish but it was a nice quiet dive.

Unfortunately I still don’t have an underwater case for my camera so no pictures. In the meantime you can see what’s out of the water – a beach cleaner and Aqaba in Jordan on the other side of the red sea.

This article was published at 12-01-2008 Time: 16:43 and belongs to categories Eilat, Middle East, Dive Log, Israel, Diving. You can follow comments to this article using the feed RSS 2.0. You can post a comment, or trackback from your website.