ODD set off for Gatwick at stupid o’ clock Sunday morning, buzzing with anticipation for the week ahead. All the early concerns about excess baggage proved unfounded (especially as Sue was wearing most of her dive gear!) and we sailed through check in and security ready for the obligatory airport beer at 7.30am! A pretty uneventful flight and the marvel that is Egyptian airport bureaucracy and we were at met at Travco by Hooch our guide for the week on VIP One.

There are so many liveaboards in the Egyptian Red Sea these days and by comparison, VIP One is an old girl now. You wouldn’t believe it though, as the moment you step aboard, the quality finish strikes you and it is clear that its rating as a first class luxury liveaboard is well deserved. And so it proved for the rest of the week; extremely comfortable, great food and a truly first rate crew.

With all the permits in place, we left Travco that night and moored up just outside in order that we might beat the traffic to Ras Katy in the morning for our check out dives. With no problems and weighting duly sorted we set about a week’s great diving on the sites of the Northern Red Sea. The Dunraven provided us with quite a current and three very friendly dolphins. Well, the dolphins were there for those lazier divers who hadn’t bothered finning their backsides off against the current to get into the bow section of the wreck and had just loitered around!

We were very lucky with the weather. Although there was the threat of a serious storm, it didn’t materialise and we were blessed with calm seas for the majority of our week. In fact, the Thistlegorm had practically been out of bounds for the previous few weeks due to high seas and severe currents, but we managed to get three excellent dives on this most popular of the Red Sea’s wrecks. The greatest hazard turned out to be the pack of antisocial Russians with their twinsets, drysuits (???!!!) and military issue DPV’s! We then moved back up to Ras Mohammed for fabulous dives on the likes of Shark and Jolanda and Ras Hooch, named after our inimitable dive guide. I would love to tell you more about that but would then have to kill you!

After our last dive at Ras Mohammed we then steamed for a few hours up to the Straights of Tiran and rumour had it, into the long overdue storm. It was flat calm the whole journey, almost eerily so, and we eventually moored up on South Lagoon for a leisurely afternoon dive and a night dive. The threatened winds eventually did put in their appearance; right in the middle of the night dive! It was quite a shock ascending into choppy seas and the chill winds from the North. That was the last of diving without a wetsuit! The next day we had a choppy, dawn ride over to the inside of Jackson Reef and moored up ready for our early morning dive. We checked out the red anemone at 28 metres and then started a steady ascent as a beautiful eagle ray cruised by in the blue. On the turn to beat the current before being spat out into the shipping lanes, a Manta was hovering in the near distance, oblivious of the current that we were all fiercely finning against. Unfortunately, not all of our group saw this amazing sight but that is diving and it gives me great pleasure to let Chris and Nik know that they can poke their wolffish where the sun doesn’t shine!! As we were making our safety stop at the top of the reef, a few of us that had carried on a little longer were privileged to witness a most rare sight, as a male giant puffer inflated to its full splendour. Hooch said he had never seen such a thing in over 3,000 dives!