The trip start for the 20 of us at Edinburgh airport, from there down to Gatwick, after a good meal and a few drinks with an overnight stay at a nearby hotel, it was up early to catch the flight to Hurghada, from there a 4 hour bus trip to Marsa Alam, this is when we meet Paul & Tanya from London who made up the last two places on the boat, eventually later on we reach our accommodation for the next week, the liveabourd MV Al Farouk run by Tony Backhurst, there was the usual scramble for rooms, fortunately for the couples this meant being allocated the two double rooms on the upper deck, that proved later on to be the best place.
After dive gear and luggage had been stored away, we gathered on the upper deck for guess what? yes a few drinks, and we met our crew who did a fantastic job looking after us for the week, one of our members thought it would be a good idea to do a back flip of the boat, but forgot he had his mobile still in his back pocket, so if you've heard or hear a shark or humphead wrasse with the Nokia tune coming from it now you know.
The main attraction of this trip was to dive The Brothers Islands, but before heading out there we dived a couple other sites. First dive of three for the day one was Abu Dahba 6, a reasonable dive, better vis found on the north west face, usual colourful Red Sea life around, after this it was on to Elphinstone Reef the vis here was fantastic
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the guides Marco & Sissy promised us sharks and sure enough there was a couple hovering above the plateau but not as many as was hoped, later on we had a night dive on Adu Dahab 7, the best part of this was the Lion fish that seemed to be attracted to the dive torches, so most of us had them following as like pet dogs throughout the dive.
Back out to Elphinstone the next day for another couple of great dives.
Due to high winds, heavy seas and a limitation to how many liveaboards can berth at the Big Brother Islands, it looked like for a short time we might not get out there, then the skipper made the call and that night we headed out, in the early hours of the morning we were woken with the frantic noise of the crew tying us up onto Little Brother, we had arrived.
The trip out and sea state had taken its toll on a few members and they were looking a bit green around the gills, this was exasperated by the heat and smell in the lower accommodation area.
Stugeron tablets were passed out and after a short while most were on the road to recovery, so then began one of six dives on the Islands, and they all lived up to their expectations, not enough web space to cover everything but lets just say absolutely fantastic, sharks, schooling fish, a myriad of small life and colourful corals all in great vis, on one of the dives whilst taking pictures of anemone fish (nemo), I heard the annoying quack from one our members air horns, this he had used many times before to attract attention, or just playing around, so like the boy who cried wolf I ignored him until I couldn't take it any more, on turning round to finger wag him ( difficult to shout underwater) I caught the tail end of a huge Silky shark swimming off into the distance, if only I had turned round sooner. We dived the wreck of the Aidas II that had a large shoal of glass fish inside her and was festooned in soft corals, great dives. Most of the dives were carried out from the Al Farouk's Rhib and involved negative entries, this means a good buddy check on board the Rhib then removing all air from stab jackets rolling over the side, and diving straight down a few metres to get below the swell and current, check buddys are okay then carry on with the dive, this was the norm when diving of the Rhib.
With permission you are able to go onto Big Brother Island and chat to the very friendly staff that look after the lighthouse, and surprise surprise they sell T shirts, a good souvenir for the trip.
From the Brothers we headed back to the other sites planned for diving, these included Gota Etnin,Sha'ab Arbaa, Abu Dahab 1 & 3.
Adu Dahab 1 our last dive, proved to be one of the better dives, after dropping of the back of the boat we all congregated on the bottom, at 17 mtrs for the obligatory group photo, then everybody dispersed and carried on with their dive, this involved swimming around huge coral pillars, gullies, swim through's and various nooks & crannies, loads of life around, including a large free swimming moray eel. Due to the shallow depth and pony bottles needing to empty for the trip home this ended up the longest dive over 1 1/2 hrs for some.
One the most memorable,and humbling expereinces, was snorkeling with a pod of about 60+ spinner dolphins and their young that come into one of the horse shoe reefs that we anchored in, for most this made the holiday as well as the great company on board.
Thanks goes to Billy from all, for organizing the trip, Heres to 2005.
