Mike Ball Dive Expeditions - Blog and Company News
Lap Around the Sun
Captain Trevor Jackson
The universe is just a giant clock….. tick tock…. tick tock.
The moon revolves around the earth sucking water to and fro, the earth spins on itself and laps the sun once a year. The sun lies on an outward spiraling arm of the galaxy spinning around its central core and the galaxy in turn spins around …well you get the picture. It happens quite uniformly and precisely and we end up back where we started and are at once off again to where we are going, wherever that may be. We live our lives putting misguided importance on stuff…cars, houses , toys for the kids…we want better education, a healthier return on our investments and an early and prosperous retirement….a new RV and then we’re gone and the earth keeps spinning and spinning and spinning. Read the rest of this entry »
One Way to Find Out
By Captain Trevor Jackson
2014 …..who’d have thought… I remember being back in high school in the early eighties wondering if we would see in the new century….and here we are well into the second decade and going strong. Back then the naysayers had the planet imploding or being struck by an asteroid or starving ourselves of oxygen, or simply disappearing when the computers rolled over into 2000. None of it happened and the world is well quite frankly, a better place now than it was back then. We are more tolerant of others, more supportive of those in need and way way way more aware of our environment. One simply has to peruse any of the pages of any of the social media avenues to see that humans are doing good…and so we should be, we are smart and we are innovative. In my little part of the world looking out through the wheelhouse windows I see the reef as getting better each year…not worse…better! Read the rest of this entry »
Ain’t Seen Nothing Like It
By Captain Trevor Jackson
“And I’ve traveled round, been all over this world and I ain’t seen nothing like my Galway Girl”…………or so the song goes. It’s about a guy walking along in a scenic place and he meets a girl who steals his heart away with her unparalleled beauty. It wouldn’t happen often, but every now and again something comes your way that redefines your universe. No I haven’t lost the plot or gone soft in the head…….but something new has come our way. We stumbled onto it in October and for me it is the diving equivalent of my Galway Girl. By that I mean ‘I ain’t seen nothing like it’. Read the rest of this entry »
At One with Nature
By Captain Trevor Jackson
Tech divers will often rave about the advantages of Closed Circuit Rebreathers over traditional open circuit scuba, and there are a few of them. They shorten deco times on deep dives, they save bucket loads on the use of expensive gas and they generally look spacey and cool. One other, often neglected advantage is that they don’t produce bubbles. Read the rest of this entry »
The Jaws of Coral
By Captain Trevor Jackson
One of the real eye openers from the Torres Straits expeditions last summer were the smaller and less known wrecks that turned out to be genuine highlights. The wreck of the Pandora for example offered little in terms of structure and marine life but in terms of history and its significance to our country, it was the diver’s version of Anzac Cove. We visited the Pandora on a glassy New Year’s day this year and it left all on board with a sense of having a tangible connection with the greatest maritime story ever told; the Mutiny on the Bounty. On the site of the Pandora lay the remains of the ship that captured the mutineers and was attempting to bring them to front the cruel and often unjust 18th century British court system. That connection with history can sometimes massively enhance a dive, especially when the opportunity only comes around so rarely. Skip forward to May 2104 and jump 600 miles down the coast…….. We get to touch history once again…..the SS Gothenburg. Read the rest of this entry »
Make Your Own Mind Up
By Captain Trevor Jackson
If you had the opportunity to dive every good wreck in Australia, and had to decide on the top three, the list would go something like this….
1) SS Yongala
2) RMS Quetta
3) Nothing else rates compared to those two Read the rest of this entry »
That Blue and Lime Line
By Captain Trevor Jackson
The wheelhouse of Spoilsport stretches width wise right across the whole vessel. Long and thin and wide, it resembles what would have once been known as a “Bridge” in ye olde nautical terms, rather than a wheelhouse, which you might find perched atop a fishing boat or tug boat. Windows which face the sides of the boat are the end caps of this bridge and it is here that I often find myself staring out to sea after an overnight crossing to Osprey. Read the rest of this entry »
Little Ducks, All in a Row
By Captain Trevor Jackson
Imagine that you were trying to lose some weight. Not dive weights, body weight. You wouldn’t just choose one avenue. That is to say, you wouldn’t exercise and keep wolfing down the burgers. Nor would you go on a strict diet and then just sloth around all week. You might also try knocking back a few less glasses of ale. In short, you’d have a much better chance of achieving your desired outcome if you adopted a multi- pronged approach. A lot of things in life are like that………insurers call it “comprehensive coverage”. Tech divers might think of it as “redundancy”…….what I’m talking about is backing up your basic premise with everything you’ve got, dotting all the I’s, crossing all the T’s. Read the rest of this entry »
Raise the Bar
By Captain Trevor Jackson
20 years ago as a newcomer to the live aboard scene, I remember being hungry for every piece of good advice I could get. Plenty of people were forthcoming although it must be said, while there was plenty of advice, not all of it was good. One piece did stick though. A wise old sage and I stood leaning on the back rail of a boat one day and he said “For a successful dive trip, you have to get two of the following three things right: The weather, the diving and the food…….and nine times out of ten, the food is the only one you’ll have any say in”. It would be redundant to mention that this fellow liked to eat and he liked to eat well, but the advice was solid and stuck with me ever since. Read the rest of this entry »
Get a Real Life
Captain Trevor Jackson
“Your friends haven’t done anything new lately”……….or so I was informed just moments ago. I opened my inbox and halfway down the page, next to the Facebook and Twitter icons, was that message strewn across the page. It threw me for a second, then I realized it was 5am and the message simply referred to the interim between when I last checked Facebook and now. It’s kind of arrogant though, don’t you think? Internet based social media pages declaring that you lot are BORING. Especially since, according to those same pages, posting a photo of the pub meal you’re about to eat is a worthy event. In that case the message this morning may have read ‘Joe Blow has posted a photo”. That is social media speak for ‘Go back on Facebook and waste another of your precious hours’. Read the rest of this entry »
