North Horn

Slept soundly on Friday night and woke around 6am. We were advised that it was important to be on time for this mornings dive. The North Horn site is at the northern tip of Osprey Reef. The tide had to be timed just right so we would not fight too much current getting onto the reef and be able to ride it back to the boat. The crew strung a 200 foot line at the surface to the reef so we could pull ourselves to the reef without getting swept away by the current. Good thing too, we needed that line. As we began the dive I looked down to see several reef sharks – 5-6 feet in length – swimming below us. Once on the reef we were between the reef and cruising sharks.

We swam north along the reef and down to a 100’ depth. Even at 100 feet there was plenty of blue water under us. They say the bottom is somewhere around 3-4000 meters. Not someplace you would want to go. The dive was short for a GBR live aboard dive, about 40 minutes instead of the usual hour. We spend more time at depth here and that will cause you to use more air. At about 100 bar, or 1000 psi we turned around and made our way back to the line. If you missed the line and came up off the reef, it would mean that they would have to send the tender boat out to get you. If they saw you that is. This is not a good place to get swept away as it would take the rescue helicopters a few hours to fly the 100 nautical miles to search for you. Even then they would not have much search time before having to head back to land.

On the way back to the boat we did our safety stops at 30 feet (two minutes) and 15 feet ( 5 minutes ). We did not even have to kick a fin to get back. The current pushed us right along with a loose grip on the rope.