Friday 18 October was a day of 'plenty rain'. We filled the tanks and hand-washed some of our grubbier towels and rags. Graeme went to the beach and burnt our paper rubbish, and walked in the rain to the top of the hill, then slid back down the steep trail mostly on his backside (and his face, if the muddy marks were any indication!).

A huge treat that afternoon, with Graeme and me given the opportunity to dive with Andy's hooker. Jamie stayed, quite happily, on Quintessa while we headed the short distance to the reef and descended into the crystal depths. Oh, to be diving again, what bliss! Andy's hooker consists of a battery run compressor mounted on an inflatable base, so you start it up and then just drag it around behind you. We thought it might be somewhat restrictive, given your regulator has a hose that goes from your mouth back up to the surface and into the compressor. A hooker allows conservative diving without all the gear you usually have to carry along (and get serviced or filled). The only addition to my snorkel gear was a weight belt. We didn't find the equipment restrictive at all, and found ourselves slipping easily back into the delights of diving. It was comfortable to go down as far as 6 metres. Beyond that, you had to suck harder to get a good breath. (Graeme later went by himself and found that with one person using it, you could comfortably get down to 10 metres.) There's such a difference between diving and snorkelling. As Kelli succinctly put it, 'when you snorkel you're just an observer. When you dive you become a part of the environment'. You can linger long enough for the fish to come back out and have a look at you. You can eyeball a nudibranch and watch the ebb and flow through the tendrils of an anemone while you wait for the clown fish to emerge. You can peer under coral shelves and see the rock cod, and lay long enough for a school of giant fish, or an elusive turtle, to pass by. I was on such a high after all that swooping and flying and immersing. I want a hooker!

Andy's trolling was more successful than ours - he'd caught a mackerel, so it was over to Quintessa for dinner with the guys from Desire and Waverly. Kelli made an impressive batch of 'fish and chips' - fresh mackerel pieces with a tempura batter, and chips made from local starchy veggies.