2005 April - MV Super Sport
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In April 2005 Eve and I flew to a rather wet Cairns and by a remarkable coincidence met up with our friends and UK neighbours Geoff and Rosemary Milsted and their daughter Jennifer who happened to be staying at the same Cairns hotel.

Rested, Eve and I then made our way to the Cairns Colonial Club for a 7.00 a.m. meeting with Mike Ball Dive Expeditions representatives. They took us to Cairns Airport for a low level 250km reef flight to Lizard Island. Captain James Cook climbed the island’s summit in 1770 to find the way out of the labyrinth of reefs. Two hundred and thirty-five years later, Eve and I simply boarded our liveaboard for the next 3 days: Super Sport. Our dive itinerary for this short trip was to consist of northern reefs between Cod Hole and Cooktown. This 90km chain of ribbon reefs is considered to have the best diving in the northern section of the Great Barrier Reef.

Super Sport has been honoured with more excellence awards than any other liveaboard dive vessel in the area but even so, with poor weather, choppy sea conditions and after a long journey from the UK, Eve and I were soon seasick. However as the famous Cod Hole was the destination for our two afternoon dives we put all feelings of nausea behind us to dive with Giant Potato Cod, Whitetip Reef Sharks and Napoleon Wrasse known locally as Maori wrasse.

The next day we moved on to dive Pixie’s Pinnacle twice as well as Pixie's Wall and Challenger Bay where we saw Barracuda, a Cuttlefish, an Octopus, Leaf Scorpionfish and a Whitetipped Reef Shark.

Our final day of diving gave us two dives at Steve's Bommie where we again saw a Leaf Scorpionfish and one dive at Flare Point the highlight of which was a turtle.

All too soon it was time to pack our dive gear away as Super Sport began the voyage to Cairns. It was a rough trip. I do not think that any of the passengers slept, certainly Eve and I found it impossible. Early the next morning we docked at Marlin Jetty in rain-lashed Cairns. Then after breakfast aboard Super Sport, Eve and I said our good-byes and caught a flight to Brisbane to spend the afternoon with our good friends Pete Sear and Mandy Roderick. The day was not over as we still had an evening flight to Perth to begin the next phase of our 2005 Australian diving holiday.