Spend 40 hours underwater

Spending longer underwater than some people work in a week sounds extreme but breaking it down into 40 one hour-long scuba dives way off shore in the Red Sea made it a pleasure, especially during the pandemic!

Most dives last around 1 hour. At least, that is what I typically aim for. Sometimes, if there is strong current or some other issue then they may be shorter and equally, provided that it is safe to do so, it may be worth hanging around under the surface a bit longer (like I did to spend more time with the shark under our boat in the below video).

Plan the Dive, Dive the Plan:

My plan was to do all the dives during the pandemic once domestic travel was possible. I therefore would do the following trips to try and achieve it:

Farazan Banks July 2020 (a total of 9 dives over 3 days) – cumulative total 9
Yanbu September 2020 (a total of 12 dives over 3 days) – cumulative total 21
Yanbu October 2020 (a total of 11 dives over 3 days) – cumulative total 32
Rabigh May 2021 (a total of 12 dives over 3 days) – cumulative total 44

I figured that with 44 dives to go at, I had a 10% buffer / margin of error to make up any shortfall. However, things don’t always go to plan…!

Highlights:

Being able to do this during the pandemic kept me sane; a few things really stand out so I have listed them below:

Interaction with a Silky Shark
Freediving the Aiona
My deepest dive to date
Having a reef named after me (Budgie Smuggler Reef, Marker 35)
Interaction with an Octopus hunting at night

I have expanded upon them in the body of this post, with pictures on my Instagram @cjburgoine and videos on my YouTube.

Farazan Banks July 2020 (a total of 9 dives over 3 days):

We did 9 dives over the long weekend and had some amazing experiences including a very up close and personal encounter with a beautiful and inquisitive Silky Shark:

The dive sites were as follows:

Day 1:

Canyon Reef
Malathu Island
Shi’b Ammar Reef (night dive)

Day 2:

Belgium Reef
Malathu Island
Marmar Island
Shi’b Ammar Reef (night dive)

Day 3:

Aramco Reef
Aramco Reef

God laughs at people who make plans:

Due to an avoidable and thoroughly regrettable error on my part, I did not download the detailed data files from my dive computer before they were overwritten by the data from new dives. The computer records the total number of dives and has therefore recorded the dive took place but it only has capacity to hold the detailed data for 59 dives.

So, I can prove I was there and that I did 9 dives but if I rely on these dives, I will be unable to prove categorically that these dives equate to 9 of the 40 hours underwater!

This issue was exacerbated by me using my diving watch for freediving. Even when it is on Gauge mode, the number of dives racks up fast and risks overwriting important earlier dive data. I have addressed this by purchasing a separate watch, specifically for freediving.

I hereby commit to downloading my dive computer data after each and every trip going forward!

Moving on:

Since then, I managed to do the other 35 scuba dives so I’m confident that I have spent well over a total of 40 hours underwater. That being said, for the sake of completeness, I will gladly do another 5 dives to collect the 40 dives worth of data and post it on this blog.

For each dive, I’ve put a picture of the relevant dive maps or nautical charts below with some other links and photos etc. I’ve also included the detailed data from my dive computer for each of them. This allows you to see the maximum depth, total time, water temperature and dive profile of each dive, amongst other things.

Yanbu September 2020 (a total of 12 dives over 3 days):