Scuba anyone?
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You know what is the best, you guys still have one of the nicest parts of Raja to discover, the Misool trip is going to be epic! And compared to central the currents are a bit more forgiving. Paired with wings it should be a walk in a park. Perfect warmup and then you should revisit central.
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I don't get the thing about currents.....We had some screaming flows, but you just go with it, I love covering a shit load of ground. If we needed to stop, we'd hook on. On that note, I am lengthening the cord on ours. I'll use Dyneema (it's effing strong, and I have a load of it) and make them about 8 feet long. Ours are currently 3 foot, but even when we inflate the BCD's, we have to work hard not to bash the coral. Our guide had one of about 8 feet, and he could hang in the current, well away from the coral. As long as you stay fairly close together, then the whole group will stay together as you drift, so don't need to panic about getting separated. Obviously, sometimes we had to fin into or across currents, but we all had to, so it's not like anyone is disadvantaged. Both P and I will use our long fins when we expect current, that helps. We have encountered far stronger in the Maldives on sites like Kuredu Express, where if you are hooked on, and you turn your face perpendicular to the current, you lose your mask (you only do that once :-), so I guess we are relatively used to current.
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@Giles same hook / rope experience, and a mandatory upgrade for Komodo as we were told by the guides that came from there. They were pushing our AOWD/Deep group hard at descents, yet for unknown reasons we were not doing a negative entry. This was the only time when the current was really an inconvenience. To reach a starting point at depth. Not all the dives were with the current, but we always engaged in some meandering, often against the currents, to check the pinnacles for pigmy seahorses.
Going back to the rope, we were chastised by our guide for having reef hooks that are, and I quote "Are expensive for money but cheap for life". They are stainless steel in protective tube. His good point was regarding the lack of grip on the string surface while being in very strong currents. It's better to have something like what you build, please keep some knots, something bulky, to hold on to when you climb down to the hook in order to release it.
And the long rope also provides longer bottom time while hanging on the observation point. It's amazing how many minutes can be gained when you have a long rope.
