didn’t move for the rest of the outward journey and I think everybody onboard was relived when we finally reached the calmer waters of the reef. It had also stopped raining, but there were definite black clouds looming overhead, a fair old breeze and quite choppy waters - great!!! En-route we were kitted out with snorkelling equipment, and told we were in dive group number three, which meant that we had at least 30 minutes of snorkelling before our dive. It was with great hesitation that I entered the water, I’m not the greatest of swimmers and don’t particularly feel at ease in deep sea water, let alone when there’s waves smacking you in the face and that’s before you’ve even let go of the boat!!! All that kept going through my mind was, what the hell are you doing here, you don’t even like fish??? Rob was very patient and waited till I felt ready to let go of the boat and have my first go at snorkelling. It wasn’t long before I was back at the boat asking for a floatie, which is a big

long round floating aid. The crew had advised anyone who wasn’t the strongest of swimmers to use one, but I’d thought I would try it without one first - bad idea! It was an awful lot easier swimming with this, but I still couldn’t really get the hang of snorkelling. I wasn’t comfortable with the big plastic mouth piece stuck in my mouth or the fact that you just had to breath through your mouth, I kept forgetting and breathing through my nose and getting a mouth full of water. Rob was brilliant, he not only encouraged me but held my hand and basically led me around! I can’t say I was instantly taken with snorkelling and certainly won’t be taking it up as a hobby, but after around 20 minutes I started to get the hang of it. The underwater world was a whole different ball game but I wasn’t sure even at this point if I wanted to get any closer to it than I already was!

Our group was