An 18 litre tank,
230 bars of pressure,
100 metres of underwater tunnel
and 52 minutes of diving.
Most important, however, was the 140 metres of bloody line I had to reel out behind me and scoop back up in increasingly chaotic armfuls. Not sure it was a hot idea to use a reel in such an open cave, with no tie-off points.
The two reels clipped together - and their endless noodling lines - made up the dive. The rest of it was just scraps:
* Four divers sitting on an underwater rock ledge, fins dangling, like boys on a riverbank. Below them a green sandy beach. A broad blue smear behind them shows the cave mouth.
* Guide reel #1 hanging ten metres below me; its arcing white line loops under the corner of a massive slab of rock. Have to go deeper to unhitch it before pulling it in.
* Cardinal fish, big-eyed and red, huddling in the hollows and bumps of the cave ceiling.
* Casting my head around in the dark, looking for buddies, seeing greyed out yellow fins, a torch beam behind me, a pure white camera flash.
* Diver silhouettes swallowed up by the crisp blue of the open water.
* On the wall dive outside the cave, looking up at the surface; it seems 5 metres away, but my depth gauge says 26m. This is dangerously good visibility.
* A tuna torpedoing away beyond the limits of vision.
