Sail Rock!

The underwater stone chimney in the Gulf of Thailand knows many titles and has been described many ways.... “Best Site in the Gulf of Thailand” “Premire World Class Diving” “Menagerie of Schooling Fish” “breathtaking” “1sts Rate Corals” “Whale Shark Playground”  and many more.

We just called it awesome!

Sail Rock was where Michele and I would take our first real open water dive for our certification. Justin came along as he was already certified and Nick tagged along, hoping for some snorkeling between dives.

Justin does a predive buddy check with his partner Rod

 Our alarms woke us up early the morning of the dive. Our walk to the dive center seemed super long because we are all so excited to get out on the boat. After arriving and getting dad outfitted with equipment we got onto our dive boat at the pier and then started our one hour ride to Sail Rock. As we watched the island of Koh Phangan get smaller and blurred with ocean spray behind us, we could begin to make out the faint out line of Sail Rock (the cap of a huge underwater pinnacle) on the horizon.  I think we were all surprised to see how many other boats there were. “How are we all going to fit in the water?” I wondered.  They had to be at least another half dozen boats which unlike ours were crowded and bustling. The captain idled the engine and we geared up.

Sail Rock from the surface 

I was initially a bit nervous about my first dive, I mean, there are so many horrible things that could happen down there! I realized that  obviously we had been preparing for unlikely worst case scenarios but it was still in the back of my mind. No sooner than I thought, we were in the water. First, I was amazed. It’s hard to describe but the underwater world is just so alien to anything I’ve ever experienced before. We saw massive schools of barracuda and they didn’t even seem to notice us as they flashed by. We also observed a rather dangerous jellyfish but we were far enough away that it was no issue. On both dives there were a few Titan Triggerfish swimming around. For those who don’t know these territorial and beautiful finned predators have been known to chomp off the fingers, earlobes and other fleshy bits of divers who got too close. After Michele’s story’s of her past encounters, I was pretty wary of the fish.

Titan Triggerfish 

Big schools will blow you away

Diving is just so amazing. You feel like a bird rather than a fish. Weightless, soaring over a murky abyss below. We felt like astronauts on our own planet. We did 2 dives that day. Our dive master Michi found it amusing to ask how long we were submerged. 15, 20 minutes? In reality it had more like an hour! It’s crazy how time flys when you are having fun!

Whale sharks were in the area but we missed them. Everyone was fine with that, we hadn’t expected to see one anyway. What we had seen were barracuda, parrot fish, butterfly fish, urchins, anenomes, pink clownfish, jellyfish, titan triggerfish, giant groupers and so much more! 

Overall experiencing the natural fairy world that is Sail Rock was an aqua experience I will never ever forget.

Can’t wait to get back in the water!