Red Luggage

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Choosing The Right Gear For Your Red Sea Liveaboard Trip

Once a scuba diver has been to the Red Sea they will always want to go back again. Getting your equipment right on your first visit is not always easy unless you have some tips and advice before you go.

When you book a holiday in the Red Sea that involves staying on a boat for the whole week, you can expect to get around 20 dives in during the first 6 days, with the last day resting before your flight home. With up to four dives each day your scuba diving equipment takes a lot of wear. As a result it is sensible to thoroughly check all your gear before the trip. If your regulator is due for service make sure that it is done before you go.

Flights to Red Sea destinations for your diving trip will likely be with a package holiday company. These use charter flights and therefore you must check in advance how much luggage allowance you will be able to take and the cost of anything over and above this. For some reason most airlines do not treat scuba diving as kindly as golf or other sports and can be quite mean with their weight allocation.

Make sure that you take the biggest piece of hand luggage that is permissible as often a further 10 kilograms can be carried in this way. Delicate or valuable items such as your regulators, torch and instruments are better carried in your hand luggage and this relieves your hold baggage allowance quite considerably.

You need to consider what equipment to take very carefully given that the weight allowance can be a problem. Your diving suit is the most important item to get right.

The Red Sea provides fine warm water diving for much of the year, and many people wear only a 3mm short wet suit in the height of the summer. In the winter, from around November to March, many switch to a dry suit as the temperatures can drop below 20 degrees centigrade.

A popular time to visit the Red Sea is between Spring and Autumn and a good 5mm one piece wet suit could be used during this period. Everybody has different tolerances to cold and it is better to err on the warm side than to be too cold!

The chances are that you will get to dive at night on perhaps three or four occasions and a good torch will increase the pleasure of doing this. A torch is also needed as an emergency beacon for each diver by law. Instead of taking your heavy lantern a good back up torch with a spare between a buddy pair will be adequate in the clear waters of the Red Sea.

The rest of the equipment is pretty standard, but it pays to take light items wherever possible. A reel and delayed surface marker buoy is essential, but leave your heavy Kent stainless steel work of art at home and take a light plastic finger spool. Taking the spring clips off your fins and putting back the plastic ones can save you around 200 grams in baggage allowance!

Staying on a live-aboard is a very relaxed experience, so fortunately there is no need for any formal attire. Shorts, swimming trunks and a couple of tee shirts are all that are required. Take at least three pairs of swimming shorts as this means that you will always have a dry pair to put on after a dive. And remember - do not forget your sun tan lotion!

About the Author

Mark Jenner is a British Sub Aqua Club dive leader and
open water diving instructor
. He has visited the Red Sea a number of times and enjoys writing about his
scuba diving experiences
.

Who to seek if I have been biten by a spider and how do I know it is a spider bite?

I live in Ontario Canada. I was sitting in my living room three days ago (Thursday) and felt something crawl up my hand. I had my hand underneath a laptray working on my laptop pc. Before I got my hand out from under the tray something stung me (thumb). I thought it was a bee (it is winter here). A luggage bag had been brought up from the basement earlier in the day. It was so painful and sharp I was sure it was a hornet of some kind. I could not find one. We took the couch apart...lifted it up...vacummed the entire thing...swept the hardwood and the curtains and never found the supposed 'bee' culprit. I had a dot looking like a bee sting, surrounded by a white elevated ring, surrounded by redness. This subsided by the next day...completely. Then Sat night the area became hot and red and looked as if I was just bitten or stung again. The white edges are now gone(Monday) but the dot came up to a blister and opened. It is still has erythema around it and a hard area around it.

It IS probably a spider bite. It does not sound like a brown recluse, so it's really nothing to worry about. If it should get more cruddy and infected, you could see a doc, but right now it sounds like it's gonna be ok.

Orchids & Onions 2/20
Orchids: A very large bunch to the nice medical person that came to our aid when a member of our group took ill at a local eating establishment. How kind and helpful people are and this lady was a real gem. Thanks. (Submitted by Range Red Hatters.)

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