November at Sairee Cottage Koh Tao

Monsoon Season on Koh Tao

November is the start of our low season here. Generally, it rains every day, so rain jackets are a must! Fortunately for us, this November was extremely enjoyable. While it did rain occasionally, the sun came out for several days at a time, and the visibility at the nearby dive sites was much better than expected. Lucky us! The dive shop was in full swing, and we had such a great time with our students! Laura and Chris were the full time instructors managing the shop. They received help from some of our freelancers, like Greg and Nacho, and the fun divers kept Rachel very busy. We taught several open water and advanced courses along with Nitrox and rescue courses. There is nothing more satisfying than sharing our love for scuba diving with new people!

Diving

We had plenty of fantastic dives this month. Sarah hasn’t stopped bragging about diving with Whale Sharks on several different occasions. Luckily, both Laura and Rachel experienced their first dive with a Whale Shark at White Rock. Breathtakingly awesome! Talk about spectacular creatures; they are so elegant underwater.While the weather limited us to 5 or 6 dive sites in November, we still saw loads of great underwater life.

White Rock and Twins were teeming with schools of Long Face Emperors, White-Eyed Moral Eels, Snappers, and Blue-Spotted Ribbontail Stingrays. The table corals at these dive sites were home to many juvenile Eight-Banded Butterfly fish and Three-Spot Dascyllus.
Chumphon Pinnacle was spectacular as usual. The schools of Chevron Barracuda and Batfish returned joining the school of Yellow-Tailed Barracuda and giant Marbled Groupers. The dive site is a MUST when visiting Koh Tao! We recently noticed 4 baby Scrawled Filefish on one of the shipwreck’s buoy line, and schools of Fusiliers and Rabbit fish were swarming the wreck. It continues to be really exciting watching the dive site blossom with life.

Staff News

Several of our instructors headed off for a holiday during the month. Danny and Neil both traveled to Phuket. Danny polished his sale skills by working within the dive industry, and Neil concluded a SSI Instructor Trainer course. Barry took a ‘stay-cation’ here on Koh Tao. Sarah and Gordon, who both completed their DMT course with Sairee Cottage Diving, passed their PADI Instructor course with flying colors! Congratulations to them!

Neil met up with Trevor, Greg, and Rachel in Khao Lak where they jumped on a 4-day live aboard trip that toured the Similan Islands. Although they didn’t see any Manta Rays, they dove with Leopard Sharks on two different dives!

Bear, otherwise known as Mad Skills, was the one who traveled the furthest. He went to Dahab in Egypt, to complete a Technical diving course himself. He is now a Tri-Mix diver and a bona-fide Side-Mount and Technical Deep Diving Instructor. Bear is now looking forward to developing Sairee Cottage Diving Koh Tao into a Technical Diving facility. Well done, sir!

Dive Shop News

We have now fully moved into our new dive shop. There are some great photos of the new digs on our Facebook page. The shop and classrooms are very lovely and exceedingly functional. We have loads of comfy seating with pillows galore, and the shop has since become a popular place for both students and staff to relax. After moving into the new dive shop, our restaurant closed for renovations and is scheduled to open before Christmas. We cannot wait to share our new space with y’all and hope to see many of y’all soon!

Sairee Cottage News August 2011

What a fantastic month we all had in July her at Sairee Cottage Diving! A very busy few weeks and lots of happy divers, with the weather not being its best visibility is still great and plenty of cool sea life. Congratulations to Ida for becoming a Dive Pro and doing her SSI Dive Control Specialist; truly a great diver. Dan and Bear had a group of 11 Irish lads from the full moon rush who were awesome to teach and a great laugh thanks lads for making our job as good as it can be!. You can imagine the night out celebrating after becoming open water divers; it was carnage. To quote from our Facebook page:

“Hello! thanks to Trevor, Neill, Bean, Danny, Barry, Rachel, Ida, Laura, Sarah, Tamara and everyone else at Sairee Cottages for the best week of our lives!! Safe to say we’ll be back in Koh Tao again! lots of love from Gavin Nugent, Shane Lavelle, Brian Gerard Lynch, Jeff Abbott, Donncha O’Donovan, Ian Humphries, John Perrott, Simon Sweetnam, Christopher Ryan, Cormac O’Flynn and of course Junior Patrick O’Donovan! The other two langers deserve a mention as well i suppose! peace out xxx”

Wreck Diving on Koh Tao

The recently sunken naval ship wreck Sattakut 742, a 1943 built Thai Navy ship, has been moved to a more suitable location by the Thai Government. To move the wreck was necessary because it had fallen on the side. The bad weather conditions on the day of the sinking had it made difficult to sink the wreck exactly the way it was planned and it ended up to be in a bad position for wreck diving. the Sattakut 742 is the the second wreck, after the MV Trident, that has been sunk on Koh Tao to become an underwater attraction for fish and divers alike. On the 3rd of August it will be ready for scuba diving again! We can’t wait to start diving this fantastic wreck again, and especially teaching deep and wreck diving specialty courses, bring it on! Now the tide is high again and we have our Speed boat ready on the beach. This is going to be perfect for quick and easy trips to the dive site and what a cool way to do it Check out our dive boats here.

With the full moon party just around the corner, which will bring many new faces to Koh Tao, we are looking forward to another great few weeks ahead. August has been one of the busiest month of this Season so far. This is a great time to start your Divemaster Course and make lots of new friends, which is exactly what Alina has done, another diving professional in the making. Check out the huge schools of Yellow Tail barracudas!

Video from the Sinking of the Sattakut 742

For those of you who missed the sinking of the Sattakut it June, we have added the video here. The weather was bad and there where several delays until the wrecked ship could finally be sunk, so it’s probably much more comfortable to watch the video…

Scuba Diving News July 2011

Well, June came and went in a flash and what a great month we all had. Bear received another “Certificate of Excellence” from PADI after one of his students personally wrote to PADI.
Neil had two diving instructor candidates for SSI. Congratulations to Bec de Ruyter and James Beischer on becoming Open Water Diving Instructors. We would like to wish them the best of luck in their new career. If you are interested in becoming a dive professional send us an email and we can tell you all about it.

Let's go diving in Koh Tao Thailand - Come and Join us!

The rest of the guys in the team have been working flat out all month training people to be great divers. One of Dan’s Open Water Course Students loved it so much she decided to stay on to become an SSI Dive Control Specialist. So we would like to welcome Rachel, Tamara and Martin to our team of Divemaster Trainees, all of which are well on their way to becoming the dive pro’s they always dreamed of being.

The new Dive Shop Reception, office, equipment room and classrooms are close to completion now. Just a few finishing touches to be made and we should be moving in by the end of the month, and then its time for our fantastic new swimming pool and bar to begin construction. Keep an eye on our facebook page to see the progress.

The post full moon party rush was great fun this month with a an amazing bunch of people coming over to Koh Tao to become divers. Bear, Mee, Neil, Dan, Barry loved every minute of it. The weather conditions were fantastic with superb visibility in the water, which meant quite a few people stayed longer than they planned to take extra diving courses and to go fun diving with our DM’s Sarah, Gordon and Cle.