Yoosuf is a diver with the Maldivian Defence Force, recently married with one child and crowned Maldivian Strongest Man 2005.  Yoosuf was our dive guide in 2004 and 2005 and was again specifically asked for in 2006.  The NSS agreed to his detachment to the Expedition due to the useful work planned for 2006 and the work conducted during Poseiden Feenun 2004 and 2005.  This year Yoosuf Joins us again. 

Finding the safari boat situation still unresolved i.e. still in a chain of double booking and contracts still to be broken, and despite valiant attempts by our organisers, we found ourselves in both accommodation and diving limbo once again.  Having spent the morning waiting to see if we were going to be able to check out of the resort and get away on our live-aboard, by lunchtime the decision had been made to check out (although that clearly transpired to be too ambitious), go diving off the Dhoni whilst JC and John P headed across to Male (the capital) to try and resolve the situation in person.  The remaining 14 managed a successful dive, with the aim of increasing our depth to up to 21 metres.  The dive was exceptionally clear coupled with an introduction to Maldivian currents.  Main marine life highlights were a number of leopard moray eels and huge gigantic size Napoleon Wrasse.  Liz managed to have a free flowing BCD at 20 metres, but fortunately her experienced buddy (Paul) managed to disengage the hose, whilst preventing Liz shooting to the surface at Mach 10.  Hose disengaged; they managed to continue the dive as planned with some manual inflation of the BCD as required.

After a late lunch, with time against us to all get in a second dive, Stef conducted a training dive to progress his Ocean Diver whilst Liz checked her equipment was working again and refresh some of the other basic skills off the jetty whilst the remainder carried out camera and pool training.