I had just replaced my Olympus 5060 compact digital camera with a Nikon D200 digital SLR and was keen to practise using it, principally on easy shore dives where there would be few distractions. Initially this did not prove simple. House Reef boat dives were not available. Following the sinking a few months earlier of an Egyptian ferry with the loss of over a thousand lives, the Egyptian authorities had decided to restrict the use of some Egyptian boats. The Ocean-Pro Dive Centre was confident that the ban on their small House Reef boat would not last long and were right, the ban was lifted as soon as Eve and I returned home! On our previous two holidays at Lahami Bay I had first met shore diving buddies by diving with them on the House Reef boat. As this was no longer an option and with far fewer divers than usual in the resort, finding a buddy other than Eve for a shore dive, was not so straight forward. Eve only wanted to do one dive on our first full day at Lahami Bay and after diving with her I searched in vain for another buddy, there being no Ocean-Pro Dive Centre staff available for a private dive. Fortunately on our second full day, the Ocean-Pro Dive Centre found me some buddies and over the rest of the holiday, I enjoyed diving with Stephan Roth, Winfried "Winnie" Braun, Urs Balmer, Roland Schwaiger and Roman Mukhin. 

Our holiday coincided with coral spawning and as a result the underwater visibility on most of our dives was badly affected with the visibility sometimes as poor as 4 to 5 metres. Shore dive fish highlights were Titan Triggerfish, Bluespotted Rays, a large Brownmarbled Grouper, Giant Moray Eels, a Sea Horse, a juvenile Cuttlefish, Napoleon Wrasse and Batfish. Roman, Eve and I also spent two days on Ocean Bird I, an Ocean-Pro Day boat, visiting Shaa’b Said North and South, Shaa’b Claudio and Malahi. The underwater scenery was simply stunning, as fantastic as ever. The currents were generally strong and as Ocean Bird I did not have a support boat in the water, great care had to be taken. 

On the penultimate diving day of the holiday, Roman and I decided to see if we could fin from the Lahami Bay shore to House Reef Buoy 1, a dive site that is only visited by the House Reef boat. After finning for 65 minutes, we reached the site and were rewarded with visibility of 20 to 25 metres, fantastic corals and a profusion of reef fish including Sweetlips, Snappers, Titan Triggerfish, Filefish and Porcupinefish. It was interesting to see how the visibility deteriorated as we returned back to the shore. When we reported into the Dive Centre, almost four hours had expired since we had left for this dive. I suspected that few divers have recorded such a long time between their Dive Centre Check Out and Back times. Encouraged by the success of this dive, Roman and I twice finned to House Reef Buoy 4 on my final days diving. The long fin was quite arduous but worth it as we enjoyed visibility of around 25 metres on our first dive and saw Napoleon Wrasse, Filefish, a large Turtle and a Leopard Whipray. As before the visibility deteriorated steadily as Roman and I returned back to shore. The visibility on House Reef Buoy 4 was not so good when we returned for the second time but we saw a large Turtle and a two metre Whitetip Reef Shark. This was the first shark that Roman had seen diving and was a good highlight to conclude the holiday with.