2017 Day 2: Sipadan disappointment

Today, our second day of three days, was at Sipadan. It is the highlight for any diver as it is amongst the best dive sites in the world. Some rate it as #1.

We left at 0830 like yesterday but the boat had trouble with one engine. We pulled into the village area for a mechanic. He tapped a part which the Kiwi guy on our boat said can get sticky; it is a Yamaha characteristic. With that done, the mechanic realised the battery was now flat from the captain having had too many attempts to start the motor.

The mechanic hopped off. A little later, we saw him wading through the shallow waters in the distance, carrying a battery on his shoulder. Once we had the new battery we were good to go again.

We headed in a different direction from yesterday. The ride took over an hour passing Mabul before arriving at Sipadan amidst the most torrential downpour. We hopped off and went to the office to sign in with the Park authorities.

Our first dive was at South Point. It was a nice wall dive with the usual reef fish and some good turtles.

Second dive was at the famous Barracuda Point. We backrolled into a beautiful wall area to find four turtles sleeping right there! It ended up being turtles galore with around 15 in total. We also encountered a wall of jackfish (with some trevallys mixed in), a bumphead parrot fish, white tip reef shark and a unicorn fish in the distance.

After lunch we took our third dive at Turtle Cavern / The Drop Off. This dive saw us enter a cave but none of us went in very deep in; it had quite a wide opening which we could hang around in. There was also a nice wall to follow. Again, we saw turtles, a wall of jackfish (with some giant trevallys mixed in) and a humphead wrasse.

For others on the dive, it was an amazing day. Lots of superlatives like “best dive ever in my history of a few hundred dives”. But I was a little disappointed as I knew this was only a fraction of what Sipadan can display. Where were the barracudas and why were they so “few” turtles? I’m spoilt beyond words perhaps.

[Edit: About four years later, I reset my expectations and stopped being a spoilt Barracuda Point brat. I learnt to enjoy everything else it had to offer, from the countless turtles, mirror-wall of shiny jackfish, the odd shark and the colourful reef fish against the most amazing drop-off walls. Realistic expectations help with enjoyment!]