Weather in the Maldives

I have just returned from two weeks in the Maldives. Despite being told that our original island was overbooked and that we had been moved to another island, when we arrived at the airport we were told that were going to Bandos, the island we originally booked for.

We were incredibly lucky with the weather, apparently it had rained every day for 8 weeks, some people who had been there a week when we arrived had not seen the sun. Our first two days were slightly overcast with sunny spells, then we had one day of quite heavy rain in the afternoon but after that the weather was exactly as you would expect; warm and sunny with hardly a cloud in the sky for the remainder of the trip. Ideal conditions really as the first couple of days allowed us to get used to the sun.

The diving from Bandos was great, the dive centre is well organised with lots of good quality equipment for people who do not take their own gear. The staff are all Maldivian or Japanese, so training and briefings are given in English and Japanese, but there always seemed to be enough people around who could translate in to any of the needed languages. Most people there seemed to speak pretty good english anyway.

I was reminded of the diving instructors joke:

Q. What do you call someone who speaks three languages. A. Trilingual.

Q. What do you call someone who speaks two languages. A. Biligual.

Q. What do you call someone who speaks only one language. A. English!

The diving programme is well organised with a boat leaving every morning to do two dives, then two boats in the afternoon for single dives. The sites were always interesting and had a great variety of life on each of the reefs. Experienced divers are paired up and pretty much allowed to run their own dives once they have been given the briefing on each reef.

In addition to this, the house reef at Bandos is very easy to reach from the beach and some very good corals and plenty of life to observe. I dived on it several times and it was always a very different experience each time.

For divers with their own equipment who do not need a guide, the house reef diving is free, you can just sign out and collect your tank and away you go, you can even dive unaccompanied on the house reef at night, if you wish, provided you are competent. The house reef is populated by many types of corals, fish, sharks and turtles so if you are a keen snokeller you can easily see all these.

One thing I have always though curious in the Maldives is that the dive leaders never know which way the current is running. The procedure is for one of them to jump over the side when over the dive site and observe what the current is doing, they then decide which end of the reef to start the dive.

Previous to this trip I had tried to find information about the current and tidal flow in the Maldives but I came to realise why the locals rely on observation that any published tables. It is not unusual to dive in fairly strong currents, on one dive we entered the water in the channel where the current was about 3-4 knots and were swept rapidly down the reef, only to find that further down the reef the current was heading up or down at 1-2 knots! In seconds it then reversed and carried us back where we had come from. These sort of conditions certainly make for challenging diving!

One thing that I noticed was that the strongest currents we experienced were during the period of neap tides. As most of the current is from the monsoon winds, I could only assume that by chance the tidal effect was acting against the flow of the ocean current through the atolls or that the dive leaders were carefully selecting dives to avoid the strongest currents.

From my sea kyaking days I had realised that the average sea canoeist is more aware of the tides and the need for good planning than the average yachtsman, but diving in tidal waters has made me realise that divers are probably even more aware of the tides and current that any other water user.

Maldives Weather

I am off to the Maldives at the weekend for two weeks of diving. In the lead up to this trip I have been monitoring the weather in the Indian Ocean and its seems to be unseasonably wet, windy and cloudy out there at present. The rains should have eased off at the end of November but on some days recently there has been no sunshine and up to 6 or 7 cm of rain!

I am hoping that the weather clears up soon, especially at there is a tropical storm brewing on the other side of the Equator, I don't know this area well and am hoping that this may indicate a change in the weather over the area generally. Perhaps a local expert could enlighten me.

We have just been told today that Bandos where we were booked to go on Sunday is over booked and they have moved us to Sun Island, seems hard to believe that they managed to do this, but I guess one island is going to be much like another. From reading reports of holidays this does not seem to be unusual at Bandos. At least we will get a free sea plane flight out there which should be a memorable experience.