It's not that far to the dive shop, just straight down the road and a turn into town at the first junction and there it is. The boat is full this morning! They are taking out 10 divers plus the 3 dive masters for each group of people. My hubby and I are a group. As this is our first dive, we have to do the paperwork (are you pregnant, are you on medication, are you a druggie or alcoholic, do you have seizures, you realized this sport could kill you -and on and on in that vein so that if you weren't trained and didn't love it so much, you'd think "Hey, maybe this ain't for me!". We answer, "No we're not and no we aren't" on everything and we're good to go.
The shop gives us blue bags to hold our gear (this is much more efficient than everyone hauling their dive bag to the boat because the boat isn't really big enough for that. Then we head down to the beach and the boat. My hubby and I are last ones on the boat. Not the best of choices as everyone else has been diving several days already so they are set up on their gear. We still have a minimum of fussing around to get everything ready.
The boat is rather crowded with the tanks and all of us. One of the dive masters offers me 4 kg of weights. That is waaaaayyyyyy less than I usually use because I am so "fluffy and cork like" and bob to the surface a lot without a massive amount of weight to keep me down. He explains that we are using steel tanks rather than the aluminum ones we are used to using. Steel tanks are much heavier and squatter. In fact, we both have to adjust our tank straps to get it over the tank and cinched in place.
Finally we also are ready to go. First ones closest to the stern of the boat are usually the first ones in the water. My hubby does his backward roll over the side of the boat. There is a bit of a current so I have to wait for him to clear before I can backward roll over the side. Unfortunately, the person after me did her backward roll over the side when she saw her buddy on the opposite side of the boat do his backward roll. She forgot one of the major tenants in getting in the water which is always check to make sure no one is underneath you. She didn't check and I was underneath her. So I'm swimming towards the bow of the boat and the down anchor line when suddenly I am pushed under-water by about 4 ' as a heavy weight lands on me. Yikes. We were both extremely lucky in that she didn't bash my head in with her tank (remember we are doing backward rolls off the boat so the first part of the diver into the water is the tank). I think I must have been halfway cleared from beneath her because she didn't hit me direct. So I kept swimming and in a few seconds I was clear and she was clear. I do have a nasty massive bruise on my shoulder where she came into the water on top of me.
Oh well, one of those things. She was very apologetic afterwards and I don't think she'll make the same mistake again. We hit the down line and some of the divers who have been coming off the other side of the boat have already descended. Our dive master and my hubby are waiting for me and we go down the anchor line.
We are diving on Snake Reef which has been thus named due to the number of moray eels that are present. Thank goodness not named that for the number of sea snakes present. There are also a large number of lionfish (venomous) and stone fish or scorpion fish (also venomous). In fact, I've never seen bigger ones of the lionfish and scorpion fish. These guys are massive! Seems like they could use a rodeo roundup of lionfish and have a nice fish fry. I'm able to get some nice shots of morays but there wasn't a great deal of other fish to photograph. A couple of giant French Angels that swam away as soon as I pointed my camera in their direction.
Ran into a slight problem in that my hubby and I are used to using PSI on our calculations for how much air we have left in our tanks. The dive shop and all the other divers use bars of mercury. We have never been able to figure out how to convert from bars to PSI. And my hubby does tend to breathe air faster than most so about 20 minutes into the dive, he's almost ready to surface. Our divemaster swims to him, tucks him under his arm practically, and gives him his octopus regulator so that my husband is now buddy breathing with our dive master.
If you are a diver and have ever had to buddy breath with someone, it's not the most fun activity in the world. Just doing it makes you nervous because you are depending on them for air and worried about using up their air and such. Dive masters the world over are quite notorious for being able to make numerous scuba dives and hardly every breath a bit - it seems - so they always have extra air in case someone needs it. Still, it makes one nervous to have to do that. I had to do it in Palau as my regulator just gave out. I breathed with my dive master for over 20 minutes as my regulator gave out rather early in the dive. This was my hubby's first time at buddy breathing other than what you practice in class. So it made him nervous and he was ready to get up and out of the water.
We finally surfaced, after making our 3 minute safety stop at 5 meters (this is a thing that PADI has adopted and everyone follows now. Technically, you don't have to do this but everyone follows this rule. It is a safety thing and diving should be all about safety. When we did get to the surface, our dive master says "you still have 10 minutes left on 50 bar" - which is basically into the red zone on your air gauge. Yes, my husband probably could do 10 minutes on 50 bar or 500 PSI as he has before, but not when he's been buddy breathing and staying underwater longer than expected.
So we were first ones in the water, first ones out. Not really a problem. It was a good dive. Then they helped us with our gear, taking the weight from us before we try and climb their ladder out onto the boat. I was almost up from the water when the waves sloshed it to the side a bit and I smashed my inner thigh onto the ladder. Now I have a most magnificent bruise there as well. I usually do come back from dive trips with a mess of bruises from one thing or another.
Everyone is finally out, we get our name-chips back from the boat driver (We have started a new safety system, just my husband and me - with name-
Then back to shore to clean up, change tanks, and get ready for the second dive. Unfortunately, hubby was feeling a bit seasick (actually so was I!) so we decided that we would just do one dive today and do two tomorrow (originally we were not scheduled for diving on Sunday). We cleaned our gear and stored it, got a ride back to the apartment, swam in the pool, showered, had lunch, then we're ready for Other Stuff.!
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