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Published: October 20th 2007
10/12/2007 9:44 a.m. SUCCESS!!!!!
We dove Dirty Rock today and for this dive you absolutely have to go down, and go down fast to at least 60 feet so that the current doesn't
A. Take you away
B. Slam you into Dirty Rock
Between the help of Sudafed starting to clear my ears on the boat and much sooner the whole way down, I was at 94 feet in four minutes. 94 FEET!! Normally it takes me 10 minutes to get to 28 feet. I immediately lost Alex, my diving buddy, and if you loose your buddy you're supposed to look for one minute then surface. I wasn't sure what to do because of circumstances and thought he must have beat me down and I'd find him with everyone else once I dropped another 10 feet. On top of being in a panic about loosing my buddy, I'm not used to dropping so quickly and couldn't breathe. The deeper you go the thinner your air gets and any other time for me, it's a gradual, calm process and I adjust fine. This time I'm down there and the air is so thin I can't catch my
Alex
Soaking up some sunbreath. Alex and I found each other and I tried to signal to him to look at my tank to see if they gave me a Nitrox tank instead of Air. Most everyone else is Nitrox certified and prefer that because it allows a longer dive. Alex gave me the "okay" symbol and the calming process began. Even at 111 feet the current was swift and hard to fight against. We were hanging on to rocks, peering over as a LOT of hammerheads came in. They were magnificent! There were probably somewhere around 12 to 15 in the group we saw, but it's tough to say because the visibility was only around 40 feet. Any sharks past that were hazy and hard to see. The white tip sharks and sting rays are kind of old news now. I did see an eel. It's weird being face to face with an eel then reflecting back to when I was in the Netherlands and thinking,
"I ate one of you..." Swimming toward our group was a lost cause. We clung to the rock and just hoped we didn't go out to the deep blue.
I was getting close to a
Baby Crab
There were a bunch of baby crabs in our port hole window the last day at the island. 1,000 psi left in my tank. We start at 3,000 and once you hit 1,000 it's time to head up to make sure you have enough air for a safe ascent. The captain/dive master asked how much air I have left and forgetting who I was signing to I signed back
i"a little". I say that to Alex so he knows it's almost time to go - this to the captain made him panic that I was literally about to run out of air. Whoops!
The fun wasn't over yet. We started to make our way up and my computer was spazzing that I was going up to fast. Your depth, times, and speed are very important. Not only do you risk blowing your ear drums if you don't clear your ears properly, but more importantly you risk
decompression sickness which means you have air bubbles in your body that cause the bends. It's easily avoidable as long as you follow the rules. So Jim, the owner of the Divers Mast, signals for me to slow down. I exhaled so that I wouldn't rise anymore, but apparently to much because just as quickly as I was at 24 feet I
Panga Uno
This is our group (without me and alex) was suddenly at 80 feet, my ears felt like they were going to explode and before I got my dive computer in my hands to figure out what just happened I was freaking out that I was going up to fast and didn't know where I was. I finally got stabilized at 15 feet where we have to hang out for 3 minutes for a safety stop.
In other news, we're avoiding showering while on this trip. The "bathroom" in each room is literally a toilet and a shower in a 3'x4' space. Mike said something about how he can shower, shit, and shave at once...and that's not a joke. There's a fresh water rinse shower for when we get done with a dive to get the salt water off us. I might take my shampoo with me out there and wash my hair. Between the salt water, lack of soap, and wind, It looks like I'll be coming home with dreadlocks. Sweet, eh?
8:23 p.m. I took my shampoo up with me for after our second to last dive. It feels clean, but I cannot get a brush through it...it has literally started
Blue Crab
In a river on the island to dread. Hopefully when I can get some conditioner in it it'll come out without having to be cut off.
Our last two dives were interesting. The second to last dive, Alex's teeth started to hurt the deeper we went. Our group was down and out of sight pretty quickly. The current was strong still and I didn't feel comfortable not knowing where they were. After 15 minutes of tooling around where we were at, struggling with the current, and not making up our minds we finally surfaced and signaled for the panga to come get us. I guess the sore teeth is due to a sinus blockage. He took Sudafed and nasal spray before we headed out for the night dive. I said I refused to ever do one again, but was talked into it. I'm glad I did...it was nothing like the first and only night dive we did in Roatan. For starters, my computer didn't die. There was literally HUNDREDS of white tip sharks. Eventually you wished the sharks would clear so you could see something else.
Along with all of the sharks we also saw a large red star fish, crab, lobster, a few
different colored sea cucumbers, sting ray...
10/13/2007 8:31 p.m. Bad day for diving. Alex was stuffy the first dive so we opted to lounge in the sun and read a book that we're working on together. Aside from the kink in the neck of sharing a book, I like that we're putting fourth the effort on this particular one. We attempted dive #2, however my right ear would not clear. It feels cloudy right now even. I made it down to 30 feet and while my left ear cleared with no problem my right ear wouldn't do anything. You have to go up a few feet to ease the pressure and try again when that happens. When I made it back to the surface and it still didn't react so I decided to head back to the panga. Panga, which I don't know if I'm spelling correctly or not, is the Spanish word for
"small boat". Aside from being completely irritated that Alex was heading down to his first dive without me and having to sit in the blazing hot sun in the middle of nowhere, I did have the good fortune of seeing a
Whtie Tip Shark
Photo by: BETH
I don't have an underwater camera so I'm stealing everyone else so you can have a visual. large sea turtle at the surface and a Manta on the way back. My goggles have a prescription lens, so on most occasions, I leave my glasses behind and walk around with my goggles on before and after the dive until I can get back to my specs. I look goofy, but it works. For whatever reason I decided to take my glasses with me, and I'm glad I did. Not only because I had to hang out on the panga for a little over a half hour, but also because it's the first time that I got a good, clear, look at the island as we cruised by it to our dive location. It was mind boggling to think I'm actually witnessing such beauty. It's scenes you might see on a poster in your dentist office, but not a place that you might visit or even exists for you to enjoy the sight, the smell, the salt water on your lips. I'm told the island has deer, cats, rats, hogs, goats, and a lot of other random animals I wouldn't think would be on it. We're supposed to go on it tomorrow between dives.
We skipped dive 3
and the night dive as well...took a long nap and did some more reading. I love, love, LOVE Jodi Picoult and she's done it again. I'm trapped in her world reading Keeping Faith...a book I picked up at Nomad Bookhouse before leaving for this trip. I left dinner early, not very hungry, and eager to get back to this fantasy world.
We're hoping out ears and noses are better tomorrow. The boat is moving to the other side of the island for a change of scenery.
As much as I love to dive, taking almost the whole day off felt great. I kind of feel guilty when we're napping in our dimly lit room with only a porthole for natural light, or reading when we could be geared up and in the ocean....but you know...it's our holiday. Why not? Alex is working on some painfully boring annual paperwork for work while I enjoy Jodi Picoult. It puts me to sleep just trying to figure out what he's working on so I'd imagine it must be easier for him to plug though it here then in the office. After it got dark we retreated back to the room from
Turtle
Photos by: BETH the upper deck to change things up...curled up on the bed he continued to work, I continued to read.......it's such a simple, no excitement night, and it really doesn't get any better then this. Day in a day out I want nothing more then to spend every minute of every day with him and I've finally got it. Temporary, but I love it. I love him.
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Kat Attacking
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YOur trip sounds amazing so far! I am going to...wait for it wait for it..... IOWA on vaction this weekend! YESSS!!! not the same as scube diving in exotic locations, but I am going with Dave and it will be uninterrupted time together away from school and work. Like I said your trip sounds amazing. You've deserved this for a looongg ass time. So have fun! Quit worrying about napping. It's all part of the excitment.