Crowell
Guest
Today, (9/11/04) I went diving again after 5 years, changing jobs, being stricken with diabetes, having a son, burying a grandmother to cancer, getting a divorce, and finally meeting and getting engaged to a lovely young lady who's also a diver ...
My fiance is almost a master-diver and has more dives than me, but due to a very bad car accident she hasn't dove in several years because of extensive back issues plus continual ongoing physical therapy and rehab. I was certified via a specialized NAUI class at Ft. Rucker, Alabama as part of a Sikorsky Aircraft helicopter crash-recovery crew, and she's SSI certified for more stuff than I care to type (or keep track of).
We're getting married in November, and going on a Caribbean cruise down to Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and Cozumel. However, the cruise requires us to have a logged dive within the last couple years before we can dive with them. So we called around a while to figure out what our best course of action would be, and determined that an SSI skills update course would be the ideal thing. We found a very courteous SSI shop in Crestview, FL named "Diver's Emporium", whom I've done business with in the past, and chose them. They set us up for a chartered boat trip on the "Golden Sand Dollar" with a dedicated captain and instructor to go with us...
... and now that that's all said and done, the two of us went diving again today for the first time in a long time for us both.
We show up at the docks down in Destin, FL early Saturday morning and find the boat. It was a little 18-ish foot thing with maybe a 6' beam and we were heading out into 4-5 foot swells, so I was a little "concerned", but eh ...
Meanwhile, our skills-review instructor shows up and we introduce ourselves to him and chat with him for quite a while about our various backgrounds, skill levels, hobbies, pets, kids, home and auto insurance, etc., just each getting a rough feel for the other. The instructor the Diver's Emporium store supplied us was a guy named Gary Phillips, and he's a late 50s, early 60s sort of guy with just an absolutely amazing personality and disposition. Truly a good guy to work with and very down to earth.
The captain shows up not much later, with a smile on his face and a box of doughnuts for everyone, and declares the day a "Go ... but not out too far" day, so we all load up and head out bobbling and flopping through the chop to our dive spot at "Bridge Rubble East" - if any of you are familiar with it. We finally beat our way, I mean cruise, out to the spot, and drop anchor in 71 feet of water.
We suit up, and the review instructor and I roll over first to make sure Sarah's gonna be ok with her back, and then she rolls in after us. The instructor takes the line and leads us down through 5' visibility soup, cross-currents, and a whole herd of big purple jellies that were just a general mess to swim in. I'm right behind him and we reach the bottom without incident ... but there's only 2 of us - No Sarah. The cross-currents are still rough at the bottom, and maybe 5' visibility, and we sit there on the rope for a minute or so and still no fiance. The instructor motions for me to hold the line and wait there and watch for her, and he starts back up the line.
So now I'm sitting here on the bottom hanging onto an anchor-line, watching my air-o-matic trickle down, and staring out into the abyss - which really didn't amount to much since I could barely even see my feet ... and wondering where my fiance had gotten off to. But since she's got a fair bit of experience and dives under her belt, I wasn't terribly worried about anything at this point.
Time passed ... alone ... at the bottom, and after a while, I got bored of trying to find my feet in that murk and decided if a fish swam by me, I'd try making faces at it (provided it was smaller than me), and sometimes imagining what an 18 foot tiger shark's jaws would look like, outstretched and opened wide barreling towards me without warning, and, as luck would have it - I didn't see one. But one thing was certain ... I had never dove this spot before and in those cross-currents with no visibility, there was just about no way I was letting go of that anchor-line. Oh, and watching my air guage, watch, and what I could see of the rope.
After maybe 4 or 5 minutes, I saw the outline of someone coming back down the line and since Sarah has pink fins - I knew this wasn't her. The review instructor gets within visibility of me, and gives me the "go up" sign, so I go up. He lets me go first, and I was mildly curious, but not really concerned, as we ascend back up the line. We get to 20ish feet and I point to my watch and make a 3 sign for the safety stop, and he shakes his head no, and keeps making the up sign pretty urgently ...
Ok, I'll admit that when he said no to the safety stop I was getting concerned, especially since it was now dawning on me how much I'd hate trying to explain to my future in-laws how I'd lost their daughter on my very first time taking her out to sea. We break surface, and I see her sitting back on the boat, safe and sound, looking at her BC with the captain. The captain then calls down that she's fine, but we find out she'd had some issues with her rental BC and he was working on it, then Gary and I decide we both have enough air left to finish the dive, and so back down the rope we go. Back at the bottom we review fin pivots, breathing, mask clearing, regulator recovery, etc. All the fun stuff that even I was mildly surpised I remembered, but the nice folks at Ft. Rucker had drilled our rescue team pretty hard, so this was a cake walk in comparison. My compliments to George Perez if he's still around anywhere.
So we go back up through the murk, do our safety stop, and get back on the boat. Turns out Sarah's tank had slipped out of her BC at about 40' down, and with her back, she wasn't able to do much about it there, especially in those cross-currents, so she'd gone back up to the boat. Our reviewer, Gary had gone up to look for her, but hadn't seen her, then got worried I might have wandered off or something, and I might vanish or something too, so he'd gone back to get me.
We chatted a while longer as the captain worked on the strap on Sarah's BC, and shortly thereafter he declared it dive-worthy. We sat in the boat rolling and flopping with the waves for an hour or so, then we all decided to try it again in the same spot, so down we went for our second dive ...
This time I roll in first and start making my way along the bow-line down to the anchor line. The current is still brutal, and the waves aren't letting up, so I'm pulling myself along the bow-line towards the anchor-line when I feel that one of my legs is moving funny, and twitching and jerking around - and this just isn't right, so I'm thinking that I must have tangled my leg in the bow-line or something and the surge is throwing it around with the line. I look back, and there's this little gray shark-looking thing about 12 - 15" long gnawing and jerking on one of my fins, and I nearly cracked up laughing. I kicked at it and grabbed the bow line really good with both hands and whacked it pretty good with my other fin, and it vanished. (Note: upon getting back on the boat, the captain said it was probably just a remora, but I saw it, and I still think it was a little bull-shark, so I'm logging it as a shark-attack in my logbook.)
Sarah and Gary came on into the water in turn, and this time I went down the line first, followed by Sarah, and then Gary. All 3 of us made it down without incident this time, and Sarah did her thing, then we swam around for a while. This time the visibility was better, even with the currents, and we could actually see some of the fish. I don't have any idea what kind of fish they were since I was mostly taught to look for helicopters and pilots, and it's probably just as well we didn't see any of those. What fish we did see though were colorful and all, and there were lots of them, so we had a great time.
The captain of the Golden Sand Dollar was wonderful to work with, rough seas and all, and the reviewer that Diver's Emporium sent us was a top notch guy. Overall an excellent trip, the water was 79 degrees all the way down, and I was glad to get back into the water. (And I put a lot more here than I could fit in my dive log.) And best of all, we're now all set to dive in the Caribbean on the cruise.
My fiance is almost a master-diver and has more dives than me, but due to a very bad car accident she hasn't dove in several years because of extensive back issues plus continual ongoing physical therapy and rehab. I was certified via a specialized NAUI class at Ft. Rucker, Alabama as part of a Sikorsky Aircraft helicopter crash-recovery crew, and she's SSI certified for more stuff than I care to type (or keep track of).
We're getting married in November, and going on a Caribbean cruise down to Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and Cozumel. However, the cruise requires us to have a logged dive within the last couple years before we can dive with them. So we called around a while to figure out what our best course of action would be, and determined that an SSI skills update course would be the ideal thing. We found a very courteous SSI shop in Crestview, FL named "Diver's Emporium", whom I've done business with in the past, and chose them. They set us up for a chartered boat trip on the "Golden Sand Dollar" with a dedicated captain and instructor to go with us...
... and now that that's all said and done, the two of us went diving again today for the first time in a long time for us both.
We show up at the docks down in Destin, FL early Saturday morning and find the boat. It was a little 18-ish foot thing with maybe a 6' beam and we were heading out into 4-5 foot swells, so I was a little "concerned", but eh ...
Meanwhile, our skills-review instructor shows up and we introduce ourselves to him and chat with him for quite a while about our various backgrounds, skill levels, hobbies, pets, kids, home and auto insurance, etc., just each getting a rough feel for the other. The instructor the Diver's Emporium store supplied us was a guy named Gary Phillips, and he's a late 50s, early 60s sort of guy with just an absolutely amazing personality and disposition. Truly a good guy to work with and very down to earth.
The captain shows up not much later, with a smile on his face and a box of doughnuts for everyone, and declares the day a "Go ... but not out too far" day, so we all load up and head out bobbling and flopping through the chop to our dive spot at "Bridge Rubble East" - if any of you are familiar with it. We finally beat our way, I mean cruise, out to the spot, and drop anchor in 71 feet of water.
We suit up, and the review instructor and I roll over first to make sure Sarah's gonna be ok with her back, and then she rolls in after us. The instructor takes the line and leads us down through 5' visibility soup, cross-currents, and a whole herd of big purple jellies that were just a general mess to swim in. I'm right behind him and we reach the bottom without incident ... but there's only 2 of us - No Sarah. The cross-currents are still rough at the bottom, and maybe 5' visibility, and we sit there on the rope for a minute or so and still no fiance. The instructor motions for me to hold the line and wait there and watch for her, and he starts back up the line.
So now I'm sitting here on the bottom hanging onto an anchor-line, watching my air-o-matic trickle down, and staring out into the abyss - which really didn't amount to much since I could barely even see my feet ... and wondering where my fiance had gotten off to. But since she's got a fair bit of experience and dives under her belt, I wasn't terribly worried about anything at this point.
Time passed ... alone ... at the bottom, and after a while, I got bored of trying to find my feet in that murk and decided if a fish swam by me, I'd try making faces at it (provided it was smaller than me), and sometimes imagining what an 18 foot tiger shark's jaws would look like, outstretched and opened wide barreling towards me without warning, and, as luck would have it - I didn't see one. But one thing was certain ... I had never dove this spot before and in those cross-currents with no visibility, there was just about no way I was letting go of that anchor-line. Oh, and watching my air guage, watch, and what I could see of the rope.
After maybe 4 or 5 minutes, I saw the outline of someone coming back down the line and since Sarah has pink fins - I knew this wasn't her. The review instructor gets within visibility of me, and gives me the "go up" sign, so I go up. He lets me go first, and I was mildly curious, but not really concerned, as we ascend back up the line. We get to 20ish feet and I point to my watch and make a 3 sign for the safety stop, and he shakes his head no, and keeps making the up sign pretty urgently ...
Ok, I'll admit that when he said no to the safety stop I was getting concerned, especially since it was now dawning on me how much I'd hate trying to explain to my future in-laws how I'd lost their daughter on my very first time taking her out to sea. We break surface, and I see her sitting back on the boat, safe and sound, looking at her BC with the captain. The captain then calls down that she's fine, but we find out she'd had some issues with her rental BC and he was working on it, then Gary and I decide we both have enough air left to finish the dive, and so back down the rope we go. Back at the bottom we review fin pivots, breathing, mask clearing, regulator recovery, etc. All the fun stuff that even I was mildly surpised I remembered, but the nice folks at Ft. Rucker had drilled our rescue team pretty hard, so this was a cake walk in comparison. My compliments to George Perez if he's still around anywhere.
So we go back up through the murk, do our safety stop, and get back on the boat. Turns out Sarah's tank had slipped out of her BC at about 40' down, and with her back, she wasn't able to do much about it there, especially in those cross-currents, so she'd gone back up to the boat. Our reviewer, Gary had gone up to look for her, but hadn't seen her, then got worried I might have wandered off or something, and I might vanish or something too, so he'd gone back to get me.
We chatted a while longer as the captain worked on the strap on Sarah's BC, and shortly thereafter he declared it dive-worthy. We sat in the boat rolling and flopping with the waves for an hour or so, then we all decided to try it again in the same spot, so down we went for our second dive ...
This time I roll in first and start making my way along the bow-line down to the anchor line. The current is still brutal, and the waves aren't letting up, so I'm pulling myself along the bow-line towards the anchor-line when I feel that one of my legs is moving funny, and twitching and jerking around - and this just isn't right, so I'm thinking that I must have tangled my leg in the bow-line or something and the surge is throwing it around with the line. I look back, and there's this little gray shark-looking thing about 12 - 15" long gnawing and jerking on one of my fins, and I nearly cracked up laughing. I kicked at it and grabbed the bow line really good with both hands and whacked it pretty good with my other fin, and it vanished. (Note: upon getting back on the boat, the captain said it was probably just a remora, but I saw it, and I still think it was a little bull-shark, so I'm logging it as a shark-attack in my logbook.)
Sarah and Gary came on into the water in turn, and this time I went down the line first, followed by Sarah, and then Gary. All 3 of us made it down without incident this time, and Sarah did her thing, then we swam around for a while. This time the visibility was better, even with the currents, and we could actually see some of the fish. I don't have any idea what kind of fish they were since I was mostly taught to look for helicopters and pilots, and it's probably just as well we didn't see any of those. What fish we did see though were colorful and all, and there were lots of them, so we had a great time.
The captain of the Golden Sand Dollar was wonderful to work with, rough seas and all, and the reviewer that Diver's Emporium sent us was a top notch guy. Overall an excellent trip, the water was 79 degrees all the way down, and I was glad to get back into the water. (And I put a lot more here than I could fit in my dive log.) And best of all, we're now all set to dive in the Caribbean on the cruise.
