Tales of a Maldives Virgin - Part I

[DarinJ]

Keep it coming, please!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[cooperscuba]

It’s amazing how adrenaline, being thrown in to water and the worry of fish with big, sharp pointy teeth aid sobriety. One moment I’m having trouble making a coherent sentence, the next I’m as straight as a die.

My options seemed straight forward - tread water, hope a bunch of drunks realized they were one idiot short of a full banana boat and that they’d come back for me, or start swimming. I’d seen Jaws at a very early and impressionable age so knew that every shark in the Indian Ocean was just waiting for a splashing sound at the surface, and then I would be fish food but, confusingly and contrary to what I ‘knew’, a book that I’d picked up for my travels, ‘Sharks of the Maldives’, stated that not only were the people of the Maldives very friendly, but so were their sharks.

I decided to start swimming (with a very slow and very precise breaststroke) in the hope that I’d be back in time for my evening meal. It struck me as ironic that 24 hours early I was in my clothes and soaked to the skin, and 24 hours later I was dressed again and soaked to the skin (and still hadn’t had a dive).

I’d been swimming for what seemed hours (it was only about 30 minutes) when I saw a light on the water, then heard the sound of a boat and finally heard people shouting my name. Relief flooded through me - I was going to get my dinner rather than be something’s dinners - and I started yelling in response. Surprisingly it wasn’t just the speed boat that had come back but the banana boat too with the whole group.

They’d got as far as the outside of the house reef before they’d realized I was missing, then had debated about whether to raise the alarm (which would obviously had caused some stink with the island’s management) or turn back and hope they’d find me. Michael eventually reasoned that, as the speed boat was the only boat at the island for that evening, then it seemed more prudent to start searching straight away (and hopefully have to avoid the whole “Hey, boss, funny thing but we seemed to have misplaced a guest” conversation back at the island). The only problem with the plan was the banana boat held pretty much the whole of the evening’s bar staff; sooner or later, people would start wondering where everyone was so, once I was in the speed boat (for some reason I wasn’t allowed back on the banana boat), Michael gunned the engine back to Reethi Ra, navigated the reef passage in to the lagoon a tad too quick and then, unfortunately, beached the boat. This would come back and bite me a few days later.

I sheepishly took my evening meal, politely declined to join anyone at the bar, and slunk off to bed.

Amazingly the next day I actually started my Advanced Open Water course with two other students (Bill & Ben, possibly made up names there), beginning with a check dive in the lagoon; mask off, mask on, regulator recovery, fin pivoting and ... that was it. How kneeling in less than 2 meters of water while performing static skills is an indication of someone’s ability to dive was, and still is, a mystery to me.

“Okay, first dive we going to make is the Peak Performance Buoyancy Adventure Dive”, informed our Italian instructor Antonio, “so I want you to complete the book chapter, then meet me at the center in, oh I don’t know, 90 minutes or so.”

Maldivian time is not the same as GMT. ‘Ten minutes’ means ten to thirty minutes (probably thirty), an hour is up to three chunks of sixty minutes and ‘tomorrow‘ means just ‘definitely not today’, so it wasn’t much of a surprise that Antonio reappeared two hours later to start looking over our bookwork, before we waded in to the lagoon (a bit deeper this time) and started fine tuning our buoyancy.

I really enjoyed the dive, the games were fun and I was diving - Yay! - but these days I have ambivalent feelings toward the PPB Adventure Dive. On one hand there are definitely divers who benefit from it (although, with the exception of people who just haven’t dived for a long time, I always feel that anyone who needs to make the dive has been initially sold short by their Open Water instructor), but on the other hand I feel that some instructors add it to their AOW courses simply because it is an easy dive to run - especially those instructors who make the PPB one of the last dives in a course. If a student needs PPB, why would an instructor feel it was Okay to first take them on a Deep Dive or Navigation dive?

Next up after lunch was the Deep Adventure Dive, which went against the ‘deepest dive first’ rule.

“Yeah, I know but the only reason we have that rule is because the surface interval required after a deep dive for a shallower dive is shorter than the surface interval required to make a deep dive after a shallow dive,” Antonio informed us, after we’d pointed this out to him, “and here (Maldives) we have plenty of time for surface intervals, so it’s not an issue.”

“Eh?” we collectively replied, so he explained it again. The fact that the ‘deepest dive first‘ rule has since changed shows he was right, and way ahead of a lot of instructors (in my book anyway). He then sent us away for another two hours which turned out to be three.

The dive we made from a dhoni which went as far as the outside of the house reef and took all of 5 minutes to get there. At the time one of the course requirements was to perform a timed task while at depth and then perform the same task out the water (it has since been moved to dive 2 or dive 3 of the Deep Specialty and replaced with ‘observing colour changes at depth’, a real cop-out in my opinion as I believe the demonstration of narcosis is of more use to a new diver than seeing ‘brown coral, red coral, brown coral, red coral’). In most cases, a diver will require more time to perform a task underwater than at the surface due to nitrogen narcosis, thus demonstrating the narcotic effect of nitrogen. We followed a sandy split to a small plateau at 26 meters where Antonio indicated we should settle and then set us to our task which was to numerically order, as many as possible in two minutes, twenty ten digit numbers which Antonio had written on his slate. It was no surprise to find that I sucked at it (metaphorically, mathematically, and with my air consumption), only managing to order nine and, as it turned out, two of them were wrong. It wasn’t much more of a surprise to discover I performed just as badly on the surface, managing just nine again but this time the nine were good. I was surprised, however, when Antonio signaled ‘look behind you‘ and a large white tip reef shark swam past, no more than five meters away.

The last dive of the day was a night dive (which, at the time, was one of the core dives of the AOW course), again from the dhoni, again just outside the house reef and again a boat ride of no more than five minutes. We then sat waiting for the sun to disappear.

“Okay”, Antonio said, “we’re going to drop down to a 12 meter plateau, and then start with the navigation skills. I will signal to two of you; one will navigate a square and the other will count 35 fin kicks per side. If you return - Ha! Ha! Just my little joke - I will reassign the roles and you’ll repeat the exercise until all three of you have navigated and kept count. Any questions? No? Good, lets go then”, and we rolled in to the water.

Five meters and all is good.

Ten meters and all is still good but, unless my torch is the most useless in the world, there is no sign of a floor yet.

Fifteen meters, all is ... sort of good ... even if there’s still no floor, nor any sign of a floor. Antonio and the other two divers are still there though, so on we go.

Twenty meters. I’m just starting to think the descent will never end when my torch starts to light a sandy floor, which still appears to be someway off.

Twenty eight meters and ‘touch down’. Twenty eight meters? What the ... ?

Antonio then signaled to Bill to stay put, make fin kick motions to Ben, gave me a compass bearing, and then signaled for Ben & I to start. Wow! Spooky was not the word for it (and it would be years before I made another night dive). The area we were in was just a vast flat, sandy expanse, with nothing to see, absolutely nothing. I nearly spat my regulator out when something, a shark or a kraken, grabbed my leg. Thankfully it was only Ben informing me we’d completed one side of our square, I swiveled my bezel, then myself, and set off again. This time I didn’t jump when Ben grabbed my leg the second time (well, not much anyway), and I started to change my compass settings but this time it wasn’t because we’d finished the second side of the square but because we were above three black blotched sting rays resting on the floor. After admiring the rays, we continued the navigation exercise completing the second and third side of our square, and started on the final leg. Thankfully, about halfway through the last straight I saw the light of Antonio and Bill’s torches and angled my direction towards them as we were ... ahem ... slightly off.

Once we’d arrived back at our starting point, Antonio then told Ben to stay still, gave a bearing to Bill, and indicated fin kicking motions to me. I’m sure he gave Bill exactly the same direction as he’d given me but this time around there were no rays and, at one point, a beautiful coral head alive with pigmy sweepers which must have mysteriously sprung from the ground after Ben & I had passed. Again, Antonio’s torch was in the wrong place when we made the last part of the navigation, and again we angled our dive to reach him.

My air consumption was really bad (as I’d noticed on the Deep dive) and Antonio was unable to send Bill & Ben out for the final navigation run as I was already signaling 50 bar (around 700 PSI I think?) and that I wanted to go up now, please, thank you very much.

Back on the boat, I asked Antonio what was all that about a maximum of 12 meters?

“Ah, the floor was not where I thought it was”, replied a slightly sheepish instructor.

I learnt a lot from this dive. Firstly, I wasn’t keen on night dives. Secondly, God Forbid, instructors weren’t infallible. Thirdly, when conducting a night dive exercise, an instructor should block his torch so his students don’t just home in on it (which I now do for my students) and preferably they should know the dive site. Fourthly, it’s not good practice to stop and admire the wildlife whilst trying to navigate. And finally, coral-heads randomly spring forth from the ocean floor in the Maldives.

Okay, that last one possibly isn’t true.

As he bid us a good evening, Antonio said “Get a good sleep tonight, tomorrow we’re diving Kuda Faru.”

 

[DarinJ]

Thanks again! Can't wait to read more.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[cooperscuba]

Your welcome.

 

[coolclay]

Your gonna put this together in a book and make millions right? You are a very talented writer!

 

[M-diver]

Thanks!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[cooperscuba]

Your gonna put this together in a book and make millions right? You are a very talented writer!

I wish the former was true, and I especially wish the latter was true also, but thank you

---------- Post added April 27th, 2014 at 02:30 PM ----------

Ah, Kuda Faru!

Almost sixteen years and two thousand, eight hundred and something logged dives later (approximately four thousand actual dives) and still - Ah, Kuda Faru!

Kuda Faru, also known as ‘Shark Point’, situated 500m from Makunudhoo Kandu, shaped like a church’s spire, that rises to a depth of 22m, often subjected to very strong currents (which is very good for the local residents with the big, sharp pointy teeth) is one of the Maldives most coveted dive sites. Not that I knew this at the time.

Ah, Kuda Faru!

This was to be the fourth dive of Bill's, Ben's, and my AOW course, the Drift Adventure Dive, and that was funny as, once we got on the site, we just hung on to the dead portions of the reef but I’m getting ahead of myself now ...

The boat diving from Reethi Ra was organized thus:

The divers would ensemble in the morning for a general site briefing, usually by the Base Leader Klaus, before breaking in to individual groups for more specific briefings by their respective guides or instructors. Once everyone allegedly knew what they were doing, we would assemble our scuba units (which were then transferred to the boat), don our suits (which consisted of mostly t-shirts and swim wear), board the dhoni, head off to the dive site (which sometimes actually resembled the map that Klaus had drawn on his wipe-board), make the dive, then head back to the resort where, a few hours later, the process would be repeated, and usually one more time, occasionally twice, after lunch.

It was a good system as it allowed recreational divers to choose how many dives they made without having to be on a boat the whole day (very handy for those with non-diving partners). For students, it allowed their instructors to choose whether they could make a specific dive from a boat or from shore without having to spend the whole day on one or at the other.

The journey lasted about an hour, of which Antonio, the instructor, spent the last fifteen minutes going back over key points with Bill, Ben and myself.

“The site is small, and there is nothing around it, so it has to be a negative entry, not a positive one, else the current will just push us away from the site and we’ll never get to it. This will probably be the most serious dive you have done, and will probably be so for a while to come. Especially for you Sean.”

“?!” said Sean.

“The experienced divers will go first so we don’t get in the way, and then 5 minutes or so we’ll follow them down. Once one of us has reached approximately 75 bar”, possibly this point was for the benefit of all three of us but Antonio was most definitely looking at me when he said it, “we just let go of the reef and ascend for a safety stop. The current will whip us out in to the blue, but don’t panic, remember your training and stay close to me. Especially you Sean.”

“?!” said Sean again.

Five minutes or so after the experienced divers had gone and we were rolling in to the water ... and there, rising like a giant’s finger giving the bird, lay Kuda Faru. We were about 50m away (on the horizontal) but that was Okay as the plan was to drift to the reef, and the other divers, looking like matchstick men, were already there or thereabouts. Mysteriously there were a lot more divers on the site than I had seen enter the water and, strangely, none of these other divers seemed to be exhaling bubbles.

As we flew through the water and down to the reef the mystery was solved; these ‘divers’ weren’t blowing bubbles as they had no need too, they were grey reef sharks and they were everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. Ascending from the depths, hurtling over and around the reef, darting in to the blue where a mammoth shoal of striped fusiliers, feeding in a plankton bloom, would part like silver drapes in the hope of avoiding their larger cousins.

Once secure on the reef by finger and thumb, I tried counting the sharks but it was futile, they were simply too fast, too many (and as my Deep Adventure Dive had demonstrated, I sucked mathematically at depth). Antonio signaled to look directly above; at about 10 meters, eight eagle rays were just hanging in the current, which I’d completely failed to see on our approach. Antonio then started banging his cylinder with a metal clip and one of the reef sharks started slowly swimming around our position, closer and closer, until I could have reached out and stroked it (assuming the current wouldn’t rip me from the reef). Then, when I’m thinking “!?” for the umpteenth time, the shark just accelerated away from the reef towards the fusiliers; one moment there’s a shark on my shoulder and then nothing but a remora which obviously must have been just adjusting its grip at the wrong moment.

“?!” said the remora.

“F***ing too right”, said Sean.

Alas, and predictably, I hit 75 bar before my companions, thus ending the dive. We released our holds on the reef and, ‘Whoosh!’, we were out of there and in the blue in moments, but all with big cheesy grins, wide enough to park a bus in.

Ah, Kuda Faru - a diver’s dream.

Just a shame my holiday was about to become a nightmare ...

 

[DarinJ]

Darn cliffhanger endings! Always leave me wanting more! Can't wait for the next 'chapter'.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[dmoore19]

Subscribed and LMAO........sort of.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Ack! Where's the rest?? I must have it!! Pleeeeease