"I am scared, Dad," shouted Tanner. Her eyes were wide with fear through the glass of her diving mask. The first mate helped my daughter balance on the stern of the El Duque in the rocking swell.
"It's OK, Tanner," I shouted back. Just grab the stern line as soon as you're in the water. The surge threatened to drag me away from the boat as I clutched the line and waited for my daughter to jump into the sea. I drew the rope into my armpit and leaned back on my BC so I could remain facing the boat.
We were newly certified divers anchored to an underwater mountain called Sea Mountain. Our previous dives had been close to shore with good reference points in relatively calm water. In this case, we were hovering above a submerged pinnacle in the ocean blue with a moderate surface current. I felt very small in a massive world water.
"Watch me when I come up, Dad," called Tanner as she giant-strided into the water. When she surfaced, the surge rushed her into my embrace and I helped her grab the line. "I'm scared," she said again.
"It will be Ok little buddy. We just got to stay together and we will be fine." I hoped the tone of my voice didn't reveal my own anxiety.
Our instructor and diver extraordinaire, Gary Moyer, appeared on the stern of the boat. He made for a strapping figure in his black wet suit and bald head, a true action hero of the deep. "Use the bow rope and pull yourselves to the anchor line and wait for me there."
We kicked away from the security of the stern line and reached the bow rope and pulled ourselves toward the anchor line. I thought about how far we had come in the last three weeks. From classroom studies and our first tentative dives in a swimming pool to a deep dive onto the summit of an underwater mountain.
Our dream to scuba dive started in 2002 on a vacation to the Bay Islands in Honduras. During a snorkeling venture with my wife and Tanner we floated in forty feet of water above a group of sport divers. We saw them swimming within an astounding array of sea life. We were hooked. I promised my daughter that someday we would learn to scuba dive.
In June of 2008 I searched the internet for Phoenix dive shops that offered instruction and certification and found a plethora of opportunities available. But scuba diving is a highly technical sport with potentially dire consequences for errors. The multiple web sites promised excellence but how do you decide which dive shop to go with?
I made a list of dive shops and started visiting them. I intended to interview the personnel directly. After a few stops I found Nirvana and the gifted instruction of Kevin Pettiette and a team of excellent dive masters. Kevin thoroughly prepared us for the open water experience.
But I will never forget the panic I felt submerging in the swimming pool for the first time. The idea that you can breath under water is a foreign concept to the human experience. Just immersing your face in water causes one to hold their breath and when you add the tangle of scuba gear into the equation it's easy to panic.
I remember as we bubbled in four feet of water suddenly standing and pulling the regulator out of my mouth and yanking my facemask off. I stood in the shallows gulping air for a few minutes before I summoned the courage to kneel under the water again and breath the compressed air. I must have sounded like a puffing buffalo. Thankfully two days later I couldn't get enough down time. I loved being underwater and looked forward to diving in the ocean.
A few weeks later we joined Nirvana in San Carlos, Mexico, to finish our open water certification. We learned to giant-stride into the ocean from the boat, repeated most of the skills we had learned in the pool, and practiced some new things like underwater navigation. By noon of the second day we were certified divers. That afternoon my daughter and I completed our first dive without direct supervision in a small cove and played with the fish among the rocks and corrals.
The last day of the trip brought us to Seal Island in the morning. We dove in fifty feet of clear water and swam with sea lions and schools of fish that flashed silver and blue in the bright water. We practiced our buoyancy and navigation. My daughter was better at finding the boat again than I was. In the late afternoon we motored across the ocean to the underwater mountain and our first deep dive. We were happy to have the use of a bow line to reach the anchor line given the moderate surface current.
When we reached the anchor line my daughter and I clung white knuckled waiting for Gary who arrived a few minutes later. He explained that we would descend down the anchor line to the summit of the pinnacle some sixty or seventy feet below. We planned to swim among the rocks for a few minutes and then ascend slowly to our three-minute rest stop at twenty feet below the surface. The stop was a requirement to rid the body of the nitrogen that accumulated in our blood during the dive.
We vented our BCs and started down the anchor line into the gloom. Darkness obscured the underwater mountain and white particles streamed like snow through the water. I alternated between looking down into the shadows and watching my daughter eyes. I could see her brow was pinched with worry and her blue eyes flashed darkly. I checked my depth gauge and saw we were passing forty-six feet and that's when Tanner panicked.
She kicked free of the line and bolted for the surface. I lunged and just barely caught her fin and yanked her back down. I grabbed her hand and clamped it on the line and shouted through my regulator. Stop!
Wild eyes stared at me from a shaking head and she pointed at the surface.
Slow! I shouted through my regulator, though I don't know if she heard me or not. But we started up the line together staying well below our bubbles. In a moment we came upon Gary descending the line and he returned to the surface with us.
We hung on the line while the other divers in our group descended and Gary spoke with Tanner. We decided to try again and the three of us dropped below the waves to the mountain.
The boat had anchored off the side of the pinnacle so we didn't actually arrive at the top of the spire but rather on the mountainside in about seventy-five feet of water. At that depth the surface seemed miles away, just a vague brightness over our heads and the mountainside was cloaked in shadows.
Yet the spire teemed with life. We saw yellow corrals and black fish with yellow fins and white stripes. We dropped to eighty-three feet and swam among the rocks. Swimming at this depth seemed no different to me than at thirty-feet. Though I watched in dismay as my air pressure fell more than twice as fast. And more worrisome to me was the ease with which we could have gone a lot deeper. We were, I knew, already taking on nitrogen that would have to be off-gassed at the safety stop and during our surface interval. On compressed air the depth limit for a sport diver is one hundred and thirty feet.
I saw how enamored my daughter was with the sea life, her panic long forgotten. She spiraled downward with the curiosity of a cat. We could have reached one hundred feet in a heartbeat. I felt relieved that Gary swam with her arm-in-arm.
We stayed only a few minutes and then started back up the line. We climbed at a rate of thirty-feet per minute. When we reached twenty feet we hovered in a pack with the other divers and off gassed for three minutes. TannerÃÔ eyes smiled behind the glass of her facemask.
Back on the boat, as it motored toward San Carlos, I felt the let down that comes with the end of a great trip. I stood with my daughter next to the captain of the El Duque and reveled in the beauty of the ocean as the sun dropped behind racks of red and golden clouds as we entered the harbor and moored to the dock. I was certain as we off loaded our gear that I would return to dive again in San Carlos.
"It's OK, Tanner," I shouted back. Just grab the stern line as soon as you're in the water. The surge threatened to drag me away from the boat as I clutched the line and waited for my daughter to jump into the sea. I drew the rope into my armpit and leaned back on my BC so I could remain facing the boat.
We were newly certified divers anchored to an underwater mountain called Sea Mountain. Our previous dives had been close to shore with good reference points in relatively calm water. In this case, we were hovering above a submerged pinnacle in the ocean blue with a moderate surface current. I felt very small in a massive world water.
"Watch me when I come up, Dad," called Tanner as she giant-strided into the water. When she surfaced, the surge rushed her into my embrace and I helped her grab the line. "I'm scared," she said again.
"It will be Ok little buddy. We just got to stay together and we will be fine." I hoped the tone of my voice didn't reveal my own anxiety.
Our instructor and diver extraordinaire, Gary Moyer, appeared on the stern of the boat. He made for a strapping figure in his black wet suit and bald head, a true action hero of the deep. "Use the bow rope and pull yourselves to the anchor line and wait for me there."
We kicked away from the security of the stern line and reached the bow rope and pulled ourselves toward the anchor line. I thought about how far we had come in the last three weeks. From classroom studies and our first tentative dives in a swimming pool to a deep dive onto the summit of an underwater mountain.
Our dream to scuba dive started in 2002 on a vacation to the Bay Islands in Honduras. During a snorkeling venture with my wife and Tanner we floated in forty feet of water above a group of sport divers. We saw them swimming within an astounding array of sea life. We were hooked. I promised my daughter that someday we would learn to scuba dive.
In June of 2008 I searched the internet for Phoenix dive shops that offered instruction and certification and found a plethora of opportunities available. But scuba diving is a highly technical sport with potentially dire consequences for errors. The multiple web sites promised excellence but how do you decide which dive shop to go with?
I made a list of dive shops and started visiting them. I intended to interview the personnel directly. After a few stops I found Nirvana and the gifted instruction of Kevin Pettiette and a team of excellent dive masters. Kevin thoroughly prepared us for the open water experience.
But I will never forget the panic I felt submerging in the swimming pool for the first time. The idea that you can breath under water is a foreign concept to the human experience. Just immersing your face in water causes one to hold their breath and when you add the tangle of scuba gear into the equation it's easy to panic.
I remember as we bubbled in four feet of water suddenly standing and pulling the regulator out of my mouth and yanking my facemask off. I stood in the shallows gulping air for a few minutes before I summoned the courage to kneel under the water again and breath the compressed air. I must have sounded like a puffing buffalo. Thankfully two days later I couldn't get enough down time. I loved being underwater and looked forward to diving in the ocean.
A few weeks later we joined Nirvana in San Carlos, Mexico, to finish our open water certification. We learned to giant-stride into the ocean from the boat, repeated most of the skills we had learned in the pool, and practiced some new things like underwater navigation. By noon of the second day we were certified divers. That afternoon my daughter and I completed our first dive without direct supervision in a small cove and played with the fish among the rocks and corrals.
The last day of the trip brought us to Seal Island in the morning. We dove in fifty feet of clear water and swam with sea lions and schools of fish that flashed silver and blue in the bright water. We practiced our buoyancy and navigation. My daughter was better at finding the boat again than I was. In the late afternoon we motored across the ocean to the underwater mountain and our first deep dive. We were happy to have the use of a bow line to reach the anchor line given the moderate surface current.
When we reached the anchor line my daughter and I clung white knuckled waiting for Gary who arrived a few minutes later. He explained that we would descend down the anchor line to the summit of the pinnacle some sixty or seventy feet below. We planned to swim among the rocks for a few minutes and then ascend slowly to our three-minute rest stop at twenty feet below the surface. The stop was a requirement to rid the body of the nitrogen that accumulated in our blood during the dive.
We vented our BCs and started down the anchor line into the gloom. Darkness obscured the underwater mountain and white particles streamed like snow through the water. I alternated between looking down into the shadows and watching my daughter eyes. I could see her brow was pinched with worry and her blue eyes flashed darkly. I checked my depth gauge and saw we were passing forty-six feet and that's when Tanner panicked.
She kicked free of the line and bolted for the surface. I lunged and just barely caught her fin and yanked her back down. I grabbed her hand and clamped it on the line and shouted through my regulator. Stop!
Wild eyes stared at me from a shaking head and she pointed at the surface.
Slow! I shouted through my regulator, though I don't know if she heard me or not. But we started up the line together staying well below our bubbles. In a moment we came upon Gary descending the line and he returned to the surface with us.
We hung on the line while the other divers in our group descended and Gary spoke with Tanner. We decided to try again and the three of us dropped below the waves to the mountain.
The boat had anchored off the side of the pinnacle so we didn't actually arrive at the top of the spire but rather on the mountainside in about seventy-five feet of water. At that depth the surface seemed miles away, just a vague brightness over our heads and the mountainside was cloaked in shadows.
Yet the spire teemed with life. We saw yellow corrals and black fish with yellow fins and white stripes. We dropped to eighty-three feet and swam among the rocks. Swimming at this depth seemed no different to me than at thirty-feet. Though I watched in dismay as my air pressure fell more than twice as fast. And more worrisome to me was the ease with which we could have gone a lot deeper. We were, I knew, already taking on nitrogen that would have to be off-gassed at the safety stop and during our surface interval. On compressed air the depth limit for a sport diver is one hundred and thirty feet.
I saw how enamored my daughter was with the sea life, her panic long forgotten. She spiraled downward with the curiosity of a cat. We could have reached one hundred feet in a heartbeat. I felt relieved that Gary swam with her arm-in-arm.
We stayed only a few minutes and then started back up the line. We climbed at a rate of thirty-feet per minute. When we reached twenty feet we hovered in a pack with the other divers and off gassed for three minutes. TannerÃÔ eyes smiled behind the glass of her facemask.
Back on the boat, as it motored toward San Carlos, I felt the let down that comes with the end of a great trip. I stood with my daughter next to the captain of the El Duque and reveled in the beauty of the ocean as the sun dropped behind racks of red and golden clouds as we entered the harbor and moored to the dock. I was certain as we off loaded our gear that I would return to dive again in San Carlos.
