Diving, Dave's Perspective

You've probably read Beth's account of the diving. While her overall account was fair, she left out a few details.

They make movies about tourists being left out on the reef for a few days. It happens out here. Somebody gets separated from the group, or goes out on their own (as we did), doesn't make it back in time, and then the boat leaves with 78 of 80 passengers. We were the last to get on the boat before the scheduled 1:00 departure to another part of the reef. Our crew were a careful lot and checked us out on the diving white board, noting our blood nitrogen levels from our previous dive, wishing us a happy time. By the way, out of 10 certified divers on board, only Beth and I ventured out without a guide.

When we surfaced near the boat, signaled we were okay and swam closer, they asked, "Are you Elizabeth and David"? Phew. About a minute after we were on board they started the engines and took off for the next reef. Good thing they were waiting for us or we might still be out there.

She also left off the story about how she elbowed my regulator out of my mouth. It was somewhere in the middle of the 3rd dive. The inside of my mouth is a little tender today. Ouch. But I look at it as if it were a drill-good practice to keep calm and hold my breath while searching around for my regulator at 35 feet. I'm lucky she didn't know my mask off, too.

Then another time after I entered the water the dive master pointed between my legs. What I first thought was a long piece of kelp was the boat mooring line. No big deal, I guess, but as I was trying to get away I rolled over and went up a few feet and bumped my head on the ladder of the boat. Goofy.

On the first dive of the first day we transferred from the main boat to a little dive boat, which was really 2 pontoons, an engine, and a bar down the middle for balance. Divers face the center and sit on the pontoons. The idea is that we all lean back at the same time, holding our masks, just like they used to do on the Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. But before we got to the dive spot I lost my balance, luckily falling sideways into the bow of the boat, instead of backwards into the water and the outboard motor.

It really was fun. I wasn't even scared at all, not even a little bit.