Open Water

My day was completely uneventful yesterday. The good news is I put in a long days work and was able to finish all my lesson planning and grading so I can play hookie from school work today. I'm heading out with some friends to see the Broadway production of The Wedding Singer. It can't possibly be as funny without Adam Sandler but it should be a rockin' good time.

It was Jon who had the interesting day yesterday. As a dive master, he often goes out with his dive shop to help with their scuba classes. Yesterday was the check out dive for one of their Advanced Open Water classes. He'd been watching the marine forecast for days since we've had some iffy weather here recently. They were still predicting 4-6 foot waves with even bigger swells but since the class had already been canceled once due to poor weather, both Jon and the instructor agreed to give it a go. Jon has great sea legs so he wasn't concerned for himself, but he knew it would be rough for some of the students.

Everyone fared well on the way to the first dive (a 70ft dive at the Wreck of the Ancient Mariner). Fifteen minutes into the dive, the dive instructor motions to Jon that one of the student is low on air. Jon checks his own gauge and is sitting at about 2000 psi. This guy was down to 750 psi - he was really gulping down his air apparently. Obviously, Jon has to take the guy and his dive partner (his wife) back up to the surface.

After a few minutes, the dive instructor and the rest of the class meet them to wait for the boat. Jon can tell immediately that something is wrong just by the look on the dive instructors face. He lost two of the students and can't find them! Visibility in the water was poor and the current was really ripping so this is not good. Leaving the class on the surface to wait, they both head back down and search the wreck making sure no one is trapped or worse...

Jon was calm and assumed the guys had just drifted down current. The dive instructor was freaked (in all his years he's never lost anyone before and felt really responsible since it was on his watch). They didn't find anything at the wreck and by the time they made it to the surface again, Jon could see the dive boat about 200 yards downstream making a stop and picking up the two strays. It turns out that while the guys were making their way up the tow line back to surface, they somehow lost the line. They continued to ascend but the current pulled them way off course. Whew!

The dive instructor scolded the two for not inflating their safety sausage to signal boats when they were on the surface. (It's one of the emergency skills they are taught in this very course). One of the guys looked around, "what boats?" he joked. Theirs was literally the only boat out on the water in such rough seas.

On the way to the second dive, the pukey-pukey started. A couple of the students were hanging over the edge, but they all managed to pull it together for their second dive at the Abbytoo reef. It was supposed to be about a 45 foot dive, but the dive instructor headed west instead of east when they were in the water (he was still a bit shook up from the last dive). Jon tried to swim to catch him to turn him around, but with the current he couldn't catch up. He just let him lead them off course. They ended up diving another 80 foot dive just to reach the reef.

The rest of the dive was pretty uneventful. Jon said it was an interesting experience since he was the one carrying the rope for the dive flag that is bobbing around at the surface. With waves that size, it was jerking him up and down a couple of feet the entire dive.

The scheduled night dive was canceled so Jon returned home early and it looks like he won't be heading back out today either, which is probably a good thing. Considering it's a class of 7, one could say that yesterday 1/3 of the class was puking and 1/3 of the class went missing! Not the most impressive stats.

This is why I don't dive!