Last night Andrea and I did a night dive at our favorite site. It was a good dive — we saw three octopus (octopii?), a stingray, a huge tarpon, a six-foot moray eel, and lots of other fish. But what distinguished this dive was the current. For the last week or so, there has been a very strong current in the waters around Grand Cayman.
When I first envisioned this blog, I thought it would have a lot of stories about our scuba diving. As I was drifting along in the current last night, I realized that I should share the story of my work-day on Monday.
Some days you just know are going to be bad. I don’t know what it was about Monday that made it “one of those days”. Monday is my half-day, so it should have been a good day. But it wasn’t. I woke up in an out-of-sorts mood, and it went downhill from there. Our truck (the subject of a future blog) has a big wooden box for a trunk, and at work I dropped the lock down a drain in the parking lot as I loaded some tanks into the car. Strike One. I was actually hoping not to dive on Monday, since it was my half day. We had a boat trip going out, and my co-worker Chris was going to be working the boat. He was teaching an Advanced Open Water class, and in addition to that he would be leading the other four divers scheduled to go out on the boat. The only way I’d have to go along is if the two other divers showed up who had expressed an interest in the boat trip. And as luck would have it, they did. So I had to go out on the boat, guaranteeing that I would be working at least an extra hour into my half-day. Strike two.
These two additional divers are what my former instructor Tec would call “soup sandwiches”. They were certified scuba divers, which means that they are capible of diving on their own, but just watching them you knew it was a risk for them to do so. They didn’t know how to set up their gear, they didn’t know basics of dive safety, they were just a mess. And on top of that, they fit a stereotype that I hate to say has some creedence. They were very nice people, don’t get me wrong. But the guy was a big muscular black guy — played football in the CFL — and the woman was a black woman with typical black woman attiatude (picture “oh no you di-in’t” and go from there). I know this sounds a bit racist, but here’s the streotype that these people helped to enforce — black people aren’t good swimmers. Yeah, yeah, racist, I know, whatever. Obviously this is not true about everyone, but the thing about stereotrypes is that they come from somewhere. And these two people, when you looked at them, you could tell right away that they were much better off sticking to land based activities.
So because of them, I went out on the boat. Chris, my co-worker, was leading the dive, and my job would be to stay at the back of the group, keep everyone moving, deal with problems, and then take the people who ran out of air early (this group would inevitably include the large black guy) back to the boat.
I knew this dive was going to be a nightmare the second I hit the water. I was the first one off the boat, and I instantly noticed an extremely strong current. It was ripping — super-strong. We hang a line off the boat for people to gether on, and I had to cling to this line to avoid being swept away. I’m a decent diver, so this raised a red flag as to how the customers would handle it. I would soon find out, of course, because they were on their way in. One by one, I helped them grab hold of the line, and instructed them to hold tight, and to pull themselves towards the front of the boat, where we were to make our descent. We all hung on the line as best we could, waiting for Chris to come in. Once he finally arrived, we began our descent.
We had hoped the current would be milder once we were under water, but we were wrong. It was still crazy current. The dive plan was to go down to 100 feet. At about 15 feet, the big black guy signaled me that he wanted to go back up. I should have let him, but instead I calmed him down and helped him descend. Just getting down to the bottom was an effort in this current — the whole group struggled. Once we managed to get down, things did not get any better. We were essentially swimming in place, fighting the current so hard and getting nowhere. And the tough conditions did not make it easy for the recreational divers. The black couple were really struggling, although in true tourist form, they had their underwater cameras out and were taking pictures as they agonized against the forces of the ocean (not realizing that the struggle would be lessened if they focused on the dive instead of on taking pictures). The guy couldn’t make it down to the ocean floor, and so I had to swim up from 100 feet to 70 feet and drag him down. Not fun. But he and his wife were not the only ones struggling.
Another diver had a fin break. The current was so strong it actually broke the buckle on his fin. We tried for a minute to get it fixed, and when we couldn’t, I signaled Chris that I was taking the guy back to the boat. I should have been so lucky. I started to drag him along (since he couldn’t swim well with only one fin), and a minute into my dragging he gave a tug on my arm and showed me that he fixed the fin. So unfortunately, we stayed with the dive.
Eventually we turned around, and the current very quickly pushed us back past our ascent line. Half the divers were low on air, and so I led the low-air divers back to the line. Unfortuntely this involved a swim of about 100 yards, directly into the current. It was brutal. I made it there only by the sheer force of my will — I just kept saying to myself “I will reach that line. I will reach that line.” and I pushed and pushed until I got there. Not everyone had the same resolve that I did. The man whose fin broke made the line, as did his wife, but only because I left the line once I reached it to go and get them. I dragged them both there, again willing myself to reach the line. Despite being very athletic, the black couple did not make it to the line — they could not fight the current. They were too far away for me to help, so I relied on Chris to help them, as he was still down-current of them. I also helped two other divers to the line, and the four of us ascended, leaving Chris to handle his one student and the black couple.
During our ascent, things did not get better. On most dives we make a safety stop, which involves hanging on the ascent line for three minutes at a depth of 15 to 25 feet. During the safety stop, the wife of the guy with the broken fin ran out of air, and so I had to put her on my alternate air source and let her breathe from my tank. This is generally that complicated of an action, but the strong current made it very difficult for me to check on other divers while holding onto the line and providing air to this woman. As an added complication, I was also running low on air — fighting the current really causes you to breathe much heavier! — so I didn’t have a lot to spare. As this was going on, I noticed her husband was once again holding his broken fin. And as we hung on the line waiting for our three minutes to pass, I was looking down, watching Chris struggle to get his student and the black couple back to the line. It was one of the more difficult safety stops I’ve experienced.
Fortunately, I was able to get the divers that I had with me back onto the boat. Once they were on, I went back to help Chris with his divers. I saw him heading for our drop tank (a spare tank that we hang at 15 feet deep in case of an out-of-air emergency), with his student and the wife of the big black guy. The big black guy himself was nowhere to be seen. I was in a panic. Chris and his two divers reached the drop tank, but the current was so strong that once they grabbed it they were pushed to the surface by the current and were unable to stay down for their safety stop. We helped the two divers onto the boat, and I instantly asked Chris where the big black guy was. He had no idea. I looked around in a panic, and he was nowhere to be seen. I figured that he was either on the surface, a half mile away and still drifting, or else he was still underwater and he was dead. And I thought the later was the more likely option. You can imagine my relief, then, when Crish yelled to me that the guy was actually back on the boat. We have no idea how he got there, but we were thrilled that he made it back!
This dive was a nightmare. A total nightmare. I knew before the boat left in the morning that it wasn’t my day, but I had no idea how bad it was actually going to be. Just a brutal dive. But in hindsight, I wonder if it really was my day. As horrible a dive as it was, maybe it’s lucky I was there so that it wasn’t even worse. Chris has taken seven divers on his own before. Had he done it this time, instead of me going along, who knows what the results would have been. And as terrible as that dive was, there was a moment where I was genuinely afraid that one or more of the divers might be in real danger, and despite that we were able to bring all of the divers back safely. So maybe it was my day after all.
The lessons of the day: 1) This job is not easy. You are responsible for people’s lives, and that is a serious responsibility. I had always been aware of this, as it was instilled during our training, but this is the first time where I was REALLY tested during a dive, where I really had to watch out for the welfare of my divers. I’m happy that I was able to meet the challenge on this occasion. 2) Diving with a strong current really sucks! Actually, that’s not true — diving with a current can be fantastic if you plan properly and make it a drift dive, where you drift along with the current. Because of the experience level of the divers we had with us, that wasn’t an option, so we had to deal with it the hard way. No fun. 3) When you know you’re having a bad day, do your best to stay off the boat!!!
Since Monday I’ve dove a number of times, and each dive has had a decent current, although none like the one we faced Monday. I’m hopeful that the waters calm soon so that we can get back to the calm and wonderful diving that typically graces the Cayman Islands!