It’s been an eventful and busy week down here in the Caymans.
A little over a week ago was Andrea’s birthday. We don’t go out to dinner too often down here, so we celebrated with a nice night out at a local restaurant. It was a fun evening for us.
But the big happenings started the next day, when we had a friend arrive for a visit. During our deive training, one of our favorite classmates was a guy named Terry. He was only in our class during a small part of our training (he only needed to do the instrctor course, whereas we started our training at an earlier level and then went beyond the instructor level as well), but we liked him instantly and we all became fast friends. Terry lives in the greater Washington DC area, but he is originally from London, and has that British accent that all the American women find so charming. He quickly earned the nickname “Bulldog” when someone made a reference to him as the “British Bulldog”.
Bulldog was on a month-long work/vacation in Costa Rica, and decided to add an extra week to his trip and visit us for some diving. And diving is what he got. During his week here, he dove an average of four dives a day for six of the seven days. And he saw EVERYTHING! Turtle, baracuda, tarpon, stingray, eel, tons of fish, and even rare stuff like shark and manta-ray. Bulldog saw it all. We did day dives and night dives. Shore dives and boat dives. It was particularly nice for him because he does his dive instruction in a quarry in northern Virginia, where the water is always cold and the visibility is about 5 feet. In Cayman the water is about 82 degrees and visibility is about 80 feet. So with the good conditions he was always anxious to get in the water and dive, and so we did a ton of diving. He had a blast. And so did we.
Of course, there are some aspects of the trip that Bulldog would prefer to forget, and so it is my pleasure to talk about those specifically.
On his first day, he came down to work with me, and his first dive was going to be accompanying my co-worker, Natasha, on a guided dive. Since we did our dive training together, I gave the obvious warning of “don’t embarrass me.” And he, of course, wasted no time in doing so, falling into the water before even reaching the ladder that he was supposed to climb down while making his entry. It was actually a dangerous place to fall from, but to his credit Bulldog managed to fall in such an awkward way that he avoided injuring himself against the shore. Well done, Bulldog!
The next day he had an opportunity to show off his superior divemaster skills, and almost caused me to lose my first diver ever. I was leading a group of seven divers. Usually we try to limit guided dives to six, but I accepted the seventh, knowing that my good friend Terry was around, and that I could have him assist me as my divemaster. His job was to stay in the back of the group and act as a sweeper — make sure everyone stays together and doesn’t get lost. Towards the back of the group of seven was a group of three divers who were particularly problematic. They were slow gearing up and had difficulties assembling their dive kit, an early warning sign of problems, they were all a bit older (in their 50s), and one of them, the woman in the group, was morbidly obese — she did not wear a wetsuit because she is too bouyant already, and she used 18 pounds of weight on her weight belt, whereas most women would use 8-12 if diving without a wetsuit. She warned me at the start that she is panicky on the surface but is fine underwater, and I reassured her that I would be in the front and Terry would be in the back in case she had any issues.
Issues arose early, but with the two men she was with rather than her. They were both amazingly quick with their air consumption, and about 20 minutes into the dive, when the other 4 guides still has around 2000psi in their tank, these two men were around 1000psi. Terry let me know this, and I asked him to put the diver with the least air on his alternate air source so that he could breathe off of Terry’s tank as we swam in.
As we started to make the turn around the reef towards the shore, I did a quick count of the divers, and discovered that only six of the seven guides were present. I did a quick recount, and realized immediately that the obese woman was gone. Terry saw me doing the count and did one of his own, and he realized we were one short as well. I looked at him and asked where the missing diver was, and he gave me a shrug of his shoulders, indicating that he never would have known she was gone if I didn’t do the count. Nice job sweeping, Bulldog!!!!
So with a diver missing, I went into panic mode. I had the rest of the group stop and stay in one place (Bulldog did manage to watch them as they stayed there — great job!), and I swam off to look for the missing diver. After about a minute of searching with no luck, I did the only thing I could do — I returned to my group and prepared to surface, at which point I would notify my dive shop that we had a lost diver and a large-scale search would begin. It was not a good feeling.
As I was surfacing and formulating my plan, I was greeted with a sight that I never thought I’d enjoy so much — a morbidly obese woman swimming above me on the surface. It was my missing diver, and she was swimming, which meant that she was alive, and that’s always a good thing. I went to the surface and confronted her, happy she was alive but angry that she was up there. Her story was that she saw her husband go on to Bulldog’s alternate air source, and she got nervous, and that led to her lungs filling with air, and she was unable to stay down and was forced to come to the surface. For those of you who don’t dive and therefore don’t know, this is total bullshit. She is a certified diver, and thus should be able to stay down, and if she can’t keep herself on the bottom she doesn’t deserve to be certified (and when we returned to the shore I told her as much). Nonetheless, I was glad she was alive.
So in five months of working as a dive instructor, I had never lost a diver on a guided dive, and then on my first dive with Bulldog as my divemaster, I lose one. I’m not saying it’s Bulldog’s fault or anything, but you do the math. Fortunately, it all worked out ok in the end, and I had a great time busting his chops about it for the rest of the week.
Bulldog had a great time down here, and Andrea and I genuinely enjoyed having him. He was a great guest. But we are also happy to have our place back! A one-bedroom apartment is barely enough space for the two of us (and Duffy), and so having a guest can be difficult (especially since we wake up so early every day). As great a guest as Bulldog was, it’s nice to be able to walk around the apartment naked again. :-p
So that’s what we’ve been up to lately. We’re looking forward to the next time Bulldog visits, and to visits from some of our other dive friends too (hint hint James!).