Utila – Week 5, Day 4: Snorkel Saviours
UTILA
Week 5
Day 4: Snorkel Saviours
December 14, 2022
After what felt like weeks, my morning would be dedicated to just fun dives. It’s funny how the divemaster training had taken over the recreational aspect of diving – so much so that it felt weird going for a dive without worrying about anything.
To be completely fair, I did have some anxiety. I’d be diving alone with Catherine and Buck – two highly experienced diving instructors. It’d be a fun dive for them too – meaning I’d be ruining it for them if I did something wrong or messed up in one way or another. Plus, I’d have to really watch out for my air consumption – I wouldn’t want them to end their dive early on my account. So yeah, there was a bit of pressure even though it was meant to be just fun diving.
Thankfully, both dives were uneventful. We went to Black Coral Wall and Big Bight and I, for one, had a blast diving with the two of them. They spotted all kinds of things – from the small stuff like nudibranches and shrimps, to larger stuff like queen triggerfish and even a hogfish – the first I’d ever seen! Also a large shoal of jacks which was quite the nice touch! The highlight, however, was the fact that I could just ride along and enjoy the dive without having to practice any skills or watch over any clients.
Rubber Chickens & Recovery Drills
After a perfect morning spent diving, Amelia and I had a search and recovery workshop with Noah and Darcy. Noah I had gotten used to, but knowing Darcy would lead part of it nearly had me crapping my pants.
You see, Darcy is an award-winning PADI Platinum Course Director (amongst her many qualifications), and she’s way up there. Everyone’s a bit scared of her – she’s not mean or anything like that, but she is strict and really good at her job. She also has this one quirk that completely goes against the persona she projects to everyone – she’s obsessed with rubber chickens. That aside, I kinda looked at her the way I would an attending in a hospital: a mix of respect and fear. I really didn’t wanna end up on her burn book.
Knowing we’d be practising knot tying, I spent an appreciable amount of time going over the three knots we’d be using – the bowline, the sheet bend, and the two half-hitches. It felt a lot like practising reef knots and other ties used for suturing back in hospital. I was so proud of myself when I could do them in a fraction of a second after just a few minutes of practice.
During the actual confined session, we had to use different types of knots to tie a weight belt to a lift bag. Much like when we’d practised knot-tying on the Halliburton Wreck during the Wreck Penetration course, doing it underwater proved way harder than at the surface – especially since Darcy had us using a different technique to tie the same knot! After a couple of failed attempts at the bowline, I finally got my crap together and nailed the rest. Once we ran through the sequence a few more times and felt confident with our skills, we inflated the bags using our alternate regulators to raise the weight belt to the surface – easy!
Next up was reviewing the search patterns we’d already practised during the PADI Rescue Diver course – once again using a stuffed Barney toy as our treasure. Amelia and I started with the U-pattern and found the purple dinosaur after just a few minutes. Then we moved on to the expanding square to search for a missing snorkel. Although we were using the right technique, we just couldn’t find the damn thing. We must’ve done the pattern at least five times, each time giving up and heading back to the surface to restart.
Until Andreas came in to save the day, that is. With Noah still at the bottom, Andreas took the opportunity to point us in the direction of the missing snorkel – having seen Noah throwing it from the surface a few minutes earlier as he lay sunbathing on the dock. Needless to say, that night we bought him a couple of beers and serenaded him at Karaoke Night – the least we could do for our snorkel saviour.
Stay wild,
Marius
Post-Scriptum
I found an anklet at the dock and claimed it for myself. It’s blue – my favourite colour – and I’d always thought about getting one but never acted on it. I guess I’m a fully fledged backpacker now, huh?