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Day TWO OF OUR COURSE
Back to the Pool of Pain!!
Maybe yesteday I didn't explain Matt the instuctor to you very well. He is a big guy and very scary. the first thing he told us on beginning the course was NOT to argue with him! For those of you that don't know me, that part has been particularly difficult!! He also stated that he was not going to give us praise, just criticism, and we will die on every dive. Hopefully before the course ends, he says his list of criticisms will be shorter!! If we talk out of place (that'll be me every time!) we will get a hand in the air. He is a very quiet man, or should I say thoughtful to the point of meditaion. And yesterday Matt arrived at work having already started a bad day. Needless to say this made him even scarier!! Today he is much happeir, and even joking with us.
So… off we go to the Eden cenote (Pool of Pain) We check that the water is still there and go in.
First dive, I am team leader, we go into the cave with me reeling out the line. The permanent lines only start once inside the cave proper, to make sure no cavern diver or snorklers can get to them. So… you have to make your own line into the cave.
Diver two NEVER passes the diver with the line. So… Andy dies first today, as he passed me, and got his mask ripped off.
We are going to do a drill called "diver loses the line". So on the way out, Matt tells us to turn outour lights. (Remember the Boogie man can't swim, so it's ok in the dark as long as the water is still around you). Jimmy had told me about this drill, and it scared the pants off me. Matt takes me by the hand, my eyes closed (he needs to keep his light on to make sure we are in fact OK). So in complete darkness he leads me away from the line.
My first action is to drop to the floor, tie a line in two places in front of me, and then use that as a directional indicator and starting point. I turn around with my marker line now behind me, and I swim with my reel, sweeping my hand from the floor up until I find the original cave line. Hooray, I found it and didn't die!!! I did get my shins hit with a torch though, for still being on the bottom once my torch light was on. So did Andy.
Next dive we were going to do an out of air drill. Andy is now diver one and I am diver two. He reels in, and we are supposed to turn to our left and drop to fourteen metres. In this cave, there are two lines, one to the left and one right. At the moment we are just happy to find any line! So when Andy sees one, we go. We spent the whole dive paranoid that we were going to get hit with an out of air drill, so Matt didn't do it.
Matt has clocked me already… gobby cow.
As we were looking for the line and I realised Andy wasn't going where he should be, I tried to tell him with my torch, but didn't push it. So in the de-brief Matt asked how come I talk so much on land, but when underwater and it's needed to speak up, I go quiet. I think he was insinuating that I talk crap on land… surely not… that's not me at all!!!
The last dive that day, we did get our out of air drill, but it is so weird. I spend my life, as does Andy, telling students, that as soon as the regulator is in your mouth, you signal OK to each other. Neither of us did this, so our lights got turned off. Big rule of cave diving is that in a problem, hold the line and get out. But…I didn't get to the line. Think I might be dead again!!!
Back to DAY THREE:
DAY FIVE:
Back to the beginning:
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