Today was, in the nicest possible terms, an adventure. Technically it was my day off, but as I'm about 22 dives short of the required 60 for Divemaster certification, I was bound for the open seas. Or at least, Oak Park.
Michael and I set out from home a little after 8, to meet Cem and his Open Water students, walking along the Esplanade to get a look at the ocean. In the Divemaster course, we've been learning to assess the ocean conditions and how they'd affect our diving. The crashing waves and howling wind suggested that the diving today would be a real son of a bitch. Michael was a bit apprehensive about journeying forth into Poseidon's hissy fit. I on the other hand was more concerned about getting my dive numbers up than my personal well-being.
Cem met us at Oak Park, took one look at the ocean, and decided it was too rough for the new Open Water students. He reminded us that we'd be Divemasters soon and said—in essence—that today's diving would put hair on our chest. With a devious smile, he left us a trailer full of dive gear and tanks, and departed for greener pastures. Michael was feeling much more confident by now, and joined me in gearing up for the first of three dives.
Turns out, my initial assessment was dead on: diving in these conditions was in fact a real son of a bitch. We managed to snorkel past the breaking waves and dropped down, following one of the reefs out into the ocean. There was a massive current under the surface, which whipped up an underwater dust storm, reducing visibility to about ten meters. We managed to find a few giant cuttlefish and made it out to the cave I've heard of but never seen. We turned around shortly after so Michael wouldn't run out of air and made as best an exit we could in the waves.
After waiting an hour on the surface, we donned our gear and headed back in. By this time, storm clouds were brewing and the wind was picking up, making for a truly beautiful day. We timed this entrance better than the first, and descended without incident. Our luck didn't last long though. Along one of the reefs at Oak Park, there's an old rocking horse on a spring. In the vicinity of the rocking horse is a coral encrusted sword known quite originally as Excalibur. Michael felt quite confident that he knew the way to Excalibur from the rocking horse, and took the lead. Things got fun very quickly.
We headed in what was supposed to be the direction of the sword. Five minutes of watching nothing but sand pass by, I called off the search and turned us around. A small highlight of our detour was finding a miniscule pipefish, which looked like a tiny, straightened-out seahorse. I felt bad for the thing, as the tide was surging and it was tossed around like a farmhouse in a tornado. It swam off after a while, leaving us to our navigation adventures. I led us back in the opposite direction we'd taken out, and we found ourselves looking at Excalibur. While it was cool to have found it, we'd used up most of our air going out and back. Preferring to have a bit of a swim over having Michael die of air starvation, we made our way to the surface.
As it turned out, we had gotten miserably turned around underwater. Upon surfacing, we found ourselves in front of the surfing beach neighboring our entrance point. For those of you unfamiliar with Oak Park, this is not a good situation to find yourself in. We swam half a kilometer back into the beach, involuntarily catching some very choice waves. After the surf was done having its way with us, we crawled onto the beach, and headed up for a rest. Rain was coming down by now, and Michael was ready to call it a day. Luckily for me, he changed his mind after our hour surface interval.
I decided our last dive would be a bit more conservative, and we mostly stuck around the first part of the reef by the entrance point. The only hectic part of the dive was the loss of my snorkel, which I recovered later thanks to my blind-luck navigation skills. We exited after half an hour, worn out and ready for a beer.
Instead of kicking back with a brew, I hopped on the train to Miranda to see a doctor about my dive medical. Not much else of note happened for the rest of the day, and I'm beginning to yawn between sentences. After today's excitement, I'll definitely be sleeping well.
Yours in Shaming Magellan,
Robert
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