Today was my second diving day. I didn’t pay for any instruction or special watching over me, for the first time. Lucky for me my buddy was practically a pro. Jack works behind the set at worldwide traveling Cirque de Soleil. He never goes home. His parents live in LA. No car, no rent. All his food and accommodation are paid for by Cirque. He makes the performers fly. But before that, he was a student at… wanna guess? You’re right! UCSD. I keep running into people from San Diego. He got an Econ degree but he worked in some underwater show at Sea World and then some cruise ship where he dove A LOT.
So he gave me some great advice on our three dives today and I think I got quite a bit better at my buoyancy and calming down so I don’t use up my air too fast. But except for the little assists everyone gets, like help with their wetsuit zipper or putting on fins, I did everything myself today. Hooray!
So now I have a grand total of 18 dives on three different continents.
Here’s the rundown of the day. I got picked up at my hotel at 7:40. We were riding out to the Kerama Islands by 9:00, We were in the water at 9:29. Dive one was 41 minutes. It was absolutely unreal down there. I saw starfish, a HUGE fan coral, two octopi, a snake, and more nudibranchs. Plus, oodles of colorful fish and coral that was periwinkle and chartreuse. We went through this kind of lava canyon. I was challenged by keeping my buoyancy and not running into the walls. Obviously, you’re never, ever supposed to touch the coral and some of it can sting you anyhow. Probably not through my wetsuit but still.
The second dive was in a different location and was 40 minutes starting at 11:24. Max depth was our deepest at 20 meters, so right at my Open Water Certification supposed limit. More coral and crazy fish. Here’s an example of my inability to manage my buoyancy. Near the end of the dive, we were closer to the surface, perhaps 5 meters. That’s a good way to manage a dive: go down deep at first and find a bottom topography that slowly brings you closer to the surface. That way you’re kind of doing your safety stop while you’re enjoying yourself, looking around, instead of just hanging on to the anchor rope for 3 or 5 minutes, the surface and dry clothes tantalizingly just above you. But on this dive, before I could grab the rope, I popped up to the surface and couldn’t decend. My guide came and pulled me down. Then I had to equalize my ears every few feet and he basically attached me to him. I was eye-rolling at myself for being the noob in the group. I start every dive with a 14 pound weight belt. Then my guide always has to come and put more 2 pound weights in my BCD pockets. BCD = Bouyancy Control Device (or vest)
The third dive was after lunch. When you are in between dives there is a sort of clock running, or a waiting game above the water, to give yourself time to dissolve the nitrogen bubbles in your blood. So another bento box of fried chicken and rice was consumed, plus a bunch of my own snacks too, We started our third dive at 13:26 and it was 40 minutes long. There was an option to go in a sort of cave, which I’m not qualified to do, so a dive assistant (in the bright orange wetsuit) stayed back with me while the others went in. We just looked around and played peekaboo with a trumpet fish. The best thing about this dive was this amazing school of juvenile Heller barracuda. See photos of me and the folks in my group. Several of them have expensive cameras and clearly more experience than me. I can barely keep myself together so taking pictures would be completely beyond me. In the one picture, you can clearly tell it’s me. Then after I moved my orange armband to my right leg on dives 2 and 3, you can see the whole school of barracudas passed around me. I was trying to stay out of their way, but the guide in the orange wetsuit was guiding them to make it better for the photographers in the group. I was just in the way! They don’t bite divers!
We had an hour boat ride back to Naha and I went to the upstairs deck and lay down and fell asleep. That’s how tiring it is to dive! My guide signed my book and was my driver back to my hotel. Two days of diving with a full set of rental gear, extra help on day one, transporation and lunch was about $500.
Now, back at my hotel, I’m doing my laundry and about to eat a reward Haagen Daaz ice cream cup. Tomorrow is my last full day in Japan and we are expecting thunderstorms and lots of rain, so don’t expect too much from me tomorrow. If it doesn’t seem too crazy outside, there’s a beach on a bay I want to go to, to match up a photo my dad took there in 1955.
