Scuba Diving

As part of our Hawaii vacation I wanted to also do some diving. One place I really wanted to dive was Tunnels Beach out on the North Shore, but the weather conspired against me and they canceled. I did go diving with Fathom Five out of Koloa Landing on the south side. Both were boat dives. The first was at Sheraton Caverns, just off the coast of the Sheraton hotel — a very cool dive with lots of underwater "canyons", arches and caves. I got to see tons of fish and a very large sea turtle. The visibility was not super great for Hawaii due to all the rain, but much better than Monterey.

The second dive was closer back to the harbor; I can't recall the name. On the way to the site I got sea sick and ralphed like 5 times over the side of the boat. I thought that I was out for the next dive, but after throwing up I felt great. The dive shop owner noted "The reason they don't have guns on boats is that a sea sick person would kill themselves." We went looking for White Tip Reef Sharks, as they were known to frequent the area, but none were to be found. I did end up seeing more turtles and a Crown of Thorns.

Stuart Lawrence, Hank Humphreys and I headed down for a dive. We decided to go with a dive instructor to familiarize us with the area, and headed out from the left hand side of Lover's Point as you face the ocean. It had been a little while since I had dove, and I had some trouble with my mask sealing properly on the first dive, so I had to take a minute on the surface to relax and catch my breath. This is, I think, one of the most important lessons about diving: make sure you're relaxed and ready to go "in" the water prior to going down. If you have had a surface swim out to your dive location, stop, rest and just relax yourself prior to going down.

I think we ended up getting separated on one of the dives and had to surface. We saw some huge spider crabs, very large sea stars, kelp and seals.

As part of buying all my gear I got the PADI Advanced Open Water classes for "free". So one weekend Stac, the kids and I went down to Monterey with Richard Gartner for some advanced dives. We did two dives on Saturday, both shore dives at McAbee Beach. The first one was locating a bucket of cement that sat somewhere on the ocean floor. The bucket is used by all the instructors, so it has stuff growing all over it and it does not stick out as a foreign object that much. Once I found it I had to use a lift bag to bring the bucket to the surface, a tricky maneuver since the volume of air expands as you rise and you can end up with a runaway lift bag rocketing to the surface, where the bag collapses and the bucket comes sinking back on your head. I managed to do both.

The next dive was a navigation exercise, where I had to do counted, measured kicks and try to swim with a compass in a perfect square. This is not as easy as it may seem.

I went on a two tank dive with Richard Gartner and Stuart Lawrence, two of my work mates. This was my first cold water dive. I had purchased all of my equipment a couple of weeks prior and tried all the gear out in a local pool. The first dive I was quite nervous: first "real dive" without an instructor, my first shore dive (the Bahamas dives were boat dives), my first surface swim, my first surface swim through the kelp. We decided before diving to head for a small arch across the bay. Once I calmed myself down, I had some trouble getting down due to not enough weights. Once down though, Richard, who was leading since he had dove here before, just took off. I mean he motored through the water without looking back at all, so much for a dive buddy. I think we actually ended up getting separated on this dive twice, I know once for sure.

The second dive we ran into a plankton "swarm". I have never seen so much life in one place in my life. You could see only about 4 inches in front of your face while in the plankton.

Got PADI certified on a work trip — two certification dives and two get-your-feet-wet dives.