Disco, disco!

July 23, 2009

At 9:45 last night I thought that I was going to have a nice sleep in and lazy morning. At 9:46 I was going diving with 4 Irish lasses – all friends – 3 Discos and a Refresher. As horrible as it is, nationalities have stereotypes and some stereotypes are true. It might be a bit racist, but let’s be honest, stereotypes do stem from somewhere.

My 4 lasses were lovely girls, the 3 discos all took me by myself at some point during our walk to voice their fears of sharks and other big bads that lie beneath the deep blue sea. I assuaged their fears best I could, told them I would hold their hands (unfortunately I only have two hands and I need my feet for finning). One of them had done a DSD in Turkey and had a bad experience – they just threw them in with no instruction at all (could be true, but it was her recollection). She was thrilled when I briefed everything we’d be doing in great detail.

We were the last off the boat following two other groups who were needing the float. After getting all geared up and ready to jump in, I get myself in, I get Refresher girl in – GREAT – I get DSD 1 in – super, like she’s done this before. DSD 2 steps to the swim platform, looks down and REFUSES to step off. Her friends try to encourage her, I try to encourage her. She’s having absolutely NONE of it. Okay, take her gear off, toss it in the ocean, let her sit on the swim platform and gently place herself in the water while almost smashing her head on the swim platform. She puts her gear on in the water. DSD 3 gets in no problems.

We swim to the float. I’ve briefed the skills. Refresher girl goes first and does wonderfully fantastically great. DSD 1 goes next – she’s the one afraid of sharks and wants to get it done before she changes her mind bopping at the surface. We get her down a couple feet and do mask clear – works pretty well. We do regulator clear. Works okay. Then we go down a bit further for a reason that still escapes me (wasn’t my decision, but I guess that’s what I get for trusting that two well executed skills is indication that I can let go of her and trust her to find her way to the surface in a rational manner). Then for some reason, we decide that it’s a really really really good idea to spit out our regulator and go madly bolting to the surface. Why? Because we had a bit of water in our mouth. While I realize that can be a bit daunting, how is spitting out the reg and inhaling an ocean full of water going to improve on this?

Holy crap, we’re on to DSD 2. I demo mask partial flood and clear. And then we sit on the line staring at each other. I give her the big okay sign. She gives me the Fonzie thumbs up. I give her a big okay sign. She gives me another Fonzie thumbs up. All the while she’s looking perfectly sedated. We do this a couple more times and finally I take her to the surface. Nope, she won’t do the skill. Can’t tell me why, but she won’t do it. I do explain to her that if she’s okay she does need to give me the okay and not the “I want to go up” sign.

We move on to DSD 3. I hope DSD 3 will get certified because she did exceptionalize the stereotype. She did really well and had a big grin on her face throughout the whole experience (except on dive 2 when her BCD tried to bend her, but even after that, she was still froggy to change gear and jump back in).

When we finally got everybody down after trying to once more get DSD 2 to clear a mask, we actually had an okay dive. They stayed as a group. I held DSD 2’s hand or BCD the whole time mainly because I knew she’d be bouncing between the surface and the bottom if I didn’t. 20 minutes later (about) we’d been at this for over an hour and a half and it was 10:30 and I needed to start their surface interval.

We debriefed. We made suggestions for finning techniques, staying horizontal and what not for dive two and reminded everyone to stay as a group and to stay at or above me. Every indication was that Dive 2 was going to be just fine.

Dive 2 rolls around. Again, we’re the last ones in. This time it’s going to be a wall dive. The bottom, while greater than 40 feet is still not super crazy deep and while I’d have preferred something with a 40 foot bottom, there are fun divers on the boat and I can’t do two dives at Table Coral City.

DSD 2 dons her gear in the water while the other three give me beautiful giant strides. Then it was like trying to get an octopus into a net. I’d get three down and one would float back up. We’d all get back down again and go a little ways and then #3’s BCD tried to bend her. We all go back up to the surface, I do a couple of tests on the BCD which went from slowly leaking air to inflating uncontrollably, so we get out and quickly change out her BCD while the other lot are floating at the surface. We go back in and all play the up and down game a couple more times before finally completing a 10 minute dive. Since one of them had to catch the 2:30 ferry back to Phuket, I pretty much had no choice than to cut the party short.

Later that evening, at dinner with Gee, he told me that if you get a group of Irish women for Disco, at least one of them will refuse to jump off the boat and one of them will bolt. Good to know.

July 26

I don’t like Discos! It’s good money but it’s bloody hard work. And it’s not the hard work that scares me. I think there is a distinct possibility somebody might be so stupid they’ll die on me. Yesterday was a new experience. Every disco is a new adventure. Just when I think I’ve got all the problems figured out, a new one joins the party. So I ask, “Are we done yet?”

Yesterday I experienced somebody sucking down 80 CF of air in about 20 minutes (most of those 20 minutes spent above 20 feet - also note that MOST people will go about 40 minutes to an hour on 80 CF of air). I had to step back for a moment and consider equipment malfunction. He wasn’t nervous. And he wasn’t a particularly big guy. But no equipment issues. He sucked down air that fast. One minute he had 150 bar, 10 minutes later he had 20 and my eyes right near bugged out of my skull when I saw his SPG. That is lower on air than I would obviously EVER let anybody get.

I’m guessing Suunto was not real pleased with me when I blew past a 4 minute safety stop with a 10 foot ceiling to get this guy to the surface before he ran out of air.

Later during the debrief, I learned that he’d been looking at his depth gage, but couldn’t figure out why it had two needles and which one he was supposed to go by. I’m wondering why it didn’t faze him that his SPG didn’t go to 200 and why it had registered lower than 12 the entire time he’d been looking at it, when during his buddy check we’d clearly seen that it was at 200 bar.

Then I have to think that it’s me – that my briefings aren’t thorough enough, that I ought to be covering the entire Open Water class in the 20 minutes or so that I have to brief them. Then I’ll tell someone like Gee who’s been doing this for a while what new and exciting adventures my day brought and he’ll pretty much tell me that the problems exemplified by my Disco (here they call them DSDs, not pronounced as 3 individual letters, but as a word), are stereotypical of that nationality.

I guess the lesson here is to learn the stereotypes and anticipate them better.