Homeless Diver

Yuppers, I went for a checkup yesterday afternoon and my ear is healed.  It was a different Doc and he introduced himself as the one that ‘replaced’ Dr Yap. Even the office staff was different.  Anyway, the last Doc didn’t do a diagram on my card so he didn’t know where the hole was supposed to be on my eardrum - he said it healed so well in only 11 days that he couldn’t tell where the hole had ever been. He also told me to stop using cotton buds after showering…. ohhhh.. damn, he’s good.

I was sitting in Cocolocos yesterday evening (Boracay, not the resort island) and friend comes over telling how his illness cleared up and he could go diving again, unlike myself.

Then he says that out near Virgin Drop, him and the shop manager/instructor of Blue Mango diveshop saw a dolphin just under 2 meters long floating in the water not looking injured, but clearly dead. I dont remember if he said it looked like a fresh or old kill, I’ll ask him in the morning.

When they got back, I assume they reported it to the coast guard who wasted no time in snatching it out of the water - didnt tell a soul about it. Someone apparently told someone else because I found this news link about it tonight I didnt think much of it until Chad dropped me a line about a news article on it. (thanks) .

Dolphin found dead off Boracay

Boracay dive sites map

I completely forgot I had these pictures until I saw Jung post this article. Its about a sponge crab that took a plastic bag as its ’sponge’.  This past month, I saw my first sponge crab (huge! carapace almost a foot wide). It was on a night dive with Dustin of Blue Mango. This thing was ignoring us completely and steadily ripping a plant from a rock in 1.5m and would not stop until it had this tiny scrap of ‘growth’ on its back….then scuttling off.

Jen saw this one night in Red Pirates and we all played with it - a hermit crab that had taken a Cheeze-Whiz jar as its ’shell’.

..but he did it to himself by accident, with cyanide.  Click below the fold for the whole article. (source link)

MANILA, Philippines—An American diver was pulled out of salvage operations at the wreck of the M/V Princess of the Stars in Romblon on Friday for numbness and shortness of breath, a suspected case of chemical exposure that occurred away from the sunken vessel and its remaining toxic cargo.

John Hancock, a 38-year-old diver of salvor firm Titan, was airlifted to Manila by a Philippine Coast Guard rescue chopper Friday morning after experiencing chest pains and numbness on the left half of his face and the left arm. (more…)

The only real accident was me blowing my eardrum at about 20 meters and not realizing it. The Camia II is a purposely sunken fish transport ship off Boracay with 6 or 7 years of growth on it for an artificial reef project.

We were going down and had some AOW students that were having a troubling day of diving. First it was lack of weights then near-panic at mask clearing. Couldn’t seem to get them down the line in a reasonable amount of time; slow-slow-slow. By the time we hit bottom, I had used 50 bar while doing nothing more than hovering to the side slowly descending as they eventually followed. (more…)

DSAT TecRec diving, or Tec Deep Diver, or DSAT, or Tec I…. or whatever you prefer…. I learned something, thats actually tough!

All other PADI courses are generally designed so that it’s impossible to fail unless you simply cannot ‘get it’.  Even the numbers, if you get them wrong on the test, no probs - just a lil review. But if you can work the equipment and not drown, then you pass. Some courses (like rescue and nitrox) obviously dont fall into this category.

But not Tec Deep Diver, certainly not. This isnt a matter of learning new equip, which is easy, this is a whole different matter. And I finally found something in diving that I’ll have to actually work for.  This isnt recreational diving anymore. Here was my day:

• Dive briefing and  skills testing list.  uh-oh, I cant remember the skills steps all of a sudden, gotta write those down and try memorizing.
• Break for lunch…mine sits very poorly in my stomach
• put on the gear, which is massively heavier than a single tank rig, I dont need any extra weight at all for this.
• in the water heading to the boat…jeeze these waves are kickin’! Crap, cant get the fins on right, have to put on the mask just to see, high waves.
• getting on the boat is a pain in the ass, I’m the last one on and dude looks at me and walks away, i was about to throw my fins at him when another guy walks up. Oh hell… this is not what I had in mind, huge wave surge and my first time with a heavy doubles set. Have a lot of trouble getting up the ladder and into the boat—which for some reason, does not have anything like an entryway next to the ladder. Dude keeps telling me to go sit in the front but wont get the fuck outta my way.
• travel: waves are pretty damn big. even with 4 of us and one on the bow, we still crest the front 3rd of the boat over some waves. very slow going. I dont trust myself to not flip over the side so sitting on the floor is the decision.
• entry: since im sitting flat on the bottom, I cant stand directly up or even lean over with all this weight on–I wil have to twist/roll to the side and onto knees before standing. And with this rocking action, standing is gonna be a bitch. Boatman tries helping me up but will NOT get the fuck away from me. I told him over and over to get away from me so I could turn (didnt want my face in his nuts) but this fucknut just keeps lifting up on my tanks, as if that accomplishes a damn thing.
• now I’m thoroughly in a foul mood. This is not a good way to start a dive.
• water: I get in and learn something crucial, it fucking hurts to backroll with doubles tanks off a high boat in killer waves.
• the boat is smashing up and down and what do I hear?  “Get away from the boat! You’ll get fucking smashed!” or something really close.  I was gonna yell that I couldn’t get away because there were 3 other people in front of me, blocking my way, including the person yelling at me. As soon as I pulled the reg out, I caught a mouthful of wave….   screw it.  Why we would ever NOT do a negative entry in those waves is beyond me - but hey, I’m the student.
• skills: I learned that I have horrible buoyancy with doubles.  Everyone was easily hovering and fine tuning their buoyancy, but I keep flipping upside down. FUCK! its so goddamn frustrating to not be able do what should be easy as fuck.  Upside down?  WTF?  I haven’t done that since my first dives?!?! The bladder was a donut so of course, any slight tilt down instantly inverted me again.  And because of this, I cant do some of the skills.
• We took deco bottles but apparently had a skill to do on them… everyone else remembered the instruction, all I remembered was being told they were going with us that morning. So now I’m underwater and supposed to do a clip/usage skill on a deco bottle, but I have no clue what. Its not like a blackout event…. I remember clearly the bottles coming out and what was said  about them… but nothing about a skill on them.
• return: getting on the boat was just as hard. It sucked and the waves were even larger. at stationary, water was still getting into the boat. I thought Dan might have smashed his head on a pontoon cross member, but missed it barely. During the trip back, I couldn’t stop thinking how much easier it would have been if they just towed me by a rope rather than getting back in the boat.
• Back in the shop: my ass explodes from a bad lunch.

It’s a lot of complaining, I know…But I keep telling myself this type of diving isnt for everyone; it’s supposed to be hard. The weather on Boracay was bad that day and got worse over the next 2 days.

too lazy to update.. waaay too lazy, so heres a bulleted list:

• fly-paper sheets are an excellent deterrent for cats trying to get into your house, and funny as hell also
• illnesses were going around the island for a few weeks, a few people got hit twice
• been raining a lot lately on Boracay
• the roof leaks in my house, so screw the house - I’m leaving this dump.
• I’ve woken up on the beach in front of Red Pirates 3 times in the past two weeks - once in the biting cold rain
• yes, the rain actually got downright cold one night, it was nice
• sold a spare laptop for 6000 pesos
• still havent decided on where I’m going after this
• credit card fraud is a bitch
• ants again: WTF are they in this room!?!? I specifically dont bring food in here to keep them away!
• its low season and every girls mother is magically in the hospital now, so they’re begging for money
• ill do this later….gotta go do a recovery dive in the channel

Guess I havent been putting my diving in here.  I started the Master Scuba Diver plan with Dustin at Blue Mango. I’m filling up on cert cards and getting Tech I at the end.  His big thing is that I get plenty of diving in and know my skills for the specialty certs.  It does remind me that out all the people I asked, Dustin was the only one that explained RDP tables in a simple manner that was too easy to not understand on 3 dive projections… in under 30 seconds.

He did an excellent job of having me navigate all over a few unknown dive sites with nothing more than a compass and kick count. Since I already have my Rescue and EANx certs, he let me out further than I suspect others might go. I liked it. Tracing a route and returning to the mark is so much more meaningful when you can concentrate and not worry about observers.

For some reason, I’ve been enjoying the hell out of Boracay this past week, almost as if something’s changed.

jeeze, i feel like crap right now. I came home last night and it started raining again so those damn roaches started coming in again… but i forgot that the posion was already down and they’d die in an hour or so. my dumbass started spraying again and with the few drinks in me, guess i stayed in the area too long and inhaled the baygon. ive spent all day in either the bed or the bathroom. was supposed to finish my navigation specialty course with dustin today at blue mango. tomorrow is my last day ’cause he leaves for a week the day after.

Yes, I’m in a much better mood. Why? Easy…. I got myself an aluminum baseball bat. Thats all it took. Have bat, will travel. I bought 1 of only 2 for sale on the island. The other was a wooden thing that was made from a plank board - first hit on anything and it splits. But yea, I walked all the way from D’Mall to my house with it and not a single damn vendor dared ask me to by ANYTHING.  hehe. But a few security and police stopped me, just to see if I was about to wreak havoc upon the general peacefullness of the morning. One even asked me if I had a permit because it was a deadly weapon; I said yea, I have one right here. <swinging bat> He nervously smiled and bid me farewell. I think so anyway.

Really, the spirits are much lighter today.

I was feeling so good that I prepaid a ton of diving courses as a package with Dustin at Blue Mango. Its a lot and it’ll have to be packed in tightly, but theres great rapport with these guys and honestly, they already know me too well to let me fuck it up. I can trust Dustin to make sure I know the material and skills rather than just rubber stamp a form because the money was paid.

Any hoo, thats all

Today, I finally got back in the water again! Whoo Hoo! I had taken my gear down to Blue Mango a few days ago to get it back in the rinse tanks and check it over… re-seasoning it I guess we could say.

We had some really good friends come in the same day and spent about 3 hours in the water tossing Frisbee; myself w/o any sunblock. Needless to say, I got burnt so that after dinner at Arwanas, I was not feeling chipper enough to go out with everyone else. The next day was an ‘aloe-vera and dark room’ day for me as well.

This morning, I rolled down about 07:30 am after a 3rd night of mild insomnia. Sure enough Dustin is rearing for some morning diving - and this mornings dive is Yapak 1. Sweeeet! That’s possibly the most advanced dive site around Boracay without everyone having tech rigs and getting into a specialized dive. You can drop in around 18 meters and slope down to the top of the cave at 33 meters (depending on which direction you’re coming from). Theres another guy who is on his 99th dive for this one, just the three of us.

Starting off, I noticed a bit of water in my 1st stage of the regulators (personal set) because I had apparently tightened the dust cap too tight. Just a few drops and airflow is still good, no biggie. We start heading to the boat and right away my BCD is full-bubbling out the shoulder dump-valve where I had not screwed it back on correctly; Dustin easily fixes this w/o gear removal. Now I’m at 2 strikes.

We head out and the weather is magnificent: warm water, visibility is excellent. We drop in North of the cave, which is a first for me…and the current had already started moving. We did a hard (for me) swim for a solid five minutes against and across the current to the cave - man, out of breath. I think I actually started sweating in my mask. We head down and I drop straight to 44.5 meters while my dive computer is chirping that it no longer want to be my friend during such a rapid descent. Silly Suunto hocky puck.

I look at my air and Holy Crap! I’m sitting at 60 Bar already! I have never in my life seen anyone use a 200 bar tank that fast. Damn, looks like I’m going to be the one ruining this dive to only a single penetration. Anyhoo, we head thru the cave and out the top, get on the boat, head back - and I start feeling queasy. Back at the shop, I have a bout of Montezuma’s revenge and head to the house for some meds and a nap (dive later in the afternoon).

I wake up at 13:30pm and the power is out again, it seems to have been out for a while as my bed is soaking wet in sweat. Cell phone rings and its University of Phoenix trying to get me back into classes earlier than I wanted. While talking, I stand up to find my left ankle is really tight and sore as hell. The pain is shooting up the outside of my left calve and feels like overexerted muscle, I was like where the heck did this come from?!?

So now I’ve got the trots, Brown-out just ended, bedroom smells like rank sweat, can’t walk properly, missed the afternoon dive, and have the embarrassment of ending a dive a lot faster than it should have. All because I went straight for a hard dive after all this time off.

But ya know what? I still enjoyed today. I feel much better; beat up for sure - but definitely better.

So there I was, reading this diving magazine and it was pretty cool. The adverts for dive computers were friggin HUGE wrist units with tonnes of display face. Like something off a sci-fi underwater movie. Oddly enough, these ads for BCD’s look like the simple rental ones in diveshops but they are touted as innovative. And the articles, they described a crapload of places in SE Asia with facinating pristine pictures and looking undisturbed completely. I was like YES! All these new cool dive spots and they’re all nearby! But something is off…

Whats this? An article about someone making an underwater IMAX movie? Who still does that? And that Sea Shepard guy, these people are actually supporting him? Daymn! Not even Green Peace will associate with him.

Halfway thru the magazine I recognize this place in Palawan but the article says its off limits. Hmmmm…. Pictures of remains on the cave floor underwater…hmmm…… Then I spot it, a picture of these people underwater conducting the survey - and this guys mask is the old fashioned round faceplate with the metal band holding the rubber skirt to it. WTF?!?! Thats some old skool shit they dont even sell anymore!

Ok, here’s an article about the University of Philippines placing some area offlimits to harvesting turtles … now I know something is wrong because there is no chance in hell of that actually having any worth. Its so retarded that no-one bothers posting stories like that anymore since they’ll be ignored anyway by fishermen.

Lets check something here - - -oh….. the magazine is 10 years old.