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Two Dives Forward, One Step Back

Written by Daniel Hienzsch
Saturday, 31 January 2009
Today I completed my Deep and Navigation dives toward my PADI Advanced Open Water certification. I had it all planned out... since I took a vacation day at work, I was going to go diving in the morning, then go home, rinse everything off, load up my camping gear in the truck and head to Cottonwood campground at Joshua Tree National Park. Deep Dive... Joshua Tree... it doesn't sound like I've screwed anything up does it. Leave it to me, I'll find a way... Relaxing Before the Dives It was particularly fantastic weather today. 80 degrees air temperature, high sixties at the surface of the Pacific, low sixties to high fifties at depth. There really wasn't any surf to speak of, just two to three foot rollers to make the beach entry/exit interesting. The instructors were running a little late, so after going around and saying hello to the fellow students and my dive buddy, I got my stuff laid out, then relaxed a little in the cab of my truck listening to some blues and letting my body soak up the sun shine. Soon enough, the instructors arrived and we got down to business. We held a briefing on the Deep dive at the top of the steps at Veteran's Park and went over what was going to happen. Essentially, swim out to the marker buoy, descend the rope line to about 35 feet, then swim due west into the Redondo Submarine Canyon until we reach a depth of around 90 feet where we will perform an excerise to see if we've become affected by nitrogen narcosis. Everything went according to plan except the Narc part... it wasn't happening for me. When I got to 85 feet, the instructor pointed at me and did the sign for "Take Your Fin Off and Put It Back On Again" and I did so... without apparent effort, without complication. No narcosis... depth with no rapture. We swam back along the sea bottom due west towards the shore to about 15 / 20 feet of depth and waited there for a while, swimming around and exploring a small bed of Sand Dollars. Then we gathered together, gave everyone the OK, and surfaced; no problems for anyone. A short surface swim back to the shore and a little bit of a roll and tumble through the rollers and we were all back on dry sand for our surface interval. Back up the steps to the parking lot... Vet's Park At the parking lot, we debriefed on the dive, the most important reminder being that those of us who go back into the surf to help the other divers on their beach exit, should keep our regulators in our mouths and breathe off of them while heaving and lifting the stragglers to safety. Then it was time to swap out tanks, drink some fresh water and have a snack. After about 45 minutes, it was time for the next briefing and the next dive. Swim out, drop to 25 feet, meet in groups of three per instructor and perform three navigation dives: out and back 25 kick cycles using natural navigation, reciprocal course for 20 kick cycles and a square pattern with 5 kick cycles per side. Considering that the visibility was only about 15 to 20 feet in the green water, there were no guarantees, especially on the natural navigation test. We got them all done successfully. We followed the contours of the sea bottom sand for our natural navigation, since there weren't any rocks or other landmarks to use, and the reciprocal and square pattern went off without a hitch. In fact, for both the recip and square pattern tests, we wound up directly back at the instructor... in 15 foot visibility. That's pretty cool. Deep Dive Reading Time for Surface Marker Buoy practice. I totally fumbled it; becase we were a crowded together and it was surgy, I tried to move back and out of the way so I wouldn't constantly jostle elbow to elbow with the others. Then I tried to make myself a little negatively buoyant so I'd settle on the sand and not have to try to do too many things at once. It didn't work out that way... first you grab your finger reel, then you knocked sideways by the surge, then you right yourself up... but you're getting kicked in the face by another student, so you swim up and try to move over, but you're in only 15' of water so you start to surface... so you try to dump air from your BC, but you have a finger reel in one hand and your pressure gauge in the other because you were just checking how much air you have... so you try to hold both the gauge and the reel in one hand, while fumbling for your BC deflator, etc, etc, etc. Stupidity on my part entirely. It wound up with me upside down, feet to the surface, with the surface marker buoy finally getting inflated and me almost letting go of the reel. Well, anyway, I DID get the buoy up then followed it's line to the surface and reeled it all back in. Then with everything tucked away on it's various clips and D-Rings, my buddy and I got permission to descend again and swim back to shore along the bottom. We saw a couple of halibut, a few crabs and the sand dollars, but not much else. Then it was back through the rollers... drop the fins, turn around, with my regulator in my mouth, and help drag some of the other students back onto shore. The instructors, Chris and Ashley, really did a good job, at least in my opinion. I knew exactly what I was doing, why I was doing it, and what to expect. I was completely comfortable the whole time, even when I was struggling with the surface marker buoy. Apres Dive Back up the stairs again to strip the gear down and try to rinse stuff off. A crew was working on the rinse showers the city has set up so we could only use one of the small foot rinsers. As I was walking back up the stairs with a scuba tank on my back and 20 pounds of lead strapped to my waist, I was thinking about how tired I felt and the burn I felt in my quadriceps. I thought it actually wasn't that bad, which is due entirely to the long hours of gym time I've been putting in. It certainly isn't anything like the 45th rep on the goddamn Smith Machine. I thought of how my legs would feel climbing Grand Teton; I thought of how hard these steps would be after having been to the Summit of Mount San Gorgonio in the previous 24 hours. I thought of how I happy I was that I'd completed a dive in January AND was going to be able to go camping. Then it hit me. I'd been diving: 85 feet for 23 minutes. Joshua Tree is at 4500 feet elevation. Not a terribly deep depth for not a long time, but certainly long enough. There was a risk for decompression sickness if I exceeded 1000' in elevation. I sure as hell wouldn't get on a plane right now, and that meant I wasn't going anywhere. It struck me that I'd just shot myself in the foot. I was bummed. No camping for me tonight. Fantastic View Maybe it's the surface marker buoy all over again... trying to do too much at once... preoccupied with many activites and losing a little bit of the big picture. I'm trying to avoid getting too philosophical here, because I'll wind up reading this tomorrow and cringing, but still. I really wanted to do these dives partly because it's part of the challenge, but also because I really enjoy it. I wanted to go camping because it's been a roller coaster of a week for me and I just wanted to go some place quiet and peaceful by myself to just chill out. I was hoping tonight I'd be able to take out the binoculars and a star chart, light a fire, put something mellow on the MP3 player, crack a beer and just... you know... whatever that's called. I know it's nothing to get upset over. Chilllll Winston. Ok... got that off my chest. Bottom line: I got my January dive in, so that's one month in the books. I now have three dives towards my Advanced Open Water certification: Deep, Nav and Night (I did the night back before Egypt as prep for Alexandria); just a couple more and I'll have completed my first challenge. If my dive computer lets me, I'll leave at 6AM tomorrow and get to Joshua Tree then. Tomorrow will be all good... and today was damn good too! And since it was a successful day, I think I'll allow myself a little celebration... Good, and Good For You
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 12 January 2010 )