It was bound to happen: today I had a lousy dive.
We got up following the daylight savings clock change with an extra hour of sleep, which should have set me up for a good day right there.
Problem was, it was windy. Windy as hell. The windsurfers and kitesurfers were thrilled, but it was not a great morning for diving.
Jack, the divemaster, and I set out for Islands at the same time as always. We geared up in the shop so we just had to walk from the jeep to the entry. We also managed to convince the driver to head straight onto the sand so we could make things even easier. In fact, we tried to convince him to drive out into the water so we could roll from the back of the jeep into (about six inches of rock-bottomed) water, but he wasn't buying it.
Turned out the entry was a lot tougher than I was expecting. We had to walk on the reef table (rock, no proper corals) for what felt like an eternity but was maybe 50 meters? 75 meters? I'm not sure. (Why do women always park so close to the curb ...?).
Imagine wearing your bikini, your full-body swimsuit, your full-body 3 mm wetsuit, a heavy aluminum tank, your buoyance compensator (with an extra 4 kgs of lead stuffed into the pockets). You've got one mask hooked over your left forearm, another mask clipped into your bc strap (because you're a moron and you're trying out a new mask), and two big fins in your right hand. You're trudging across schmutz-covered rocks that are about a foot and a half underwater - just out of sight, but far enough if you fall, you're falling onto rocks and not really water. It's hot as hell, there's a very stiff crossbreeze, and the whitecaps are strong enough to push you sideways onto the rocks on top of your metal cylinder. And imagine you're me - small, with the weight you're carrying representing a significant portion of your bodyweight.
And you're not even in the water yet.
We finally got to the proper entry point, which was a hole in the rocks that I could stretch my arms across. I tried to sit on the ledge and get my fins/mask on while being banged around by the surge, taking the occasional faceful of water. The divemaster slid into the water, made eye contact, and then dropped out of sight.
I knew I'd be making the entry from the crack into a small lagoon by swimming through a small rock tunnel. So I [fell] into the crack and attempted to submerge.
I couldn't get under the water.
I kept getting banged against the rocks, and since the water was so rough, I couldn't see anything - not the stone tunnel, and definitely not the divemaster I was supposed to be following.
At this point, I got upset. Which meant it was even harder for me to get underwater against the surge.
The divemaster reappeared and handed me another kg of lead, which I managed to get into my bc pocket without looking. Finally I was able to drop into the stone tunnel, where I was almost completely blind. I was getting thrown against the rocks, so I had to hold my hands out to stop myself. Touching your surroundings - especially underwater - is a very bad idea. But then again, so is cracking your head and drowning in 6 feet of water. Off to my right I caught a flicker of yellow - the divemaster's fin, disappearing into the murk. If she hadn't worn those yellow fins today, I would have lost her 30 seconds into the dive.
Fortunately the whole dive wasn't miserable. We saw three very large schools of juvenile barracuda, which came surprisingly close. At one point I crested a reef saddle and found a ball of barracuda waiting for me. I swam through them and nobody made any sudden moves, so everything was fine. That was very cool.
We also went through a huge section of coral that had been toppled sideways in an earthquake, creating a "labyrinth." The coral was very good on this dive - and would've been very colorful, if the visibility had been good enough (we eventually got about 10-12 m vis, which is not great but a hell of a lot better than the entry vis). I also had a startling encounter with a grouper - I'd been drifting along on my side, playing with a cleaner wrasse. When I faced forward again, BAM! There was a grouper right in my face, eyeing me with a what the hell are you doing? expression on its face.
The exit was more misery like the entry. At one point I had to stop and really look for the yellow fins, I was so blind in the murk.
We were totally wrung out by this dive, so we skipped an afternoon dive. The wind dropped a little, but I figured I'd rather dive another day (ie, tomorrow) rather than push it today while I was exhausted and displeased.
Maelesh. Insha'allah tomorrow will be better - maybe another trip back to Blue Hole.
Guess I'd better start praying for that whale shark again. Or maybe just for a windless last day.
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