Special Dives

Southeastern Divers, Inc.

2720 Governors Drive SW, Huntsville Alabama 35805 - Phone: 256-536-8404

"Training the best divers in North Alabama since 1980."

Max Gilbert PADI IDC Staff Instructor

Special Dives

I’ve done a lot of dives, but looking back, there have been some dives that have really made my day. Some were dives when I was being trained, others were fun dives, and some were dives when I was in the water as a professional. Let me tell you about a few of them.

My first ever night dive was at Vortex Spring, in Ponce de Leon, Florida. Those of you who have been there know that it’s a great place to train or to stop off and rinse your gear in fresh water after a trip to the Gulf, but for pure fun, there are better places to go. It’s a basin, shaped just about like a big salad bowl, with some manmade structures in it that can be used for cavern training. I was there with my instructor, Rick Natividad, who was teaching a class to my friends, Abbott, Jason, Jun, and Robert. We had dived all day, and I had gotten a bee sting on the roof of my mouth. (Note: If you leave a Mountain Dew out on a picnic table, put the cap ON.) I had only done 10 dives or so and I was pretty nervous. As a new diver, Vortex seemed huge! At night, with all that inky dark around me, and eels, and coy, and fierce bream? I must have been crazy. We had the basin to ourselves as we slipped off the dock into the water. Rick was calm as can be but I was gulping air like a winded horse. We got down to the platform and I started getting hold of myself. Rick was there, I had two lights, and a marker light. I’d grown up around water so I knew there wasn’t anything in Vortex that could eat all of me. We started moving around, the scariness of the darkness faded away, and I was enthralled. To this day, night diving is one of my favorite ways to get wet.

Speaking of night dives, if you haven’t dove the Hilma Hooker at night, you’re missing one of the best dives that Bonaire has to offer. It was my very first trip to Bonaire, and since we were newbies, we hired a local dive master to take us on the dive. We swam out to the reef and descended with our lights on. After just a few kicks to the west, we started down a coral covered slope and then BAM! The 300’ wreck just appeared out of the blackness. We dove her from stem to stern, posed while Abbott shot some photos and then made our way back up the reef to the truck. Never mind the mosquitoes and no-see-ums, it was a fantastic dive.

From time to time, my dive buddy Abbot takes some surprising stuff into the water on our dives. On this particular dive, with me and Mary, he brought a magnifying glass. Like a lot of us, his eyes don’t read gauges and computers like they used to, so a little help comes in handy, I suppose. As we were diving along at Jeff Davis Memorial in Bonaire, we found a coral head about the size of a 55 gallon barrel. Mary and I swam on while Abbott stayed to take pictures. While he was snapping, he found an octopus nestled inside. Abbott whipped out his magnifying glass to get a closer look. Of course, the octopus was watching what was going on and wanted to get a closer look as well. When the magnifying glass got close enough, he reached out a tentacle and grabbed it. By the time Mary and I got back to the coral head, the octopus was curled up inside, wrapped around that magnifying glass. Only the handle and a red bungee tied to it were visible. We pulled and pulled and pulled, but that octopus wasn’t giving up its new toy. We finally ran low on gas and had to surface. Later, on the dock while waiting for an afternoon dive boat, I ran into another of the SDI travelers, Julia. She was giggling about finding a magnifying glass, and how she traded a broken snorkel to an octopus for it. I took her aside, told her the story, and let her know that she could keep the glass if she wanted, but no matter what, I wanted her to give Abbott a hard time for it. Last I heard of their discussion, Julia was saying, “I might give it to you and I might not, but if I do, you owe me a snorkel!”

Ask any dive instructor, assistant instructor, or dive master, which skill in the whole Open Water dive course gives the most trouble, and the answer will be unanimous. Mask Clearing. Quite often, there’s a student in our classes that just can’t get “inhale with your mouth, exhale with your nose” on the first try. The results of a mistake are very uncomfortable… a nose full of water. It takes some patience and diligence to get a student to clear a mask after that first snootful of H2O, but it eventually can be done. I had a student once who got the skill right on the first try in the pool, but between his pool sessions and his open water dives, he bought a new mask with a nose purge valve. Try as he might, he could not get that mask cleared. After he blew out through his nose, there was always enough water left in the nose pocket to give him trouble. I watched and watched him, and each time he tried to clear it, he got more frustrated. Finally, I asked him to give his mask to me, to see if I could clear it. Lo and behold! I couldn’t! I swam out of his view to try to figure out the trick, and here’s what I learned… Sure a nasal exhale while looking down would get most of the water, but there was always about half an ounce in the tippy part of the nose pocket. To get rid of that water, I had to purge the mask as if it didn’t have a valve. I showed him what to do, we dropped down to about 10’ and he nailed it! Perfect! He was so happy, he started shaking my hand and the next thing I knew, he had me in a bear hug! Helping someone overcome a personal obstacle is one of the intangible rewards of being a dive pro, and on that day it paid off huge!

If you’ve followed my columns for very long, you’ll know that I am a huge fan of continuing education. I’ve taken tons of dive courses, and will keep on learning as long as I can. Not all of the training has gone smoothly, however. In my trimix class, my instructor was “breaking” our gear to see how we’d deal with underwater problems. My broken gear was a missing fin. While I was hovering on a deco stop, that so-and-so stole one of my fins. I lost my ability to maintain trim, then I lost control of my buoyancy. I got rescued, much to my relief and embarrassment, but my instructor told me I’d have to endure the same malfunction the next day or not graduate the course. Talk about a sleepless night! I tossed and turned, and worried and fretted all night. I skipped breakfast the next day so I could have some peace and quiet to gear up. We started out over a platform at 30’. My fin came off, and I started sculling with my one remaining fin while letting the finless foot hang straight down. And there I was, hovering just right. Five minutes later, I got my fin back. The class and the instructors went on to do our last two dives to about 200’, and they went perfectly. We did a bit of exploration, and then ascended up the ascent line looking like a training video. I was breathing huge sighs of relief through my deco regs all the way up.

Occasionally, I learn something in the water that I never expected. A young man from Liberia taught me just such a lesson. Orlando is blind, but he came to Space Camp during Sci-Vis week with lots of other visually impaired students, and like sighted kids, he wound up in the Underwater Astronaut Trainer with me as his instructor. He listened carefully as I briefed all the dive skills he needed as thoroughly as possible. I told him how to remove and replace a regulator, recover a lost regulator, use an alternate air source, clear a mask, and remove and replace a mask. We knelt down on the training platform and he did the skills very well. I told him how to signal trouble, and I told him that I would ask him if he was OK by making a circle with my finger on his forearm. I told him to answer by holding his hand up and touching his index finger to his thumb. He wound up holding his hand over his head, and just pinching his finger to his thumb, but we were communicating the message… OK? OK! We started down the ladder to the bottom of the 24’ tank, and Orlando was doing fine. Once we were on the bottom, I stayed close, and guided his exploration of the trainer. He swept his hands over every little thing, and seemed to really enjoy himself. After half an hour or so, I brought him slowly up the ladder, and as soon as his head was above water, he was grinning ear to ear! I hadn’t expected him to perform the skills on the platform, much less get to the bottom of the tank, much less enjoy the dive. Was I ever wrong! Even though I taught Orlando to scuba dive that night, he showed me what a determined person can do with a little effort.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these descriptions of some of my favorite dive memories. Let’s go diving together and make some more!

See you soon ~ underwater!

max

Back to Top of Page

Best viewed with 1024 x 768 screen resolution. This page was last updated on 08/12/2014.