Do I look cold in the above picture? Because I am. I definitely am. That picture, fair readers, was taken less than 2 weeks ago while I was standing waist-deep in the Pacific. Yes, the ocean. It was November and I voluntarily submerged myself in the frigid water that is the ocean. What lead to this insanity? Well, read on and I shall tell you.Glen and I will be headed to the tropical, booze-infested paradise that is the Mayan Riviera in Mexico in...let me check the calendar...15 days. So in just over 2 weeks my husband and I will be oceanside, basking in some gorgeous sunny weather. But one cannot simply lie on the beach all day drinking umbrella drinks for an entire week, can they? Well, okay, they can, but why would you when there's a gorgeous ocean right there with tons of underwater beauty to enjoy if you could only, let's say, scuba dive? Oh yes, it was time. Time to finally get that plan in gear that I've had running around my skull for a few years. Time to literally take the plunge. So in October I signed Glen and I up for a PADI open water scuba certification course.
The course is designed so that once you're certified you can rent or buy gear and safely dive on your own if you choose to. I've been wanting to at least try diving for a few years-pretty much since I moved to the coast-and now seemed like a good time to finally do it. I pretty much forced Glen into the course by telling him if he didn't come with me I'd go by myself, which he knew was true. As it turns out, he's gotten very excited about diving and has already started planning dive vacations for us over the next several years. I may have created a monster.The classroom and written work was quite easy for us, and we managed to get through it without too much trouble. In addition to the classroom sessions we spent about an hour in a swimming pool on 5 separate days, learning the skills we would need once we actually started diving. The pool sessions were a bit frustrating at times, as the pool was nowhere near deep enough to really accommodate Glen and I. It's hard to have a regulator in your mouth and breathe through it when the top of your head is literally out of the water. But we did get through all the necessary material and became a little more comfortable breathing bottled air.
The open water ocean dives were where all the excitement happened. We had to complete 4 separate dives, during which we would practice the skills we learned in the pool. We did them over a weekend-2 on Saturday at Whytecliffe Park in East Vancouver, 2 on Sunday at Porteau Cove near Squamish.
The main difference for us between the pool and the ocean was visibility and temperature. Visibility in a pool is essentially limitless. You can see everything, everywhere. Visibility in the ocean is affected by the sand that gets kicked up from the bottom, the color of the water, and the sediments floating around in the water. It was a little disconcerting at times when you couldn't see for more than a few feet because someone had stirred up the sand (Glen!). Temperature was on a whole other level. The ocean is bloody cold to start with. But we did this in November. And holy crap was it cold! I had originally planned to just use the wetsuit rentals that came with the course, but after getting a bit chilly in the pool, I decided we needed the drysuit upgrades.
Wearing a drysuit is a bit like wearing a giant ziploc bag. It's airtight and waterproof. It's lovely 'cause you don't get wet. Or at least you're not supposed to, though my drysuit had a bit of a leak in the arse so my behind got a bit damp and chilly. The theory was that the more layers you wear, the warmer you'll be. It sorta worked, though at times we were still cold. Glen was wearing around 3 layers on top and bottom and he seemed to do all right. I had 4 layers on the bottom and 6 on top and I was still cold. But this is Sara the Human Popsicle we're talking about, so that's not really surprising. Normally when diving you wear a weight belt to keep you from floating to the surface. With a drysuit, because of the larger amount of excess air in your suit, you need heavier weights. And apparently if you're Sara, the standard amount won't work and you'll need even more weights. Like, 50 lbs of weight.
The thing with a drysuit is that it's not very easy to move in. It's suctioned to your skin because the pressure of the water has forced all the air out of it, and unless you've had it custom made, it's a little baggy in places. Thus they're not easy to move in. Well, add 50 lbs of weights, an air tank that probably weighs 30 lbs, and a BCD(buoyancy control device) jacket with various accoutrement (like a regulator), that maybe weighs another 15 lbs. Now strap that all to your body, somehow drag yourself to the water, and try to swim around in it. It looks a little funny. Now picture me trying to get out of the water with all that strapped to me. I swear that was the most difficult flight of stairs I've ever had to climb.
The other thing about diving in the cold ocean is that it seems once I hit the freezing water, the cold goes straight to my bladder and I suddenly have to pee. But I've got 95 lbs of gear strapped to me and I just got in the water. So I hold it. Unwise decision. After the first dive of the day, both Saturday and Sunday, I got out of the water and went straight for the outhouse. Now, I've had some satisfying pees in my life, but up to that point the most satisfying had been after holding it for 3 hours while paddling on Maligne Lake in July, as the snow came down thick and fast around us. Well we have a new number one! That's right, the Maligne Lake pee has been replaced! The new number one? The post first dive Sunday morning pee. I was literally in physical pain I had to go so bad. I was chanting to myself as I hurriedly went for the bathroom, "I will not pee in my drysuit, I will not pee in my drysuit". And I didn't. But it wasn't pretty. Remember the post-cryogenic pee in Austin Powers? It went something like that. But man, was it satisfying.
So what's it like to scuba dive, Sara? Well, my friends, it's interesting. I'm told that in time I will become more relaxed underwater, but in the meantime I found that I had to clamp down on the regulator so hard to keep it from slipping out of my mouth that my jaw was sore after diving. It's a little scary, admittedly, when you first slip below the surface of the water and realize that suddenly the air source that you've been using for 28 years is several meters above your head, and that if anything were to happen you'd have to cover that distance before you could breathe again. I often found myself repeating, "Don't panic, don't panic, don't panic", so that I didn't freak out and bolt for the surface. But once you actually get submerged and start paying attention to what's on the bottom rather than how far you are from the surface, it's not so bad.
Leaving the surface is sorta like that few seconds standing on the edge of the bungee platform before you go off. Or standing at the edge of a cliff while your climbing buddy belays you over the lip. Or those few seconds when you're standing on the landing gear of the plane before your tandem instructor shoves you into free fall. It's the hardest part, but once that's done, the rest is fairly easy.
The one thing that they require you to do in the course that I really hated was removing your mask underwater. Scuba masks cover your nose, so that you can equalize your ears with the water pressure and your eardrums don't burst. But it is possible that your mask will come off while diving, so you have to be able to put it back on underwater. Well, it's not fun, let me tell you. The water rushes up your nose when you take your mask off, which makes it rather difficult to breathe. We're taught our whole lives to breathe through our noses, so what do you do when your nose is filled with water and you have to breathe through your mouth? Concentrate. Again I had to remind myself not to panic. Confounding this problem was that I can't open my eyes underwater with my mask off for fear of losing my contact lenses. So I'm blind and I feel like I'm drowning. It was awesome. But now that I'm finished the course I need not do that again unless it's involuntary.
So now Glen and I are patiently awaiting the arrival of our fancy cards with our pictures on them, which will state that we at least theoretically know what we're doing when it comes to scuba diving. It's a completely unique experience to me thus far, and if you ever get the chance to try it I would highly recommend doing so. If you don't like it then at the very least you can say that you've tried. Which, in my humble opinion is the whole point of life.
