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Writer's pictureRichard Namikas

Sink or Swim

Since I first read the itinerary for the trip around the world, I knew that I had to get certified to dive in the Maldives, Seychelles, Caribbean, Tahiti, and other places that I had never even heard of. Well, I put it off for one reason or another for over a year, and tomorrow we fly out to meet our ship, Odyssey, in Belfast.

As fate would have it, the numerous delays that kept us from departing in May landed me back in Venice, Florida with a month to spend waiting for things to get ready for launching. The first week or so became a mission to help my brother, Eric, get much-needed medical care. With all serious business attended to and time on my hands, I could see no reason to put off my scuba certification any longer.

I contacted the Venice Dive Center (yes, I was living less than 10 miles from them for over thirty years) and asked about their dive classes. I was speaking to Sean, and he said that the next available group would be starting in just over six weeks. Would I like to reserve a spot? Shit! Procrastination can really be a pain in the ass. I guess that's why I usually try to get stuff done early and then relax. I explained that I had about ten days before I would be flying out for my adventure. It turned out that Sean was a dive instructor and that he could do a private class just for me. Unfortunately, the open water dive would be on Saturday, and I could not dive on one day and fly the next. Realizing that there are 24 hours in a day, I said that I would be flying at 8:25 PM on Sunday and would surely be out of the water before that on Saturday. With that cleared up, he asked when I could come down to get everything set up.

My brother and I were there within an hour, and I was filling out forms and reserving a spot on the boat for the next Friday (things got moved around on his schedule). We would be doing a beach dive on Thursday, and my two days of pool classes would be stuffed into one day on Monday, giving me the weekend to study everything I needed to know about scuba and pass the online test in order to be able to even put on the gear and get into the pool on Monday.

The class portion of the NAUI (National Association of Underwater Instructors) was no joke. I spent over eight hours in the course of the next couple of days watching videos, reading over a hundred pages of text, and doing dozens of quizzes before finishing the course and completing the 80-question test. I missed one question while reading a dive table for a three-dive plan, but since I needed 80% to pass, I was able to join Sean at the Venice YMCA for our first two portions of hands-on training.

I was back at the dive shop at 7:00 in the morning to get fitted for the 3mm wetsuit, regulator (mouthpiece and hoses), BC (Buoyancy Compensator), dive bag, and weights. I had found the mask, snorkel, and fins that were still in the bag in the garage that I had left behind at our home in Venice and brought them with me.

Sean put the tanks (cylinders) and his personal gear in the back of his truck and met me over at the Y. When we got there with our fifty pounds of gear each, the pool was in full motion. About twenty "young" ladies were doing pool aerobics at this end. There were four or five swimmers doing laps in lanes beyond them. No one was in the 12-foot deep center section of the pool yet. At the far end was a group of young children with three instructors getting first-time swimming lessons, jumping into the shallow end while their adult instructors stood waiting for them.

This was the area we chose for my first two qualification challenges. First, I had to demonstrate that I could swim 200 meters in any stroke. I had been swimming since I was a child (aside from that one episode of drowning when I was two years old, but that is another story), so that was no problem. Next, Sean said I had to swim nearly the 50-meter length of the pool underwater until I reached this black marker on the bottom. This was also something I was pretty good at, so I was comfortable as I started my swim underwater. My breath was getting short having just finished my surface swim as I approached what I saw as the indicated second-to-last black mark on the bottom and I stood up. I was pissed off when I saw two more marks beyond that one. Sean was patiently explaining the best breathing and relaxation techniques, thinking I had not been able to complete this requirement. He said that he would stand at the indicated line so that I would not miss it again. I listened, thanked him, and returned to the other end of the pool to make a second attempt. This time I let my heartbeat return to normal and relaxed a moment before starting out. I quickly, but calmly, swam to the indicated mark and past Sean and on another ten meters to the end of the pool where I turned and sat on the steps before raising my head above water. Sean said that there was more than one person who could not complete this requirement and never were able to get their scuba certification because of it.

From here, we moved to the vacant deep center of the pool to tread water for ten minutes. Again, this was very easy for me to do, but I could see that if a diver could not do this, they should not be getting certified for scuba. He had to be close enough to save his student in the event they started to flounder in the deep water. With time to pass, we chatted, and I changed positions a few times as we finished up the next of many things on the checklist he had dangling from a string.

Now the fun stuff: All the gear and book learning were going to turn into breathing underwater and not dying. Step by step, learn how to put everything together and make sure it is safe and ready. Learn how to check on your buddy. Repeated reminders of what to do and what not to do. First, in the shallow end with all our gear on, we made our way down the steps. This stuff was heavy! As you enter the water and add just a touch of air to the BC, there is no sensation of weight from all that stuff on your back and the 14 pounds of lead weights packed into the front of the BC vest. We practiced the use of the regulator, clearing the mask, and details of the BC before moving to the deep center of the pool.

In the deep part of the pool, we worked on the most critical skill of diving: buoyancy control. When you have it right, you are flying in the water. When you don't, you are either uncontrollably bobbing toward the top or sinking to the bottom. One of the problems is that your buoyancy changes with depth. As you go deeper, the pressure compresses all your gases, making you sink faster. As you start toward the surface, the gases expand, and you become more buoyant and rise faster (plus the air in your lungs expands and can burst if you stop breathing, so never stop breathing). The BC does the major adjustments, and your lungs can do the fine-tuning. Having good lung capacity and experience with snorkeling for years, I had it down to a very natural feel almost immediately. I occasionally had to fight with where the controls were on the BC and how the air shifted through the vest as I changed position in the water (air wants to float up), but I was definitely getting the feel of it.

Sean was happy with how I was progressing and my natural skills. On more than one occasion, he corrected and instructed me on the right way to do things and why it was done that way. We moved on to more difficult, but less frequently used skills. Things like taking off and putting on your gear while floating on the top of the water or while sitting on the bottom. Things like lifesaving and emergency procedures. You may never need the knowledge and skill, but if you ever do need it, the life you save might be your own, or your buddy's.

Four hours later, Sean and I were both smiling and ready to leave. Walking out of the pool, I was no longer weightless. Gravity was not my friend. Damn, this stuff was heavy again. My sun shirt had disappeared while we were in the pool, so I would have to find a new one before my shore dive on Thursday. The Gulf of Mexico was nearly 90 degrees, and there would be no wetsuit worn.

I met Sean at Venice Service Club Beach, and we put together our gear and strapped in for the walk from the parking lot through the boardwalk of picnic pavilions and down to the beach. He pointed out how to use landmarks for navigation due to movement from the wind and currents. There was a light offshore breeze, and the water was nearly 90 degrees when we arrived at where the lightly lapping water met the soft sand. We got into the water, and, with our BCDs inflated, we strapped on our fins and kicked out past the Venice Pier into deeper water (around 25 feet). At nearly every pause, there was some bit of instruction or diving wisdom that Sean shared with me. One of the most frequently repeated concepts was this: Enjoy diving. Relax and experience the time when you are free underwater. There were plenty of warnings built into the instructional information about every way that you can die doing this. Sean's training was so I could learn what I needed to know so that I could practice and become proficient to enjoy what was about to happen.

I held the pressure relief valve of the BCD above my head (air wants to float up) and let most of the air out of my vest. The visibility was not great because there had been some storms the night before, and we could not see the bottom until we were over halfway down. A little burst of air into my BC, and I was floating about three feet above the sandy bottom.  I started to follow Sean on our search for fossilized shark's teeth. Venice, Florida, is known as "The Shark's Tooth Capital of the World," and people come from all over to search for them both along the shore and on dive boats.

As we moved above the bottom searching for teeth, we were greeted by the occasional small fish and patches of sand dollars covering the sand in the thousands. Anywhere there was anything along the bottom, there would be life scurrying about it. Whether it was a lost crab pot or a small outcropping of coral, the fish did not seem to care. They just swirled around it and ducked in and out as large swimming animals, like us, came by. Sean's eye was well tuned to the teeth below us, and one by one, he grabbed and handed them to me, and I put them into my goodie bag attached to my BC.

When we got down to about 1500 psi (about 1/2 tank), Sean gave me a thumbs up. I responded with an OK sign, understanding that his signal was the sign to surface. Being careful not to ascend too quickly, I followed his lead as he watched the dive computer on his wrist for the proper rate of ascent. On the surface, we reviewed a bit of what we had seen and done, and I had now completed my first of four open water dives!

We went back down and soon found a large outcropping of coral, which surprised me. It was a hub of activity, and I hovered there a bit too long and had to do a couple of kicks with my fins to catch up with Sean. The next thing I knew, something long, thin, and black slipped over my right shoulder and across my chest. I was worried that a strap from my gear was coming loose, and I rolled over to look behind me and saw a three-foot-long black and white striped fish darting away and quickly returning. I tapped Sean on the calf and pointed. I got a calm sign from him, apparently thinking I was frightened. I gave him an OK, letting him know that I was cool and just wanted him to see the fish that had taken an interest in us.

Taking an interest was an understatement. For the rest of our dive, that darned fish was over, under, and all around us. It even tried to latch onto Sean for a free ride. The fish was a remora, and they are known for latching onto sharks with their Velcro-like connection on top of their heads.

When we got down to 500 psi, we surfaced closer to shore. Sean had been demonstrating underwater navigation using his compass, and we paddled along the surface with our vests inflated, making floating guaranteed. Standing up, gravity again made its presence known, and we trudged back to the parking lot with the promise of an early start the next morning.

Six o'clock in the morning, I got ready to go for my final dives of my certification. Gear was cleaned and packed in my dive bag. I gave myself an extra twenty minutes to get to the dive boat across town. Leaving in the dark, I backed out of my friend's driveway where I had been staying and the steering on my car started to groan. After making my second turn of the wheel, I knew that all power to the steering was gone. We had it worked on just a couple of months ago when we left the car with my brother. I was not going to miss my final dive. I was not going to miss getting certified.

About three miles up the road, I stopped at a gas station and popped the hood. By the light of my phone, I could see the power steering fluid reservoir was dry. I went inside and bought a bottle of power steering fluid and filled it and hoped. Hope is not a good strategy. Fortunately, I had driven a car without power steering in the past, and this was only a little worse. Besides, if I was going to be a driver, maybe my forearms should look like Popeye's.

The boat was at the dock with the dive tanks already mounted in the center. Sixteen tanks for eight divers. The sun was just rising, and it was a great day for a dive. Introductions. Instructions presented in the routine manner of flight attendant emergency evacuation presentations. Soon we were out of the No Wake Zone and moving from the brownish brackish waters of the bay and out into the bluer waters of the Gulf.

Ben Schultz was the shark's tooth expert on the Catalina Grace. Sean said that wherever he put the boat, there would be shark's teeth. Ben would spend half the time in the water than the rest of us would, and he would definitely bring up some teeth himself. Having already set up our gear, we were quick to sit on the bench and back into our BCDs to strap in and step to the back of the boat. Sean and I were the first into the water. We swam to the front of the boat and after discussing our dive plan, we let the air out of our BCDs and followed the anchor line down to the bottom. Sean had told me that sometimes the anchor will pull up some teeth and to check around it just in case. We checked. Nothing yet.

The freedom that I had flying along the bottom of the sea was both intoxicating and relaxing. I consciously tried to go through checklists of what I was supposed to be doing, and then I felt myself being sucked into the beauty of the experience. This was really what I wanted to be able to do. Unfortunately, the visibility was only about ten feet or so, and the seafloor was nothing dramatic or colorful. Back to why I was here. It was so that I could do this underwater flying safely in some of the most beautiful places in the world. It was nice. It was good. It was fun. We found a few more shark's teeth before the end of our first tank.

We returned to the Catalina Grace via underwater navigation and boarded to change tanks. Sean said I needed to empty out my collection bag because it was bad luck to have something in it going back into the water. One reason was that you would not find anything more due to bad luck. The second reason was that you would open your bag underwater and dump out the stuff you had already found due to bad luck.

The second tank was apparently the lucky tank. First, we had not one, but two, remoras come to mess with us. They both promptly left. Good luck number one. As we started to work our way back to the boat, Sean flipped up a big black rock nearly as big as my palm. It was a shark's tooth. Not just a shark's tooth, but a huge shark's tooth. Not just a huge tooth, but a megalodon tooth. The giant sea monster that lived here over two million years ago. He held it out to me, and I took it and looked at it. Amazing! I held it out to give it back to him. He had found it. He waved me off and indicated that it was now mine. A most excellent souvenir from my diving certification.

The rest was the formality of getting my butt out of the water and back onto the boat. I unhooked my gear and posed for a picture celebrating my new NAUI certification and the massive tooth the Shark Tooth Fairy had left me.

I thanked Sean, and we agreed to meet back at the dive shop after he set up the gear on the boat for the next group coming shortly. I hauled the heavy bag back to the car and drove the short distance back to the shop, cursing the steering as I went.

I offloaded the gear that belonged to Venice Dive Shop and went inside for the final paperwork to certify my qualification for open water diving. While I waited for Sean to return, I called the auto repair shop where my steering had been repaired two months before. We agreed that I would come by as soon as I finished what I was doing.

What was left was to record the details of my four dives (two each day) and enter that data into my diving logbook. Then, all the requirements were submitted to NAUI, and my certification was complete.

What was not complete was my power steering. Never think things are done. There will always be problems. It is what you do with those problems that will make the difference between being miserable and being inconvenienced. Having trustworthy professionals to help you does make this easier.

The repair shop was calling me as I was walking in their front door. They were ready to check it out. After a half hour, they told me that it needed a new part. The part was in town. The part would be delivered in fifteen minutes. It was repaired in another hour.

While I was waiting for the repair, I used the shop's WiFi to listen in on the video meeting about our three-and-a-half-year cruise. It had been repeatedly delayed, resulting in a number of new adventures over the course of the last two months. After listening to the meeting, I was left hoping that this problem would now be an inconvenience instead of making me miserable.

In either case, Dusty and I would be on a flight to join our ship in Belfast in two days.


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