Barracuda…In Triplicate

One…

In the summer of 1992, my first (and second) husband and I remarried and for our second honeymoon went on a 7 day cruise to the Caribbean.  Our first stop was at a small island in the Bahamas where we snorkeled for the first time.

I recall during our short training session on the ship, the instructor telling us to be aware of barracudas and he flashed a large slide of this dangerous creature on the screen there in the showroom on the Fiesta Deck or Party Deck or something to that effect.  It made an impression to see a close up of those very large teeth.

During our first snorkel experience there in the Bahamas, we swam out from the shore, past the swimmers and further and further.  I was a little nervous, but I followed that husband of mine like a dutiful wife, certain he would protect me from any possible harm.  The water was lovely, clear and warm.  There was cloud cover and it was not too hot.  Nice.

I saw the ship looming in the distance like an island all on its own.  We headed in that direction out to a small protruding island that stood between the beach and the ship.  As we swam, enjoying the little fish that would swim up to say hello, I marveled at all of these pretty creatures swimming about, letting down my guard a bit and moving along gracefully.

As we reached the island and started to swim alongside it and heading out beyond, my husband tapped me on the shoulder and I looked over at him with my masked and snorkeled face and followed the line of sight where his finger was pointing.  There at about 60 feet or so below us was a glimmer of silver.

“Oh, pretty!” I thought as I focused in on this shiny swimming object.

Then I recognized that long thin body with this pointy nose as the barracuda it was.

I immediately went into fear mode and tried to jump out of the water, but of course there was nowhere to jump.  I stopped and flopped around in fear and motioned to my husband that it was time to turn around and head back.  He shook his head in dismay and reluctantly agreed.

Unscathed by this horrendous spawn of the devil, we made it back to the beach and I immediately hailed a Cabana Boy and ordered a Bahama Mama, and make it a double please.

Two…

We were in the oceans off of Borneo, my latest and greatest significant other.  It was late summer in 2006.  I was a relatively new SCUBA diver with just less than thirty dives under my belt.   We were in one of the most amazing dive places in the world, Sipadan, full of amazing underwater critters in great abundance.

During our stay there were two or three typhoons happening up North in the Philippines which had things pretty well stirred up down where we were so the visibility was not at it’s best.  During this particular dive, we started out with a nice big group of divers and somehow lost our way, ending up just the two of us.  We’d come across an area that appeared to be a resting place for numerous sharks.  As my eyes became accustom to the light down there, I could start to make out the shape of these sharks all over the bottom of the ocean there, I decided maybe we should head up to the surface and look for our boat and motioned to my dive buddy my desires.  He nodded and we started to ascend out of the murky depths heading towards the sunlight above.

As we rose, the waters above us seemed to go from murky to filled with shadow.  I decided perhaps clouds were obstructing the sunlight and gave it little thought.

As the shadow got closer and closer, it became larger and larger.  Suddenly we came out of the murk from below into a clearing in the water and there directly in front of us was a massive school of barracuda swimming in a huge swirl.

I stopped in mid-water and just watched, completely in awe, heart pounding, breath quickening.  The light from above shone upon this throng and lit up the water like a million diamonds.  It was a sight that would be ingrained in my mind forever.

Three…

January of 2008 and we were in Belize on a boat for seven days.  It was a nice time, with easy diving and pretty corals.  There were wonderful people on board with us from all over the US.

And this, THIS was my 100^th dive.  That’s a big deal in the world of diving.  My dive buddy always told me that once I hit 100 dives, it would all suddenly make sense, the buoyancy, the breathing and air consumption would settle in.  I would hit the “I’m truly comfortable” zone.

We were at Dolphin Pass for this dive, which seemed so appropriate to me having an incredible experience with dolphins during my first dive.  We had made plans to document this dive photographically using my camera and my writing board once we made it to the bottom.  We finished this documentation and moved on to enjoy our dive once the business part was out of the way.

We swam along, just the two of us, my dive buddy with his hundreds and hundreds of dives, and me following behind with my incredible 100 dives.  I was so very proud.  As we swam along, suddenly from the corner of my eye, I noticed a glistening of some sort right next to my face.  I quickly looked to the right and saw nothing.  I turned to face forward again and there directly in front of me was the biggest single barracuda I’d ever seen, stopped, teeth bared, looking at me out of the side of his head with one round fisheye.

I quickly halted and looked him in that eye.

We hung there for a matter of what was probably seconds but seemed like minutes before this magnificent fish took off again.  What a wonderful gift on my momentous dive.  A wave of satisfaction flowed through me as I took to swimming after my dive buddy once more.

I’d come a long way from that little snorkel trip oh so long ago.  A very long way.

My First Dive

I stepped up to the edge of the diving platform on the back of the boat.  I was the last diver to go in having stayed behind while observing the other four divers that went in before me.

I looked down into the dark blue water and took a deep breath.  And let it out.

I could do this.

I pumped a little air into my buoyancy vest, put my mask down over my eyes and nose, checking carefully to make sure my hair was out of the way and the back strap was nice and flat, put the regulator into my mouth, placed my hand over my regulator and mask and stepped forward with a giant stride off of the back of the boat, into thin air, falling quickly down several feet into the waters of the Red Sea.

My fins hit the waters first and I submerged under the surface, popping back up to rest on the top.  I quickly put my hand on my head, a signal that I was okay and looked up to the dive crew standing up on the back of the boat.  I pumped more air into my vest and tried to adjust to the fact that I was actually floating in open seawater with a tank of air on my back.  I looked around me for my friends and my dive instructor.  All were waiting patiently there at the surface for me, the novice.

My first dive.  Ever.

I bobbed in the water a little.   And looked around.   I could not remember what to do next.  My mind was blank.

I looked around at the others.  They looked so comfortable.

I was scared.  My fight or flight instincts kicked in to the secondary gear and I started to head to the ladder at the boat.  My instructor, Abduo, swam up to me.

“Where are you going!?”  he yelled at me in his Egyptian accent.

I stopped, swirled around in the water, and yelled, “I can’t do this! I just can’t!”

He grabbed my shoulders, both shoulders in his hands and looked me in the eyes.

“Yes you can!  We went over all of this last night and you are ready!”

I closed my eyes and shook my head, furiously.

He grabbed my head and I opened my eyes.

“We’re going.  Get ready,” he said softly.

He grabbed my regulator and put it gently into my mouth.   He took his two fingers on his hand pointing first at his eyes, then at mine and back again.

“Look at me.  Watch me.”  I understood.

He grabbed the inflator button on my BCD and depressed the button and the air slowly began to leave my vest and I started to submerge into the water.   As the water hit my face, and over the top of my head, I could feel my breathing start to speed up.  He kept his eyes locked with mine and softly shook his head side to side and exaggerated a slow and easy breath.  I began to slow as well.

We slowly descended into the water.  I took a short glance away from him into the expanse of the water around us.  The aqua blue, the hundreds of feet of visibility.  I couldn’t believe it.  I quickly looked back into his eyes.

He reminded me to clear my ears.  I grabbed my nose and cleared.  We kept descending.

I began to feel a slight pressure in my ears and tried to clear them without success.  I was almost elated.  I still had a chance to get out of this after all.  Ear problems happened.

I gave him the sign for “problem”, a back and forth wave of a flat hand and pointed to my ear.  He nodded and gently, slowly took me back up a few feet.

And the pain cleared.

I was still going to do this.

After what seemed and eternity we finally stopped.  He looked me in the eyes, took my shoulder and moved his body and face back and away from me, his right hand outstretched in a way that said, “Here it is, this is it, this is why we do this.”  And I looked out.

Just below us, a few feet down were the brilliant white sand of the bottom of the Red Sea.

Sunlight was streaming down from the surface that was about 40 to 50 feet above my head.  Streaming down to where we floated and lit up the most amazing array of corals of all colors, soft corals, and all about the corals swam hundreds of fish of all kinds.  I had no idea what anything was, but the colors, the sunlight.  I was amazed.

Beautiful.  So, so beautiful.

I turned to my instructor and met his gaze.  I smiled as best you can with a regulator in your mouth, my eyes wide, amazed.

I nodded my head to say, “yes, I get it.”

He gave me a nice regulator grin, pumped a little air into my vest to help stabilize my buoyancy.   He took my hand and place it on his arm and we started swimming, kicking our fins, moving forward.    Slowly, carefully.  He adjusted the air volume in my BCD as we moved along to go along with the changes in depth.  We swam along and he would point things out in every direction.

“I’m doing this,” I thought, “I’m really doing this.”  I could not stop smiling to myself.  Now I understood.  I knew, knew that there would never be anything to rival this experience.  I just couldn’t imagine anything better.

As we swam along, he pointed in front of us and there rising from the bottom of the sea up 20 or 30 feet was a rock formation I’d heard him call a pinnacle during the briefing.  I had to stop and try to take in the beauty of what stood before me.

The sun, beaming down from the surface through the brilliant blue green water onto this coral covered pinnacle, the colors were astounding, brilliant greens, pinks, reds.  All incredible plant-looking creatures moving in the water gently swaying.  And amidst all the beauty, all around this pinnacle swam hundreds of bright orange little fish, sunlit from above.

We began swimming toward it, coming close to it and the fish.  I reached my hand out and the fish moved slightly to one side or another.  Swimming through the school, surrounded by them, looking closely at the coral on the pinnacle, close-up, seeing the opening and closing of the tips of some of them.  I could not believe this was truly here, right in front of me.   As we continued to swim forward, I had to turn my head back to watch, not wanting to lose the sight of this, wanting to hold on to it.  Trying to capture every detail in my mind.

Once we’d past it, we continued along, close to the bottom of the sea.  I was getting comfortable, relaxed, taking it all in.  Abduo still had my hand on his arm, keeping me steady and lifted from the bottom so as not to stir the sand or injure any coral.

I noticed him turn his head away from me and he seemed to be looking up.  He suddenly took his arm and pointed up to the surface of the sea.   My eyes followed the direction his hand pointed and there, oh my heavens, there…

I nearly stopped breathing.

At the surface, brilliantly lit by the sun, was a pod of dolphins.  Dolphins!  There were about seven of them all in a group about 40 feet above my head.

Dolphins.

Dolphins.

I watched them, craning my neck towards the surface, watching them there, swimming.  I noticed that next to one of them was a baby, just along side, swimming close.  Classic.  Amazing.

As I watched, to my amazement, this pod of dolphins began to swim in a downward sloping direction towards us.  Gently, slowly, curving, downward.  I watched every move, every move.  All of them together as one.

Suddenly, down to our level, about 30 feet away to the right of where we hovered they all stopped as one and hovered there as one where they’d stopped.

I knew my breathing had quickened.  I tried to slow it down.  I could not believe what my eyes were seeing.  I looked at Abduo and it was clear he could not believe it either.

This was not something that happened every day.  I smiled.

As I watched the pod of dolphins there, one of the dolphins, I found out later was probably a sentry, left the pod and started to swim towards us.

My eyes widened.  What?  He was getting closer and closer.  I didn’t know what to do.  I looked at Abduo and he took his hand and gave me a “be calm and stay put” motion.

I turned back to find that the sentry dolphin was right there, close to me.  Right there in front of me.  Right there.  His face about three feet from my own.

He looked me in the eye.  In the eye and held my gaze.  I could see every detail of his face.  He looked like he was smiling.

I took a quick glance at Abduo, he was shaking his head in amazement.

I looked back.  The dolphin looked at me for a second longer and swam forward, slowly, slowly, just a little further up as if to give me the opportunity to take in the glorious contours of his entire body.  His tail, his fin, his flippers, all of it.  The sleek pearl gray beauty of his side.

If I’d been brave enough to reach out, I could have touched him.  But I didn’t.  I just took it all in.

He hovered there for a few moments, he looked back at me with his eyes again and then took off and swam away from us back to the pod.

We watched as he returned to the others and they all, as a group began to swim back up to the surface and away and they were gone.

Abduo and I looked at each other and just shook our heads.  I know I was shaking I was so excited.

Abduo reached over and check my air gauge.  I was getting close to the 700 pound mark.  He gave me the sign that it was time to begin our descent and prepare for our three minute safety stop fifteen feet from the surface of the water.

We hung there, suspended in the water for three minutes.  The other divers were there with us.

When the time had elapsed, we all headed up the last 15 feet to the surface slowly, moving no faster than our bubbles and reaching my hand up as I’d been taught so that my fingertips would be the first thing to break the surface, announcing my arrival to anyone there above the surface.  As we popped up and inflated our BCD’s, we all took the regulators out of our mouths and started talking at once.

All of these divers I was with had 500 or more dives under their belts and not one, not ONE had ever experienced anything like this ever.

I smiled, comfortable in the water, no longer afraid.

It was then I knew that this was my new home.

(This is a photograph of two of the dolphins from the pod.  It was taken by Janet Crumb, who was along with us on the dive.)

Making My Way Back To Happy (In Parts) Part 2

Same Day, 11:01 p.m. Cozumel Time

And the saga continues.  I’m in my room.  I made it here and I’m still alive.

Okay, I must give credit where credit is due.  I must thank He-Who-Shall-Remain-Nameless for everything he taught me, regardless of how he taught me.  Without the experience and knowledge, I’m not sure I would have survived some of the tests of today with the integrity and finesse that I did.

The flight went without incident, although I must make it a rule that if I want a window seat, I must refrain from drinking coffee right before the flight.  I sat next to a young Asian couple who were grossly involved in each other, and I hated to disturb them, so the usual, dinner came, had to go, couldn’t get out, etc.

Landed in Cancun on time, a four hour flight.  No problems, little turbulence.

I went through immigration with no problems.  Got my bags with no problems.  My dive bag is difficult to maneuver, obvious to me why it was on sale.  But I get it figured out okay.  As I was on my way out of the airport, they x-rayed the bags again, and stopped me.  The first man said to me, “Do you have anything to declare?”  I said no I didn’t.  The second man took my dive bag as I was trying to hook it up to my suitcase.  I thought he was trying to be helpful.  He asked me if I was carrying fresh fruit.  I said no.  He said do you have apples with you?  I said no.  He said you are sure you have no fresh fruit.  I said, yes, I’m sure.

He threw the bag up on a table and opened my bag.  Okay, I thought, go ahead.

He pulled out the can of Pork and Beans I’d brought for Tim and, what the hell is her name???  He stared intently at the label.  I asked if it was okay?  He said yes, looked through my bag some more, and then zipped it up.

Wild.

Once he was done with me, I had to try to hook my bags up again.  I was feeling quite foolish, but didn’t care what people thought.  I was on my own, and who cares.

Got them hooked up and headed out of the airport.  Stopped at the currency exchange booth.  When I’d left home, it was about 30 something degrees.  I had on a long sleeve shirt and my travel pants. When I got to Cancun, it was about 80 degrees, and with all the exertion of dealing with my luggage, I was sweating profusely.  My hair was sticking to my face.  As I approached the woman in the exchange booth, I said hello and how are you, in Spanish.  She assumed that I spoke Spanish and started rattling off something that I had no idea?  I tried to guess, in English, told her I spoke poquito Spanish and she shrugged.  I handed her a couple of twenties and proceeded to put away my jacket and play with my luggage some more.  She handed me my pesos and receipt through the little tray at  the bottom of the plexiglas window.  I said Gracias and moved on.

Got to find a shuttle, that was my biggest worry on this trip.  Getting a shuttle to Playa del Carmen for the ferry.  I stopped at the first booth called Green Line and the woman said she could get me a ride to Playa del Carmen for $30.  Okay, sign me up.  She then said it would be 25 minutes until the next shuttle.  I asked if there was another shuttle service?  She asked the woman next to her if she had any shuttles.  “No tengo,” don’t have, was her answer.  Okay, sign me up.  As I was pulling out my $30, she said, well, if there is no one else to ride in 25 minutes, then you will have to pay another $30 and we can take you in a taxi, okay?  What could I say?  No other shuttles?  I didn’t see a choice and it was getting late.

A man walked up, took my shuttle ticket out of my hand and grabbed my suitcases and we headed out of the last part of the airport.  We walked down the sidewalk, past lines of people, and tour guides with their signs waiting for groups.  He dropped my luggage next to a light pole and said wait here.  They will pick you up here, 25 minutes.  He handed me my ticket back and I handed him a dollar.  He stared at it as if it were foreign, (which it was), said a reluctant gracias and headed off.

And there I stood.  Watching as other shuttles and taxis filled up and left.  I waited.  A man who was wearing a shirt that said “Transportation” on it came up to me and said “Two Minutes”.  I saw that he had escorted a group of three people to stand there at the curb.  And after some creative eavesdropping realized they too were waiting for a Greenline Shuttle.  Two of them were a man and his daughter that I had taken notice of at LAX  while waiting for our plane.  The other man seemed nice enough and was talking with them.  Eventually they were all herded over in my direction with all of their luggage., putting them in the primero place.  Then three more showed up behind me.  A woman about my age and two girls, about 16 or so I guessed.  They asked the man how long and he said “Two Minutes”.  I smiled.

I decided I was too tired to play the “Hi, how are you and where are you from” game so I stood there in silence and ignored all of them.

I listened to the Transportation Man as he talked on his walkie talkie.  He had a worried look on his face and was speaking Spanish.  I could get the gist of what he was saying, that he had too many people, and too much luggage .

Eventually a shuttle showed up and he started putting people on it and talking to the driver in Spanish.  They started loading all of our luggage into the van, and talking to each other in Spanish.   I listened.  The woman and two youngsters go on first.   Then the father and daughter.  The man who was by himself and I found ourselves standing waiting for direction.  I tried to be friendly and make some sort of joke or gesture and he acted as though I might possibly have the plague.  The Transportation man said something to us both that I understood was that we were going on a different van.  The man by himself, got upset and confused and the Transp. Man told us to get in the van.  There were three seats.  Man and daughter in first one, second one empty, third one, woman and two youngsters.

I got on and popped into the second seat.  The man by himself wedged himself into a small side seat in the front row.  Fine, fuck you, I thought.

We drove around the parking lot to a different parking lot, all of about a minute and a half, and the shuttle parked.  The man by himself got confused and had no idea what was going on.  The man and his daughter, well, the daughter said, do we get out here too?  I said, no, we are going to Playa, you are not.  And then I was quiet and got out of the shuttle, walked over to the other shuttle and made sure my luggage was on it.  The man by himself followed me over to the other shuttle, realizing that maybe I wasn’t so plaguish after all and tried to be friends..  I wasn’t having it and left him to fend for himself.  I got on the new shuttle next to a young man and young woman.  The man by himself got into the back row sitting with two young women.  There were two Mexican gentlemen sitting quietly in the front row.

And off we went.  The sun was going down, the sky was full of incredible pink clouds and then it was dark.

I sat and listened to the young man and woman next to me and the man by himself and the young woman next to him, to their various conversations.  When the first young woman started talking about how much better she was than her sister, and the man by himself was asking the woman next to him what it was like to live in Spain, I’d had enough.  I pulled out my iPod and put on Lady Gaga and tried not to sing out loud.

Making My Way Back To Happy (In Parts) Part 1

WARNING:  The “f” word is used in this post once.

In November of 2009, I took my first trip by myself after a very difficult time.  I went diving in Cozumel, Mexico.  This is my diary, if you will, of my experiences.  I’ll be posting it in parts as I get them completed and polished, a little.  I didn’t want to overdo the polishing as I didn’t want to lose the feel I had at the time I wrote it.

Hope you enjoy.

Making My Way Back To Happy… (also How Denise Got Her Groove Back)

Wed, November 25, 2009, 8:31 a.m.

I did it.

I made the plans, I paid the costs, I got myself here to the airport, went through the lines, security, all of it, by myself.  And now I sit here at the gate and wait.

This has been a frustrating, nerve-wracking, all encompassing, emotional journey just to get to the point today.  I know he didn’t believe me.  I know a lot of people didn’t believe I would actually do it.

But fuck ‘em.  I did it.

I sit here, watching all the people who are waiting.  This is one of the biggest travel days in the US, but not for the Mexican airlines.  The lines were small and quick.  Easy.  As the shuttlebus traveled past the US terminals, I saw the lines going on forever.  People going home to spend the holiday with their loved ones.

My loved ones are either gone or otherwise engaged with others.  It’s just me.

That’s okay for now.

The last six months have been brutal.  The worst in my long life.  I’ve had emotional times before, but never like this.  I almost didn’t make it through this one.  The reality and futility of existence was overwhelming.

And now?  Now, I still don’t know.  I’m lonely, afraid, frustrated, unsure.  All of those things.  I hope I can get in the water during this thing.  I have to.  I just have to.  I need it .

I suspect this will be rambling until I figure out what I really want this to be about.  There are so many ways to go.  It may just be that I’ll have to pop out bits and pieces and post them in different sites.  Right now the emotional element is huge.

I like being just me.  I like not having him here.  He wasn’t really that nice anyway.  When I think of the look on his face the other day as he approached me at the store.  I was on the phone, looked him in the eye.  He’d done the turnabout move again.  I love that Lisa just happened by at that moment.  The distraction was perfect.  I wonder what he would have spewed this time.  I realized that there is nothing he can say that I have any interest in.  At all.  I can’t even stand to look at his face.

That helps my sanity.  I’m done.  And that’s good.

The crowds are starting to show up now.  It’s getting close to boarding time.  Just less than an hour to take off.  I can do this.

It’s interesting that so many countries have free public internet access, but here, in our capitalist society, it’s about making a buck.  I need to spend less time on the internet anyway.   It works for me.

I’m going to shut down the computer now and just watch.  Must save the battery.

OH!  And my luggage was underweight.  Yay for me.

Riding the Storm

We were in the Philippines.  It was not only my second dive trip but also my second trip to a country other than the US in my life.

I had five dives under my belt going in to the trip, four of them were certification dives, all five done in Egypt just two months prior.

It was a 10 day trip.  It was a little scary for me at first, but with 3 to 4 dives a day and diving with well-seasoned divers, more than happy to critique and criticize, my diving skills increased with every dive.

Somewhere about the middle of those 10 days, one of our group members, Stu, started tracking the weather on the internet.  “There’s a storm building in the Pacific”, he said.

It’s just a storm, I thought.  It’ll blow right over.  I didn’t pay any attention for a couple of days.

After a morning dive on this particular day, I walked by the computer room and saw him sitting at the computer and stopped by to see what he was looking at.

“It’s gotten bigger and it’s heading our way.  It qualifies as a typhoon now.  According to reports, it will probably be here sometime late tonight.  It’s a level 4.”

Typhoon?  Level 4?  What’s a level 4?  How many levels are there?  Should I be worried?  The questions all started rushing out.  What do you mean 100 mile per hour winds?  Can people survive in that kind of wind?  What will happen?  Should I call my kids?  Do we go in a basement?

Having grown up all of my life in the Mojave Desert, the prospect of a hurricane, or in this case a typhoon was as foreign to me as speaking Tagalog.

“Hey, don’t worry about it.  It’ll probably die down when it gets closer to land and probably miss us altogether.”

Probably?  Am I supposed to feel better?

Well, it was still nice weather where we were.  A few clouds maybe, and a little breeze, but not stormy by any means.

There were two more dives scheduled for that afternoon.  I tracked down Jack, my dive buddy who doubled as my boyfriend to run it past him.

“There’s a big storm maybe coming our way?  Stu said probably sometime tonight?  Are they still going to dive?”

“Sure, of course we are.  It’s no big deal.  It’ll calm down when it hits land.  You’ll barely notice the breeze.”

That sounded familiar.  Both were educated men with what sounded like great information that surely was backed by years of experience in these matters.  Okay, I’ll go with the flow.

So, I prepared for the first afternoon dive.

I carried my gear to the dive shop at the prearranged time.  I saw Jack talking to one of the dive guides.  As I walked up they stopped talking.

“What’s up?” I asked, trying to sound positive.

“Nothing,” Jack said calmly, putting his hand on my arm,  “just deciding on the boat we’re going out on.  We’re going to take the bigger one for this dive.  Go ahead and get ready.  We’re heading out soon.”

“A bigger boat?  But why?”

“Don’t worry about it, get ready.”

Have been soundly dismissed I set about preparing.  Making sure my equipment was all there, air in the tank, etc. and watched as the dive crew carried equipment out to the boat.  I noticed a few of the members of our group milling around the area, not in dive attire, not swimsuits or trunks, but in shirts and shorts.

I didn’t ask.  I wanted to, but I didn’t.  I rationalized, thinking “well, they are older, maybe they are tired and had enough diving this morning.”

I got on the boat.  We had a small group of six, not our usual group.  We all found our places on the long wooden boat, everyone making sure all of their equipment was on the boat, putting on our dive skins, rubbing defogger on the inside of our masks.  I watched the boatman as he steered the boat through the water.  He was watching the horizon, and seem to be looking a bit nervous.  We came to the dive spot and he stopped the boat.  We were all ready.  We put our masks in place, our regulators into our mouths, scooted our butts back over the edge of the boat, securing our masks and regulators with our hands and, one, two, three, we all fell backwards into the water.

We all descended in the usual slow manner, following our dive guide, Rudy, along under the water, looking for fish and critters and such.  It was all still so new to me, that everything was a surprise and amazing.  I kept careful watch of my buoyancy, making sure not to touch anything.  Rudy had been adamant about teaching me all of the dangers in the underwater environment there.

I also kept a close eye on my air.  Being a new diver, I had a tendency to “eat up” my air and was always the first one to make the “low on air” sign to the guide, cutting everyone’s dive short.

However, this particular dive, our guide was giving us the “level off and get ready to go up” sign.  I looked at my pressure gauge and I still had a considerable amount of air left.  But the dive guide is the boss.  We all prepared for our ascension, floating at the 15 foot level for the required three minutes for our safety stop.

As one by one we reached our three minutes, we started to head up to the surface.   I looked up, watching my bubbles, careful to rise no faster than they did.  As I looked up to surface, I could see drops of rain hitting on the topside and the water looked a little rougher than when we had gone in.

I looked over at my dive buddy.  He could see the concern in my face.  He stayed close to me as we neared the surface.

I broke the surface and my head popped up out of the water.  I filled my buoyancy vest and looked around.

The sky was filled with dark angry-looking clouds, the rain was coming down in buckets and the surface of the water was churning with wave after wave.  I thought we had come up close to the boat, but it was now at least a 100 feet from where Jack and I were floating.  It was bobbing up and down like crazy, end to end. I could see that some of the divers had come up next to the boat and were performing a ballet of timing and expertise, trying to get their tanks and themselves up and into the boat.

How could I possibly do that?  I was too new and too inexperienced.  I started to get nervous.

First things first, though, I was going to have to get to the boat.

I looked around, expecting to find Jack close by and was surprised to find that he had been carried a huge distance away.  I could barely see the top of his head over the waves.

Don’t panic, I thought.  We are safe, we are fine, we are floating, they will get us.

I took a deep breath through my regulator and relaxed as best I could, floating with the waves, trying to take in the experience, keeping an eye on Jack.  It made no sense to try to reach him.  The boat would get to one of us first.

The other divers were safely on the boat and I could see the boatman look first in Jack’s direction and then to mine.  Everyone knew that I was new and inexperienced.  It was no secret.  He made a decision and headed in my direction.

As they got slowly motored closer to me, the dive guide yelled to me, “Grab the rope on the side of the boat!”  I looked and saw what he was referring to.  There was a rope that went around the boat, hanging down, attached at the front and on the sides.  I bobbed in the water hoping to get in rhythm with the waves and the boat so I could reach the rope.   I grabbed at it and took hold with both hands.  At that moment, the boat hit a wave and nearly pulled me up out of the water.  I held on as tight as I could and tried to ride with the boat.  I was going to have to get in a better position.  But this was not the time.  Rudy yelled over the side of the boat,  ”Hang on, we have to get to Jack.”  I yelled okay and held on as tight as I could as the boatman started moving the boat in the direction I’d last seen that bobbing head of his.  I spotted him, relieved he hadn’t drifted off any farther, and even seemed to have gotten closer.  We pulled up alongside him and I put out my hand grabbing him and pulling him to the rope.  We both hung on to the rope, bobbing with the boat.  We seemed to have hit a slightly calmer spot in the water, at least for the moment.

The other divers yelled to us to remove our weights, and we handed them up, followed by our tanks and fins.  No small task while trying to hang on to the rope at the same time, but we managed.  As we hung there, trying to follow the rope around the boat to get to the small ladder on the other side, the waves started to kick up again.  I tightened my grip as the boat started to buck up and down.  Philip had started around the front of the boat, heading to the other side.  My feet felt so small without the fins on them.  I hung onto the rope and maneuvered myself putting each of my feet up against the side of the boat, let go of my fear and just went along for the ride.

The rush of riding the waves on the side of this boat in the waters of the Philippines during the arrival of a typhoon was incredible!   Me!  I was doing this!  This small town girl, who never ventured out much farther than the grocery story, was doing THIS.

Rudy yelled over the side of the boat to me that Jack was onboard and to head around.  I grabbed the rope and hand over hand as quickly as I could make it around the front of the boat to the other side and grabbed the ladder.   Two members of our dive crew grabbed my arms and pulled me up and over the side of the boat.  All were in and all were safe.

The boatman put the boat in gear and headed back toward the resort.

I sat on the side of the boat, hanging on, watching the sky and feeling the wind and the rain on my face as the boat raced back towards the lagoon in front of the resort.  I had survived.  I had made it.

And this was just the beginning of the storm, what they call the eyewall.  The worst was yet to come.