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.

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