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Thread: Utila Rescue Diving Course - AND THEN THEY ALL DROWNED

  1. #1
    Senior Member Pod of Texas Seatan's Avatar
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    Utila Rescue Diving Course - AND THEN THEY ALL DROWNED

    Oh. My. God. I just finished my Rescue Diver certification to prep for my Divemaster/Instructor/Diveboat Mate course that starts in August. Two days of INSANITY. There were four of us in the course, five Divemasters in training, and an Instructor. Every fucking five minutes they would leap into the water all at once (usually while the Instructor was explaining something, aka when we were least prepared) screaming their lungs out that they couldn't swim and we would have to save them ALL. Then they would try to climb on top of us and drown us or rip our snorkels off our faces or drown each other, or ditch the buoy we gave them to "save their girlfriend" even though they "couldn't swim" or jump BACK into the water after we'd put them back on the dock. Then "Edith" and "Sally" kept going missing and we would have to search the sandy shallows and later the coral reef for them. Me and my partner's (teacher-me-and lifeguard-him) gal Editch only had possible brain damage (4-6 minutes), but the other team which consisted of two boys under 21 who had the reaction time of snails definitely left Sally with some brain damage when it took them almost 5 minutes just to get off the dock into the damn water. Sally and Edith weighed about 3 pounds each and strongly resembled weight belts.

    The first day was all surface rescues and I got so sunburnt on my hands and face that they are all swollen today. We spent over six hours on the surface practicing rescues and they all "drowned together" three times. Then the next day we were on the boat and they all "drowned together" four times. Then we had to do full "nonresponsive diver underwater" scenarios when the waves were MASSIVE. My guy had to "come back to life" as we were trying to pull him onto the boat for oxygen when a HUGE wave sent the boat straight for his head and I had to grab him by the back of the head, push forward and yell "JUST JUMP!" so his head wouldn't smack the stern. He was supposed to play dead again but just climbed into teh boat like "fuck no this ain't worthj dying for", haha. HORRIBLE waves. These times they all jumped in and acted like utter fools were ASIDE from the actual scenarios required by PADI. Plus there was the time that a serial killer somehow got into the gear room and slashed them all up (ketchup everywhere!) and tied them in weird positions with weight belts (the EFR scenario) and the "Hell Dive" where all at once they were doing crazy shit under water and we had to save them. One guy bound his feet with his weights and then just hung in the water. Another guy rode his BCD like a rocket, using the octopus purge valve to shoot him forward. And anytime you didn't have your snorkel or reg in your mouth on the surface and you got within arm's reach they climbed on your shoulders and tried to drown you (your "punishment" LOL).

    It was a FUCKING BLAST but I am so exhausted I can't even believe it. I have to admit, doing rescue in the crazy Caribbean with a bunch of twenty-somethings doing the weirdest shit ever is much more amusing than the courses at home where people just pretend to drown, minus the absolute insanity of screaming about how they are all high on cocaine and just did some meth and saw mutant mermaids and want to make love to sharks, not to mention the MANY weight belts-as-a -form-of-bondage situations.

    The very last time they jumped off the boat all the fun divers went, too, and four of us had to save ten people in enormous surf. Cray-zay.

    Did I mention I am sunburned? I reapplied sunscreen dozens of times, too! Thank God I was wearing a full wetsuit or I would really have been fucked! (Plus the other guys ended up hitting the fire coral growing on the dock when they had to haul themselves and another person up while I just got splinters, haha)
    Once upon a time I was known as Seavanna. Going by Seatan these days. I always wanted to be the high lord of underwater hell.

  2. #2
    Senior Member Chesapeake Pod Fun123joker's Avatar
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    i just imagine how these drowning people are like on dates
    Date: so what do you do?
    Drowner: i pretend im dead in water so armature divers can save me


    gif. from Free! Eternal summer ending
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  3. #3
    This sounds like a LOT of fun! But poor Edith, lol.

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