Tales from the Deep

Today I know exactly where I am. Boy is that a rarity these days. -15.38126° / 167.1947° After 36 hours of travel, I made it to Santo Island, Vanuatu, but my one checked bag did not. Oh well, someone once told me tan lines were overrated.  It is also hard to get a tan when you are in a wetsuit at 75+ feet.  I made an offhand wishful comment to my friends about doing some diving and they set up a divers paradise of multiple, serious, technical wreck dives every day.   I got in way over my head...

Divers log, day 3, Santo Island Vanuatu: I abandoned today's dive out of fear. Embarrassing, but true.   I was head-first swimming down and I realized where we were going was dark, cold, and way too deep. My heart was racing and my breath sounded like Darth Vader in my own ears. Visibility was low and I just couldn’t make myself go any further into the dark. Incapacitated with terror, I had to face the shame of everyone watch me shut down, flee to the surface, take some deep breaths and try to calm down.  Luckily I had a guide who stayed with me and encouraged me to take my time and reenter at my own pace while the rest of the group went on ahead.  I ended up relaxing enough to resume a modified dive and saw some marvelous things after my guide coaxed me inside large cargo holds at depths well beyond my comfort zone. So while I lost my one chance for “girl on girl” action (kissing the famous lady statue on the USS Coolidge), I was able to see a barber chair, a tank, a jeep, an entire infirmary, a tea set, and more things that I will probably ever be able to remember. I need to learn to trust my instincts, as my flashlight failed and if I had been on the original tour I would have been single file on one of the long, narrow, passageways inside the wreck where you have to navigate in tight quarters by flashlight through the rusty wreck.

Divers log, day 4, Saturday, Santo Island Vanuatu: I am terrified. The second planned dive for today is back down to the same wreck I aborted the decent on yesterday. This time we are going in AFTER DARK, follow the lead rope down to the deck of the ship (80 feet down), enter one of the cargo holds of the ship, swim down the hull the length of a football field, and then turn OFF our flashlights, sit in total darkness and see fish. This sounds like the very definition of insanity to me but my host/hostess are incredibly excited to be able to offer up this world-famous opportunity. They have already made plans and the entire crew is with us. Ug.

I suppose it isn’t really courage if it doesn’t cost you something. The verse from my daily devotional starts flashing through my mind: By faith Abraham... obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. (Hebrews 11:8) While my entire life this last few years has been an exercise in accepting God’s plan for me as a good plan, this seems like a bit of an extreme metaphor. At least it is better than yesterday’s verse about a shipwreck. Who picks these verses? 

The entire group can tell I am uncomfortable, including my friends, the crew, and the dive team. Everyone is excited and cheerful and then there is me, atypically quiet and slightly pensive in the corner huddled in a mass of cables, tank, weights and stuffed into a cold-wet-wetsuit with booties that were squishy, 2 sizes too big, and filled with gritty sand. My hair is tied up on top of my head in a fountain of curls so it isn’t caught in my mask or heaven-help me caught on some sharp rusty hook or attacked by a hair-eating fish. (Do you see where my mind goes?) 

The only people who have ever seen me this unsure of myself are the select few who have seen me naked literally or figuratively (in bed, a courtroom, hospital delivery room, or a double diamond bumps run). For the rest of the world, the tell-tale sign is very pronounced deep breathing and blue eyes the size of saucers. My friends offered up kind and plausible explanations... are you having trouble with your ears? “Nope. I’m just afraid.” Then they laughed as if I were teasing them. I didn’t laugh.  The dive masters ask us like cheerleaders in Australian/Pigeon English: “Alls ready have em GREAT NIGHT DIVE!? No worries mates, we only going down twenty “foive meeturs" ( yeah, ONLY 82 feet, into a rusty old wreck, at night, where there are 2000 earthquakes a year).” No problem.

The local Vanuatu dive guide...Tula, who comes up to my shoulder and has beautiful ebony skin, missing his front tooth (like my 7-year old Sophia, and yet.. not), and a fantastic afro that puts my hair to shame, comes up and puts one hand on my shoulder. He puts his other hand behind his back and comes back out with a perfect antique green glass Coca-Cola bottle. He has apparently watched me delight myself for the last few days dancing up and down the beach during dive stops, collecting shells and bits and pieces of these broken antique bottles that to me, tell a story.. . Isn’t it amazing if a shell isn’t absolutely perfect, no matter how gorgeous the shard, we reject it completely? (I bet there is a love-life analogy in here somewhere).  He gives it to me as a gift and holds his hand up in the divers OK sign with his hand and says “you do ‘em good diver, you see ‘em flashlight fish, you love”.  He repeats the divers OK sign and waits for me to do the same. I sigh, reply “OK” and then hope against hope that I don’t disappoint everybody. One of the guides comforts me by explaining it was not this company who lost a diver in the earthquake earlier this year. More deep breathing ensues. I sit in the corner and keep avoiding everyone’s gaze. I am afraid that if just one more person asks me if I am ok, I will bail before even starting. I am quietly going through the emergency checklist in my mind over and over and over again.

Thanks to my experience with the failed flashlight yesterday, Mara assigns everyone a buddy and we all have a plan on failed gear. My “buddy” is the second dive leader Adam. He makes a big point of telling me... “nothing to worry about, I will be with you the whole way. Just take it nice and slow. I am right here. I won’t let anything happen to you.” I just nod.

We all waddle like penguins along the reef to enter the water. It is awkward with heavy tanks on our backs and everyone is breathing heavy by the time we get deep enough to slip on fins and masks (now having progressed from penguins to walruses rolling about to get our fins on with the waves batting us about). Adam keeps giving me encouraging smiles and the divers OK sign. I dutifully respond OK. We descend. Here goes nothing... It is decided I am to be the last diver to enter the water, unfortunately, as many of you know, stage fright does not get easier with waiting... but I dutifully put my BC controller in the air and let the air out.  Does this position seem reminiscent of hanging oneself, or is it just me?.... I sink down into the inky depths feeling the cool water seep into my suit at my ankles, neck, and wrists. My hair starts waving like a warning flag on the top of my head.  I turn on my flashlight and ... interesting... (wait for it....) I wait... I breathe... (no panicking?? ) ok, lets go down a little deeper. I find some nice fish swimming, and Adam points out hidden treasures with the beam of his flashlight. 

 Yesterday going from perfectly good light into murky darkness seemed inconceivable (please pronounce in the princess bride vernacular “IN-con-THEE-vable”).  Starting in darkness it was easier to follow the beam of light down and onto the adventure in front of me. It was fun looking at everyone’s flashlight beams lighting up different things as they descended. then IT happened... The dive buddy pair in front of us started to act erratically. One of the divers started shaking her head and motioning frantically she wanted to return to the surface. Adam looks at me as if it is a group vomiting event. Once one starts.... like a virus in my household.. “where we go one, we go all”. As the rear dive guide, Adam has to rise to the surface with the other divers to see what is happening. As he motions for me to remain (BY MYSELF) on the bottom, I know he has recognized a flaw in the plan. I don’t have a dive buddy. I am alone, in the dark, at night, in the middle of the south pacific, using up my limited supply of oxygen.

SPOILER ALERT: I am still alive, did not die in the underwater earthquake in Vanuatu in 2014 and today am celebrated my oldest son's wedding, my step-son's 19th birthday, and my own wedding anniversary (I was a single mother and had not yet met my husband at the time of this adventure). If you would like to hear the rest of the story which got even scarier but provided some important live lessons, please click subscribe. Do you have a favorite place to dive or sail? Share it in comments! The playlist is the same as last weeks Backtrack playlist, but I have added a Youtube video of the Coolidge (not by me) for those who want to see more.

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