Adventure seekers abound. Sometimes they have great adventures, sometimes they’re met with disaster, such as the five members of the Titan who were sadly lost at sea trying recently to reach the ill-fated Titanic.
I’ve never been that adventurous and never will be, but I’ve definitely had adventures. One was to have been a simple dive trip. Trouble started soon after landing on Grand Cayman, British West Indies.
Palm fronds swayed overhead in the evening’s tropical breeze as I wheeled my luggage curbside at the tiny Cayman airport. Professional Association of Diving instructors greeted me with big hellos and helped me aboard the hotel shuttle bus. With a newlywed couple on the shuttle, conversations quickly degenerated into totaling the number of marriages for all onboard the bus. “Better to ask how many times I’ve been divorced,” I mumbled. Sports Diver Magazine editor, Ty Sawyer (who brought us all along for the trip) made it his campaign to torture me. I knew he’d be trouble.
My room, spacious with tiled floor (good for dropping wet gear), look out onto the sparkling turquoise Caribbean Sea. I was eager for the first dive.
At breakfast I paired with dive buddies, Michael Edwards (one of the Northern California troublemakers) and PADI instructor Marlene Thompson. It’d been a while since my last dive so I was happy to buddy with an instructor.
At the after-breakfast meeting the entire group of 60 was divided into teams; Purple, White, Red and Blue. Each day was to consist of a morning two-tank boat dive, afternoons of unlimited shore diving and evening of barbecues, dinners and tomfoolery.
Boarding one of the four dive boats, my team Blue consisted of the newlyweds, a female judge, and electrical physicist, a father and his 14-year-old son, a lesbian couple from Indiana who were dive shop owners and two guys from Kansas. Our dive master Jamie was one of the few American on-staff. Most were Brits and cute blue-eyed Welshmen.
The first dive was maximum depth 60 feet – to allow divers to acclimate. I followed my buddies down the mooring line and all was going perfectly; my ears were clear, my breathing was slow and the visibility was great – I could see to Cuba! Fish darted in and out of stag horn coral. Their neon blues and yellows, and pastel pinks and greens were mesmerizing. With my buddies taking the lead, we explored the coral reef at a Zen-like pace. Michael glanced over his shoulder and gave me the OK signal. I signaled back and then adjusted the air in my BC (the vest-like buoyancy compensator) to attain a better depth. Mistakenly, I hit the wrong button, inflating the BC instead of deflating it.
I shot to the surface!
Shocked and nervous about the effect on my body from the rocket ascent, I dove back below the surface, wondering if I should continue the dive. Dive master Jamie hand-signaled me to stay put at the decompression trapeze, which hung 15 feet below the boat. I did as ordered, embarrassed as hell and grateful I hadn’t been deeper, longer.
“We’re calling you Porsche,” he announced to everyone as he helped me on to the boat. “You went 60-to-0 in 2.3 seconds!”
“Where did you go?” hollered buddy Michael. “One instant you were waving like the Rose Bowl Queen, the next you were gone!”
So much for anonymity, pride, self-bravado.
The second dive was calmer. We swam with giant tarpon fish and flippered through a labyrinth of caves. Jamie and my dive buddies stuck to me like sucker fish.
Over the next few days, we dove walls and shallow reefs, saw giant purple fan coral, fire coral, pink waving anemones, tiny drum fish, hefty lobster, turtles and nurse sharks. We weathered a tropical storm that cancelled diving for two nights and a day.
On day six of the week-long trip, Bob Talbot, the internationally renowned marine photographer, dove with my buddies and me. Ever playful and seemingly forgetful, Talbot prepared his gear next to me. I watched in amazement as he put his BC onto his tank – upside down. Knowing that he had more than 10,000 dives under his weight belt, I started laughing. The great Bob Talbot – adorably human – made me promise that I’d never tell a soul.
What was a girl to do?…I promised, of course. But I have never been good at keeping husbands or secrets.
Lucy Llewellyn Byard is currently a columnist for the Record-Bee. To contact her, email lucywgtd@gmail.com
