Today we went diving at Waimanalo Bay. It went from a beautiful morning with choppy water to a rainy day with extremely unpleasant water. We started with navigation skills: go 25 meters one direction, turn 90 degrees, 25 meters, turn 90 degrees again, etc, until you make a square. I was really good at making the square, but going in a straight line one way and then turning around and going back to the spot you started at, I failed by 5 meters... But, some people did even worse than I did, so I'm not too worried.
After navigation skills, we did more rescue work. We worked on "extractions," which is a lovely way of saying carrying an unconscious (probably dead) diver out to the beach. First we practiced different ways of dragging them out on the beach--armpit drag, back-pack (that was my best one), fireman carry, and then there were many that involved at least one other person. The main lesson we learned today was: if you need to drag a body out of the water, it would be nice to have help...
Then we practiced rescuing our buddy from the sea bottom, taking them to the surface, swimming them to shore and extracting them--incorporating all the skills. It was exhausting, EXHAUSTING!! My buddy and I both told each other never to go unconscious while diving.
I swallowed so much sea water...it went up my nose, in my mouth--I was choking. It was tough. It made me think about this book I read as a kid, something about seven chinese brothers. One of them could hold the entire ocean in his mouth... Now that I think about it, it was kind of morbid. He held the ocean in his mouth because a boy wanted him to--the boy went to collect fish, and he went too far and the brother couldn't hold the ocean anymore...and the boy died. The emperor decided to put him to death, but each method he was going to use to kill him, one of the brothers is able to get around. One brother can't have his neck cut, one brother can't be burned, etc. Anyway, for some reason, I thought of this book--probably because I was oxygen deprived...
This is a fun video:
1 comment:
That's really scary! Please don't swallow the sea, please be careful!! I remember that book, The Seven Chinese Brothers. Yeah, they all got away in the end... I'm not really sure what the moral of the story's supposed to be. I remember always being annoyed with that kid who took advantage of the brother who swallowed the sea for him.
Love you, hope you're having a nice day. :)
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