The Scuba disaster

This is the beautiful beach we went to for diving.  I thought, "wow, this is so pretty I can't wait to see what lies beneath."  To think this is right on base, too and I never knew it.  The end of the rock is where you dive, so you have to swim out a bit.

We got our gear and went into the water.  The dive is out a ways so you have to swim to it.  No problem.  I've done that before.  The first problem was those rocks are covered in algae and slippery.  The second problem is it is pretty shallow for a ways out so swimming is difficult.  But the ground is not even because it is coral so you can't walk.

The next problem were these waves.  Trying to snorkel out became impossible because the waves would cover the snorkel and then you had a snorkel full of water.  Supposedly snorkels are designed to not have water get in them, but they are essentially an open tube so they can only do so much.  After having my snorkel fill up unexpectedly several times and inhaling water, I took it out and tried to time my breaths between waves.  That turned out even worse.  Face full of water.  My friend, as I coughed vigorously, said "don't worry about inhaling the water, there's plenty in the ocean."

This is a sea urchin, which is has poisonous spikes.  They were on the bottom of the shallow coral, which is another reason you didn't want to walk.  They were everywhere.

My friends invited me diving Saturday afternoon, which made me really happy because diving is fun.  So we rented what we needed and headed to Old Wives' Beach.  Cool, I thought, I'd never been there.  We go out and things are going wrong from the start, but don't worry, once you are under the water, everything will be fine.  And they were just minor annoyances, not real problems.  Well things took a turn for the worse when one of us said, "does anyone's skin feel like it's stinging?"  We were like, ummm, and I mentioned my hand stung a bit because I cut it to pieces on some coral on the way over the rocks.  No, that wasn't it.  Then I felt my skin start to sting.  Then everyone felt it.  Turns out there was an entire pod of very tiny jellyfish right before we reached our destination for diving.  Suddenly it's like we couldn't escape them!  They were everywhere, but they were tiny so we couldn't see them.  All we could see were their tentacles, a couple feel long, wrapped around our arms and faces and wherever else they reached.  They looked like thin hairs.  And you knew they were there because it felt like electric current burning your skin.  We abandoned our dive at this beach and headed for shore.  It was a long way back.  I ended up abandoning the swim part way in and taking my chances with the coral because we had drifted a bit to where it was even shallower and I kept hitting rocks.  When I say hitting rocks, I mean coral, which is sharp and I was bleeding from a lot of tiny scrapes.  My hand had the worst of it, but that happened early on.  I also had bloody knees and then ankles as I walked in.  Luckily the felt bottomed dive boots are great for coral.  So it wasn't so bad.  It was exhausting, though.  The waves would knock you over and then you had fifty pounds of scuba gear on your back and you had to get up.  Your balance is all wonky and I was tired.  I hadn't really eaten lunch and didn't sleep the night before due to my neighbor working on his truck at all hours of the night like he sometimes does.  So it was a tough journey back.  Not very difficult but difficult enough to be unpleasant.  I kept thinking that it wasn't so bad and I wasn't so tired but all I wanted to do was make it to shore and take the scuba pack off.  At one point I realized I didn't know where my friends were so I took a quick look and they were struggling just like I was but doing fine.  Then I felt bad that I had focused on myself getting to shore instead of thinking how they were doing.  But like I said, it wasn't too difficult, just enough.  Now I have red marks over my arms and neck from the stings and my hand hurts from a relatively deep cut.  We ended up diving a different beach and that went fine.