The dolphins were skimming along beside us, easily keeping up with our small craft as they surfed on our wake. Three of them, four of them, I wasn’t sure as they seemed to be everywhere at once, disappearing below the surface for minutes at a time before reappearing on the other side of the bow, laughing at their game. Sailors have long considered dolphins to be an omen of good luck and sitting on the roof of the cabin, washed by sun and sea spray, I decided they were proof the next three days would be fabulous experience I had always imagined it would be. I was, as usual, hopelessly wrong.
I had arrived in Townsville, Australia a few days before and as I had planned many months before while still in Britain, set about signing up for a scuba diving course. Taking a diving course while on the Great Barrier Reef is just something every world traveler does, like getting ripped off in Bangkok, or sick in Jakarta and I was no exception. There were various outfits all offering variations on the theme, but the essential elements were the same. You’d spent a couple of days learning theory in a classroom setting, then putting it into practice in a swimming pool. Then you would board a luxury cruiser to sail some sixty miles off the coast and complete your training on the Barrier Reef itself. It sounded awesome.
The classroom stuff was something of a chore as the weather was hot and close. However, in the afternoons we headed over to the outdoor public pool where we joined the local retirees, each one a charming shade of tobacco, and learned how to enter and exit the water, use the gear correctly and practice rescue operations. It was easy enough even for Ryan, a Canadian guy who’d signed up for the course, completed the compulsory medical and passed all the other required tests without revealing that he couldn’t swim. We were pumped, we were ready; it was time – bring on the open sea.
Bright and ugly the next morning, we met at the dock where we were not really surprised to learn that our home for the next 3 days was not the luxury cruiser portrayed on the brochures, but a tiny, rusting tub. We had barely left harbor when the sea began to pick up and my classmates who had chosen to retire below decks were already experiencing the joys of mal-de-mer. I, on the other hand, was atop the cabin roof, loving every minute. My happiness lasted right up to the time we strapped on our scuba gear and began our first dive in open water.
When you scuba dive, you’re equipped with a stubby snorkel so you can swim along the surface with your face submerged, viewing the ocean deep via your facemask. You expel the water from the snorkel with a short, sharp blow, which is easy enough in a swimming pool, but with waves slopping into the tube every few seconds, I was inhaling more water than I was expelling. Sea water in the lungs doesn’t assist in aerobic activity and even with flippers, swimming against this current was disturbingly difficult. With each expedition, I was becoming feeling increasingly tired, nauseous and feverish.
Below the surface, things were much pleasanter even though the visibility was only about one quarter what we should have enjoyed. Many of the psychedelic fish and brilliantly colored coral were lost in the murk. Some of us saw a shark, others saw a turtle and we all saw a sea cucumber which is a remarkably dull looking creature, something similar to a gherkin. If we’d spent the whole dive course actually diving, I would have been a lot happier. Sadly, for the first two days, we were still divers in training, which meant the bulk of our time was spent on the surface. Fighting the waves, fighting the current, fighting fatigue and inhaling water. It was horrible.
There were arguments, such as when one diver “borrowed” the prescription glass mask of another without asking; reprimands, such as when two Swiss boys surfaced some two hundred yards off target during a compass navigation section and a near drowning when yours truly was swept away by the current while wrestling with his buoyancy belt buckle which had a lead weight jammed hard against it.
Each dive was more of an ordeal than the last and I’m convinced I lowered the level of the Pacific Ocean a good 2 or 3 inches due to my intake of saltwater. Finally the training was complete and we were free to dive on our own, without an instructor to hold our hands. Only problem was; with the storm showing signs of increasing violence, none of us had any real desire to enter the water.
Eventually our captain announced that qualified divers or no, our voyage was over and we were heading for home. Nobody was particularly sorry about that, but the bad news was, there would be no riding on the roof of the cabin this time. Due to the severity of the weather, we were all sentenced to spend the return journey below decks in our bunks; the last place on earth I wished to be. I’d been assigned a bunk at the sharp end, positively the worst place to be in inclement weather.
If I had thought the nights had been rough, it was nothing compared to the rodeo ride of the return trip. For seven hours we bounced, we bucked, we dipped and we dived as my stomach did summersaults and my throat was rasped raw by the diesel fumes. Distinctly below par before we started, by the time we finally made port I was battered, bruised and never happier to reach terra-firma.
We’d all made plans to meet up in a local bar for a post-course celebration. I’m not sure how many of the team made it; I certainly didn’t. In fact, it was all I could do to totter home from the docks to my hostel and once there, even a simple task like lying on my bed proved to be quite demanding. It was a good week before I felt healthy again and although this took place well over a decade ago, I’ve never felt any real urge to try scuba diving again.
Still, I can at least claim I’ve dived on the Great Barrier Reef and when people exclaim “Wow! I bet that was an experience.” I can smile enigmatically and reply “Yes. Yes it was.”
I had arrived in Townsville, Australia a few days before and as I had planned many months before while still in Britain, set about signing up for a scuba diving course. Taking a diving course while on the Great Barrier Reef is just something every world traveler does, like getting ripped off in Bangkok, or sick in Jakarta and I was no exception. There were various outfits all offering variations on the theme, but the essential elements were the same. You’d spent a couple of days learning theory in a classroom setting, then putting it into practice in a swimming pool. Then you would board a luxury cruiser to sail some sixty miles off the coast and complete your training on the Barrier Reef itself. It sounded awesome.
The classroom stuff was something of a chore as the weather was hot and close. However, in the afternoons we headed over to the outdoor public pool where we joined the local retirees, each one a charming shade of tobacco, and learned how to enter and exit the water, use the gear correctly and practice rescue operations. It was easy enough even for Ryan, a Canadian guy who’d signed up for the course, completed the compulsory medical and passed all the other required tests without revealing that he couldn’t swim. We were pumped, we were ready; it was time – bring on the open sea.
Bright and ugly the next morning, we met at the dock where we were not really surprised to learn that our home for the next 3 days was not the luxury cruiser portrayed on the brochures, but a tiny, rusting tub. We had barely left harbor when the sea began to pick up and my classmates who had chosen to retire below decks were already experiencing the joys of mal-de-mer. I, on the other hand, was atop the cabin roof, loving every minute. My happiness lasted right up to the time we strapped on our scuba gear and began our first dive in open water.
When you scuba dive, you’re equipped with a stubby snorkel so you can swim along the surface with your face submerged, viewing the ocean deep via your facemask. You expel the water from the snorkel with a short, sharp blow, which is easy enough in a swimming pool, but with waves slopping into the tube every few seconds, I was inhaling more water than I was expelling. Sea water in the lungs doesn’t assist in aerobic activity and even with flippers, swimming against this current was disturbingly difficult. With each expedition, I was becoming feeling increasingly tired, nauseous and feverish.
Below the surface, things were much pleasanter even though the visibility was only about one quarter what we should have enjoyed. Many of the psychedelic fish and brilliantly colored coral were lost in the murk. Some of us saw a shark, others saw a turtle and we all saw a sea cucumber which is a remarkably dull looking creature, something similar to a gherkin. If we’d spent the whole dive course actually diving, I would have been a lot happier. Sadly, for the first two days, we were still divers in training, which meant the bulk of our time was spent on the surface. Fighting the waves, fighting the current, fighting fatigue and inhaling water. It was horrible.
There were arguments, such as when one diver “borrowed” the prescription glass mask of another without asking; reprimands, such as when two Swiss boys surfaced some two hundred yards off target during a compass navigation section and a near drowning when yours truly was swept away by the current while wrestling with his buoyancy belt buckle which had a lead weight jammed hard against it.
Each dive was more of an ordeal than the last and I’m convinced I lowered the level of the Pacific Ocean a good 2 or 3 inches due to my intake of saltwater. Finally the training was complete and we were free to dive on our own, without an instructor to hold our hands. Only problem was; with the storm showing signs of increasing violence, none of us had any real desire to enter the water.
Eventually our captain announced that qualified divers or no, our voyage was over and we were heading for home. Nobody was particularly sorry about that, but the bad news was, there would be no riding on the roof of the cabin this time. Due to the severity of the weather, we were all sentenced to spend the return journey below decks in our bunks; the last place on earth I wished to be. I’d been assigned a bunk at the sharp end, positively the worst place to be in inclement weather.
If I had thought the nights had been rough, it was nothing compared to the rodeo ride of the return trip. For seven hours we bounced, we bucked, we dipped and we dived as my stomach did summersaults and my throat was rasped raw by the diesel fumes. Distinctly below par before we started, by the time we finally made port I was battered, bruised and never happier to reach terra-firma.
We’d all made plans to meet up in a local bar for a post-course celebration. I’m not sure how many of the team made it; I certainly didn’t. In fact, it was all I could do to totter home from the docks to my hostel and once there, even a simple task like lying on my bed proved to be quite demanding. It was a good week before I felt healthy again and although this took place well over a decade ago, I’ve never felt any real urge to try scuba diving again.
Still, I can at least claim I’ve dived on the Great Barrier Reef and when people exclaim “Wow! I bet that was an experience.” I can smile enigmatically and reply “Yes. Yes it was.”
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