Karl plays with a local stray puppy that came to visit the bungalows
Today was the first big diving day. I had contacted a diving place, via email, from New Hampshire. Their outfit is located in Bouillante and they offer dives out by Ilet de Pigeon. We ate breakfast with everyone else and then loaded up our gear. I gave a heads up to Barry about the time we needed to leave. Barry got a ride with Susan and Naveed. The diving place is located just 300m south of the black sand beach we used last year.
Karl plays with a local stray puppy that came to visit the
bungalows
When we arrived at the dive place, it was a zoo. Lots of people were registering at the same time. There was also some confusion at the dive shop because we brought SSI papers; they are a PADI shop. I had asked Barb back in Merrimack to prepare PADI papers but she had still done generic SSI papers. One of the divers at the shop was also SSI certified and stepped forward to take our little group of four. His name was Bruno. It sounded as if they were going to send in our papers to PADI Europe. By luck, the boat was delayed a bit from a previous dive. As we waited for the boat to come to shore, the kids played on the cliffs by the water. There are all sorts of things near the water surface, including crabs.
 The ginger plant. You recover the roots from it. |
 You can squeeze the ginger "flower" and scented rainwater will come out in your hand. |
The diving boat is not that large; it takes perhaps 20 divers. It has a nice row of scuba tanks in the middle of the boat. By the time we got onto the boat, we ended up sitting on the deck in the sun. It was hot, but felt better as soon as the boat got moving. Bruno came over and talked to us about the dive. We went over the equipment they were lending us. We all got BCDs; the ladies had XS, I had M and Barry got L. Those sizes were a bit smaller than we had back in New Hampshire. As for bottles Isabella got one slightly smaller than us adults. The first stage looked different. Isabella and Barry got a singular first stage, while Lilly and I got a dual first stage. In the dual fitting, the safe second hung off the second valve. As for weights, I ended up with 4Kg, Barry with 5Kg, Lilly with 2Kg and Isabella had 2Kg. They were all in 1Kg weights. The bottles here are loaded with about 200 Bar of air (approx 3000 PSI). We had an air gauge mounted to the side, but the readout was in Bar.
As we talked things over, Bruno taught us the acronym BALLO, which stood for the initials of a checklist that each diver should perform. Ideally, each buddy should check his partner's gear. The B stood for Bouteille. The A for Aspiration. The L of Levre (sp?) and L for Largir (as in extend the weight belt) and O for Ok. We learned to mount our weight belt with buckle held in right hand so as to put the release in a predictable place. We also learned to not tie down the belt end, so that it would be easier to release in case of emergency.
Our morning dive was at the Aquarium area of Ilet de Pigeon. The exit was at the rear of the boat. We inflated our BCDs and just allowed our equipment to float on the surface, while we got fins on. Bruno taught us how to mount the equipment out in the water by just opening up the BCD, pointing the bottom of the bottle forward and then climbing up on it, sitting on the whole thing. You could then reach backwards to grab the BCD and strap it on. We swam around on the surface for a little while with the regulator in our mouth. We then descended down to about 3m using the BCD. Isabella had a hard time getting down and eventually aborted the dive with ear pains. We were not entirely sure how much of it was ear pain and how much was fear for the unknown and pain associated with getting salt water into her eyes. We did a few exercises under water such as removing masks, clearing the regulator, etc. We then swam around a little bit at rather shallow waters and just got used to managing the BCD. Our dive lasted 40 minutes and we stayed down at 7m (22ft) of depth. I consumed 90 bar of air. When we came back up Isabella was not too happy. After the dive we were offered a rum drink. Yum. We talked over Isabella's failed dive with Bruno and shuffled things around a little bit in the schedule so that she could retry again on Tuesday and still complete her certification before we leave.
We went back to shore, unloaded our gear and had a wrap up discussion with Bruno. We filled in our diving log books which was a bit tricky; understanding how to do that would merit a classroom lesson all by itself. We then walked over to the beach by Bouillante, which was only 10 minutes away. We sat down in the shade and ate our picnic. The kids went down to the beach and played in the waves. Isabella did not want to put on sun cream. We returned back to the boat area by 2:30 and got ready to load. As a preventive measure, I dressed up in my wet suit to protect my skin against the strong sun. I then just filled the inside of the wet suit with water from a hose. Very nice and cool. We met Bruno and loaded our gear onto the boat. After the boat took off from the shore, we had a briefing with Bruno. As with this morning, I acted as a translator for the group.
Erik and Isabella caught a crab by the cliffs. Here in
Erik's baseball cap.
This dive added a few more elements of complication. We were to exit the boat by jumping. That worked well. This dive was to take place in the Pool of Ilet de Pigeon. We started out by swimming a bit on the surface with the snorkel. We then descended down to the sandy bottom and did some more exercises. Once again we worked on mask clearings. We also did a mask removal that lasted for 1 minute. That was a bit tough. Lilly had to abort her attempt and go back to the surface, but was persuaded by Bruno to come back down and try again. And it worked the second time. I think she managed to suck down a bit of saltwater the first time. We then practiced "out of air" and how to share with your buddy. That also worked well. We then swam around in the area for a little while. This time we were down for 57 minutes. Towards the very end Bruno wanted to check that we had the right weights. So he purged each of our bottles (at depth) down to about 60 Bar, took us up to about 3 meter, removed a weight and tried to determine if we would be buoyant. Ideally you should be diving with as little weight as possible. But he was not able to remove any weight from any of us. We were colder when we came up. Perhaps some of this was caused by chilling down inside the wet suit above the surface with the water hose? I had consumed about 120 Bar of air which was good. Isabella had been snorkeling around the boat while we were down so she was in a bit better mood. We got some rum. Yum again. Lilly and Bruno could barely hold their cups because they were shivering so much. I offered to take over her cup, but she would not let go ..
Going back on the dive boat. Bruno is to the right of Lilly.
Barry to the far right.
We packed up our gear in the car. Susan and Naveed met us there. They had been staying at the beach during the day. The drive back home is about 30 minutes. We arrived at the bungalows at about 6:30. It was already getting dark. We prepared cous cous for dinner which was very nice. I had asked Jean Jacques if I could borrow their cous cousier and as I carried it over to Brigitte's bungalow I met Morgane. She looked at me and the cous cousier with petrified eyes and asked if we were going to have some more of that "soup" again. I reassured her we were not. The dinner was very nice