Fast Boat
Today I went on the so-called “fast-boat”. It’s not really that much faster as we leave at 8am, half-an-hour before the regular boat, and return only an hour earlier. It is however taking a maximum of eight divers and a single divemaster, and therefore less crowded.
We went to Santa Rosa Wall, then Tormentos Reef. Both dives were great, with less eratic currents than yesterday. Our Divemaster was an expert naturalist, particularly good at picking out the small things in the sand: a couple of Jackknife fish (black and white stripes and a long dorsal fin) hiding in the coral reef, crab, spider shrimp, tiny flounders and larger ones. We also saw the usual baracudas and giant groupers and a very friendly large angelfish who was probably expecting some food from us. I also heard the dolphins again, but didn’t see them this time.
It was the first day of diving in a year for one of the divers on the boat, John. As he was setting up his equipment, his regulator started freeflowing (that is, it started delivering air continuously and forcefully making quite a loud noise). It happens sometimes when the diaphragm of the regulator gets stuck. John started fumbling with it, hitting it and shaking it violently with no effect. I grabbed it from him and put two fingers in front of the air out-take, unsticking the diaphragm and stopping the freeflow. John thanked me and added “I was just checking if it was still working. Haven´t used it in a year”. OK. Well, scuba diving equipment is life support equipment. Specifically, your life. It needs an annual maintenance check, because when you´re about to go on a dive is not the time to find that you should have maintained it. I could tell already that this guy was going to be fun, so I signed up to be his buddy (I need the practice to handle emergencies). Indeed, once we were in the water John had various problems. He wasn´t weighted properly and didn´t have good buoyancy control, so he kept floating up. At one point he started floating toward the surface out of control, which can be dangerous as this can cause decompression sickness or lung overexpansion injury, so I went after him, took control of his BCD and emptied all his air so he could go back down. It´s at this point I found out that his dive computer´s battery had run out, so he had no depth gauge nor a check on his dive profile (another no-no, and another reason why you´re supposed to have yearly maintenance on your equipment). Not long after he ran out of air and I had to escort him to the surface. He started ascending way too fast, and I motionned him to slow down but let him go as my computer was beeping requesting me to slow my ascent. First rule of the Divemaster: don´t put yourself in jeopardy because someone else is doing something stupid. I eventually caught up with him, stabilized him and did our safety stop together. My respect for Divemasters increase everyday now that I start seeing through their eyes.
I went to visit San Gervasio, a site of mayan ruins in the center of the island. Since around 100BC and as late as the 16th century, women from the Yucatan were expected to make a pilgrimage to the temple of Ixchel in San Gervasio at least once in their lifetime. Ixchel in the mayan pantheon was the goddess of midwifery, fertility, medicine and weaving. Iguanas now meander amongst several buildings, temples and roads that remain in the middle of the thick jungle. I spent most of my time running from mosquitoes, but several of them managed to bite me on my feet. As it turns out, malaria is endemic in Cozumel… Oh well.
Tonight a US Navy ship has moored in Cozumel, and it´s shore leave for the marines, along with the usual batallion of tourists from the cruise ships (five cruise ships stationned today). Although the marines are dressed in civilian clothes, they stick out. For one thing, there are very few drunk divers in Cozumel — alcohool and diving don´t mix, “Dont´t drink and dive” as the saying goes. For another, tourists are rarely travelling in band of four or five cropped hair young guys. A pack of them got a room next to mine. I hope they´ll be reasonably quiet and I´ll be able to sleep tonight. I have some diving to do tomorrow…
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