Crossroads, dive 28

Dive: 28
Cayman Dive: 4
Date: 12/2/08
Site: Crossroads, South Side, Grand Cayman
Avg/Max Depth: 23/42
Temp: 79
TBT/CBT: 0:37/21:58
Buddies: Nick, Kristen, Curtis, Ted

Our second dive site for the day was Crossroads. It was to be our shallow dive. Jon let the 11 of us dive without him. Our instructions were to swim around the reef with a max depth of 40-50 feet for no longer than 40 minutes. Seemed simple enough. We decided to follow Curtis since he has the mad directional skillz. No dumbheadedness from me on this dive, I got in the water right away to make up for the previous dive.

This dive was a bit more relaxing than the last one for me. I prefer swimming over the reef to swimming on a wall. I like to look below me while I swim about, it’s a more natural position for my neck, and on a wall there’s not much to look at below. My camera battery was going dead and it was shutting off on me the entire dive, but I was determined to be patient and get good fish photos. Photos of the same types of coral gets monotonous after awhile. I think I did good, better than normal anyway, but not as good as Curtis.

On the way back to the boat, the videographer pointed out a giant lobster. I descended a bit to take a peek. That’s when my ear started to ache. For the remainder of the dive I tried to stay at 12 feet so it wouldn’t bother me.

Kristen and I were the first to board the boat. She was parched, and my ear was telling me it was time to wrap it up.

Slowly everyone filtered in… except for one guy. His wife came aboard, he apparently wasn’t ready to quit yet. We waited, and waited. They knew he was alright because they could see his bubbles swimming around the boat. It went from being humorous to quite irritating. I’m sure it had been at least 30 minutes since everyone else had boarded. After trying various attempts at getting his attention, Jon reluctantly took off his warm jacket (swoon), grabbed his mask and fins and moped to the back of the boat, hesitating before diving in. It only took a few seconds, Jon was back on the boat, looking disappointed to be wet, and the rogue diver climbed up after him. Apparently he thought we were supposed to swim around until we reached 500 psi. WTF? At every dive briefing I’ve ever had the divemaster has said come up with no less than 500. That’s like the danger line. Industry standard minimum. How could he misinterpret that? We’re all certified divers, I assume he learned the same basic safety principles as everyone else. And where was the little voice in his head that should have been saying, “I’m down here all alone, this isn’t right”? I felt bad for his wife, I’m pretty sure she was embarrassed by the whole situation.

At least it gave an ample opportunity to completely dry off before the windy boat trip back. It was still overcast, but the air felt warmer, especially being dry.