Jillapalooza

IM IN UR OCEAN. EATIN UR CARDZ.

Advanced Course Dives, Esmeralda & San Pedro Canyon

Dives 8 and 9

Today marked the beginning of Nick and my journey to become advanced divers. We got to the dive shop a little before 9 am with Curtis and Kristen, who were going to do a two tank local dive.

Our instructor, Sylvan, met us at the dive shop shortly after nine. He told us due to some large swells that we would be joining the diving group going out in the big boat instead of going in his little boat. I think he might have thrown around the term “choppy” a couple of times. We rejoined C & K, as well as some other divers, in the big boat and we were on our way. Now, there are big waves, and then there are big waves, but these were big friggin’ waves. I’m talking waves that were bigger than the boat itself. For the first few waves I thought for sure it would just come right over the top of us and wash us all out.

We got to the first dive site where we would be doing our deep dive. Because of the swells Sylvan told us to enter the water by a backward roll and to descend immediately to calmer waters. I must say I really appreciate the guys who get everything all hooked up and strap it to me, all the while holding me securely into the boat.

First time entering the water backwards and… it worked out well. I descended to find Nick and we waited for Sylvan to come find us. We descended quickly. The ocean water is so clear that I was surprised to look at my depth gauge and see that we were at 80 feet. It doesn’t seem any different than 20, other than the lack of color. Once we got to 100 feet we played tic-tac-toe on a waterproof slate in order to test if we were suffering from any nitrogen narcosis. Nick beat me the first time, but I shut him out for a draw the second. The drawing of the “O” felt a bit sluggish, but I think it was from just being underwater and not necessarily any sort of narcosis kicking in. After 8 minutes at 100′ we ascended to 60′ to lengthen our dive. We just swam around and looked at the reef and all the fishes. During our 15′ safety stop I started feeling a little dizzy. I guess it was from the surface waves, although I didn’t feel like I was moving around any. when we got to the surface the motion sickness started kicking in for Nick and I. Once on the boat the waves were miserable. I kept my eyes on the horizon while Nick laid down. After 10 minutes or so the other group surfaced and we headed to shore for a surface interval.

We stopped at a different dive shop closer to town. Nick and I filled out our dive logs and Sylvan showed us how to use the wheel to find our ending pressure group, since technically our dive was a multilevel dive. After an hour we boarded the boat and were back off. This time our dive site was only a 3 minute ride and the waves weren’t as bad, but still big. We also had a couple more people along. One guy was taking his 3rd checkout dive with Sylvan at the same time we were doing our drift dive.

We descended after the first group again and the four of us met up at about 30 feet. Sylvan tested the new guy on his required skills and after that we were off. Having the other guy along was pretty entertaining as he didn’t quite have his buoyancy under control, and at one point he got too close to Sylvan and they kept getting all entwined together. It was irritating at the same time, because now I had two people who kept bumping into me, so I tried to keep a safe distance behind the two of them.

The dive wasn’t much of a drift dive as the surge was pretty strong, so it wasn’t as relaxing as I thought it would be. We kept criss crossing with the other diving group. Kristen should have taken the advanced class with us since we were basically doing the same dive. Apparently she didn’t want to give PADI any more of her money ;). It was a lot more of the same stuff as the first dive except the visibility wasn’t as good. It was still fun though. Toward the end of the dive we met up with the other group again. Felipe was their guide again, and he had brought some fish food with. On the ocean floor there was a pile of nurse sharks eating it from his BC which he removed and let lay on the bottom. It was kind of eerie at first, seeing all these sharks eating and a BC with no diver inside. Sylvan motioned for me to come down, I emptied my BC and knelt on the ocean floor. He grabbed a shark and pulled it near us, then motioned for me to touch it. It felt so neat. It really was rough like sand paper. And dense, not squishy like the rays. Then Felipe grabbed a shark and started man handling it. He flipped it upside down and I got to rub it’s tender under belly, which was silky smooth. I didn’t have my camera with, but Curtis got some good pics and video. We had to cut out before the other group, as we were nearing our time limit due to the residual nitrogen from our first dive. When we did our safety stop Sylvan had us hold onto a buoy rope. It made me a bit less dizzy than the first dives stop, but it took awhile to get adjusted to the way the rope whipped us around when the waves would come. Fortunately the other group wasn’t very far behind us so we didn’t have to spend any unnecessarily long time on the boat waiting.

Once we got back to the dive shop Sylvan gave us our “homework” assignment and told us to read the chapters on AWARE Fish Identification and Multilevel Diving. Tomorrow we’ll be back at the dive shop at 9 am for those two dives and the navigation dive!!

Hol Chan & Shark Ray Alley

Dive 7

Hol Chan was my first dive in Belize as well as my first salt water dive. Curtis, Kristen, Nick and I boarded the boat at 9am. Our dive master, Felipe, was our boat driver and guide for the morning. After a short 8 minute boat ride we arrived at Hol Chan, a local reef. Felipe gave us a quick briefing of the area, as well as hand signs for different aquatic life we may see such as nurse sharks, turtles, rays and barracudas. I was getting ready to enter the water when Felipe told me he was having trouble with my regulator hose leaking. He told me it would be fine as long as I kept an eye on my gauge and asked me if I was comfortable with it. I told him I was alright with it, but when he opened the air tank there was a super loud constant whooooshing noise. The expression on my face must have changed drastically because he immediately said we were swapping regs. After a quick swap I was in the water. I should have checked my BC first because it wasn’t inflating and I was kicking like crazy not to sink like a rock. And through my struggles I hear Curtis muttering “jilly… look… boat… shark.” I tried looking for it, but I was concentrating too hard not to sink the whole 6′ to the bottom. I swam closer to the boat and Felipe made a few quicky adjustments (apparently his reg doesn’t hook well to most BCs) and after that we were on our way.

We saw lots of schools of fish swimming about and hovering in the coral. There were tons of horse eyed jacks, silver fish with giant horse like eyes. Felipe was a great guide, searching for things of interest for us to look at like hidden eels, sand dwelling creatures, marine life hiding in shells and crab skeletons. He pointed out a tiny baby black and white fish that was less than an inch long. It looked similar to an angel fish. The water was so clear it didn’t even look like we were 30′ down. There were snorkelers on the surface and it was neat to see them from a different perspective.

It was also the first time I got to try out my new MiniReef digital diving camera. It worked out really well, much better than a disposable. The pictures turned out real well while I was holding still, but with the current it was hard to hold the same spot. Especially since most of my subjects were moving and I didn’t have time to get my buoyancy under control. And I think I might have been slightly overweighted as well.

I didn’t even notice we were ascending until we were back in the grassy 6′ water. Then there it was. The nurse shark was back. He was just a little guy, maybe 3 feet long, and I don’t think my picture turned out well because he was too far away. Then we spotted a ray floating around at a distance, as well as a turtle. Soon we were back on the boat and on our way to Shark Ray Alley for a bit of snorkeling.

At Shark Ray Alley Kristen and I were the first in the water and there was a huge shark right below us. The water was only about 8 feet deep, so he was pretty close. He didn’t seem to like our presence much because he swam off right away, but not before I got a great pic. One of the boats there had food for the fish. Of course there were more horse eyed jacks. There were a few rays and one of them was huge. There were a few nurse sharks too. Curtis and Nick touched the shark and said it felt like sandpaper. I petted a ray, it was squishy and slimy feeling. We snorkeled there for a while and I was having just a heck of a time getting my mask to seal on my face. It kept flooding, then my eyes would get all stingy, then my mask became permafogged. But even with the mask issues it was well worth it to be swimming with sharks :bigsmile:

**CHECK BACK SOON FOR PHOTOS**

Fun Dive #1

Dive 6

Woo-hoo, my first official “Fun Dive”!! Curtis, Kristen and I headed up to Brainerd to participate in the Fun Dive yesterday. Kristen and I used our free fun dive coupons, saving us about $80 each. We went to Shangri-La in Alstead. At first I was kind of disappointed to hear we were going there since W. Alstead is where our first checkout dives were, and there really wasn’t anything to look at other than the platform.

I don’t know how many divers went in total, but there was a caravan of two MSD vans and about 6 other vehicles en route to the site. Tim (red-headed-ponytail-guy-who-fixes-stuff-at-MSD) joined the 3 of us for the dive. Shangri-La proved to be really neat. There were lots of trees. Visibility was only about 25′, so when we were down at 40+ I looked up and it appeared as though the trees went on forever. There was also an old car down there. I’m not sure what it was, but it looked like your typical late ’80s 4 door sedan. A Hot Topic bumper sticker was stuck on the dash and was in really good condition, leading me to believe someone stuck it there. Curtis said there was a beer bottle on the floor of it… perhaps that is why it is in the bottom of the mine?

The only downside was that the water was friggin’ freezing. Not to say it has necessarily been warm since I started this endeavor two weeks ago. But the previous times the water would slowly seep into the wetsuit and I would be slightly chilled, then after a few seconds it would warm up and be quite comfortable. This time the water was downright cold. The first half of the dive wasn’t too bad, but the second half was very uncomfortable. The thermocline was at… oh, let’s say 0 feet. I learned later the surface temp was 52°, whereas my previous dives have been around 62°. One of my toes went numb and it took about 30 minutes to restore feeling to it. Kristen had purple lips. Actually she had a purple line around her lips and the centers were all pink so it looked like she was rocking the thick plum lip liner look.

Although I’m sad Nick couldn’t attend, we were the last group out of the water with no one running out of air right away. We estimated our max depth at around 45′ for about 45 minutes, putting us in the pressure group S, which is a definite record setter for Kristen and me. Since I’m pretty sure I won’t be diving in MN until the spring, I’m eagerly looking forward to our trip to Belize!!

First Official Dive

Dive 5

On Saturday I did my first official dive!! Since Kristen was feeling better, she scheduled her final checkout dives for Saturday afternoon. Curtis, Kristen, Nick and I headed to Brainerd in the wee morning hours. While Curtis & Nick participated in the morning fun dive, Kristen and I tore up the town buying winter wear and lip gloss. We stopped for lunch at Poncho & Lefty’s then headed back to the dive shop, lounged in the Explorer and read magazines for an hour or so.

Once the guys got back, Kristen and I got our rental gear all picked out. Curtis, Nick and I then tagged along to Mahnomen II & III where Kristen and the others were doing their dives. One of the most entertaining points of the day was watching the boys put their wet wetsuits back on. Especially Curtis because he was layering about 6 of them. The water felt a bit chillier than it did on Tuesday, possibly because the air warmed back up to the mid-60s, but once underway I was quite comfortable. There were mostly trees and long grass to look at during the dive. We did see some large schools of tiny fish and a couple really big northerns. No attacking loons, however. The thermocline must have been around 30′, I didn’t go much lower than that. Nick was getting really low on air (surprise, surprise) so we surfaced, only to find out we swam a really long way away from where we began. Since Curtis and I had plenty of air left, Nick offered to snorkel back while Curtis and I dove. I was having the same problem with my ear again after surfacing, so I decided to hang around 10′ for a bit. All of a sudden I felt some resistance. I turned around to see Nick mooching off of my alternate. He hung around long enough for Curtis to snap a photo, then back to the surface for Operation Snorkel Home.


I hung out in Curtis’s bubble path for awhile, and my ear started behaving itself long enough to drop down to 25′ or so before we re-surfaced. Hopefully this doesn’t become a pattern, or it will be more irritating than renting gear. On a side note, this is the first time I’ve dove while the sun was out from the clouds. When we were coming up to about 5′ from the surface I could see and feel the rays coming through the water. Very neat.

We got to the shore right before Kristen and her fellow divers. After Kristen finished up her papers at MSD we headed over to the cafe that welcomes back door guests for dinner.


FINALLY!! We got to have our celebratory birthday cake ice cream… except for Nick, who went with a chocolate malt. Another long drive home ended one diving day of many to come.

Check Out Dives 3 & 4

Dives 3 and 4

Nick and I did our last two check out dives last night. Unfortunately Kristen didn’t accompany us due to some ear/sinus/vomiting issues. Hopefully she will be feeling good soon so she can finish up the certification and we can have some celebratory birthday cake ice cream at the Chocolate Ox and/or Brainerd cafe that welcomes back door guests.

Nick and I arrived at MSD a little before 4 pm. Our fellow divers of the night were Chucky and 10 year old Alyssa. Bill was at the shop and told Dan that he needed some empty Nitrox tanks for the morning, then he pointed at us and said “give them Nitrox.” Dan told us not to equalize too hard or else [insert motion of head blowing up here]. Which made me very uneasy. Until I found out an hour later that he was joking, then I felt very stupid.

Dan drove us out to Louise where we started our dive at 5:15 pm. Louise is a quaint little mine pit with a 170′ bottom at the center and a little sunken boat at about 25′. The air temp was 45° but with the wind chill it felt like, I don’t know, -5°. Needless to say, the 60° water felt fantastic with air like that. Our first dive was just a bunch of swimming around. We had a couple of resurfacings due to some technical difficulties. And by “some technical difficulties” I mean “the 10 year old.” First she lost a weight pouch. We had hardly descended when Dan spotted her going back to the surface. He gave Charlie and I the thumbs up, so we returned to the surface. I asked her if she lost another weight and she said that something hit her in the head, and she didn’t know what it was so she just went back up. What? Really? I peeked down and saw Dan and Nick searching around the wooden platform that was underneath us, so I was sure they were on a very unsuccessful weight search. After that issue was resolved (btw, something = tank), we descended again. This time when we reached the bottom, Nick, Charlie and I found ourselves alone in the abyss. After standing there looking at each other like lost fools for what seemed like an eternity, we headed back up the sloping bottom and found the platform again (my brilliant idea). Soon after we could see bubbles, then make out the figures of Dan and Alyssa heading toward us. Phweeew. It was shortly before or after this that my regulator started taking on water. I would get a bit of water splashing in my mouth for four or five breaths and I had to use my tongue as a splash guard. I’d give a nice hard exhale now and then to clear it out. Then it would work fine for a few minutes … and repeat. We swam around for quite awhile, eventually making our way down to 44′. I think on the way up I started to get a bit of a reverse squeeze. My right ear was just killing me. On top of that my regulator seemed to be letting on water a bit excessively. I was about 5 seconds away from giving Dan the somethings wrong sign, but I could tell by the way he was swimming along the slop of the bottom that we would be soon on our way up. Finally my ear started making a funny noise and I could feel something bubbling out of it. Aaaaaah, sweet release!! We were up and down on the first dive, but used 30 minutes for our bottom time, which would have put me in the pressure group of “I” had I been using normal air.

I asked Dan about my regulator but he didn’t seem too concerned as long as I could handle it. During our 11 minute surface interval we swam back to the boat using our compasses. Then we descended for our second dive, swam away from the boat with our compasses and returned to the boat in the same manner. Then it was time for the CESA. I went first, which I was happy about, because I got to watch everyone after me come up. To make a long blog not as long, our second dive lasted 24 minutes with a depth of 32′. I finished roughly in PG-N. (I don’t feel the need to be as thorough in my dive blog as Curtis, as I plan on keeping a better organized log in the book, where there are pictures and check boxes and what not.)

The air above was quite chilly after removing my wet suit, which I was glad I did last. Back at the dive shop we filled out our log books and required paperwork. Then I had a gorgeous post dive photo taken for my card. Hmmm… at least polaroids aren’t super high quality, which probably helped me look better. On a side note, there was a Scuba Diving magazine with the top 10 reasons to love Belize, so I’ve definitely gotta snag myself a copy of that.

The time from Friday to last night has kind of been a blur. The certification was time consuming more than it was physically or mentally demanding, although after the weekend I was very fatigued. It was a great experience and I’m proud to have accomplished it. Looks like I’ve finally found myself a hobby :D

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