For Cowards Only, Brave Men Need not Apply


         Here's a recounting of a dive trip to Belize recently made by a
rotund friend of mine.  He's a bitter, aging, incompetent diver so I've
tried to lighten the mood of it a bit.  Ya pays your money and ya takes
your chancekez.  Since some of this diving depicts unacceptable and
discouraged diving practices, please take these remarks with a Bonaire size
mountain of salt.

         Well first off, if you want some Manly diving involving superior
skills and adherence to  sensible guidelines, you're going to Strike out
here.  This is going to be a tale of unbelievable grousing surpassed only
by its diving stupidity and written by an Oz wanna-be who has yet to come
up with the 10 pounds, err, --- 10 thousand pounds for a trip to  Oz.  So
cast your brain cells to the winds, and get in the water with a stroke that
will expose you to some face gouging, blue-lipped fear,  It's not the Great
Barrier Reef, but Belize still has quite a wall on its barrier reef.


                         I Pick My Dive Buddy


         Your narrator, old Humpty, had been on this boat, the Nekton
Pilot, before but up in the Bahamas with a less strict captain.  This
captain, Capt. John, had a ton of presence and cachet with the DMs, so when
he said "Buddies" some divers thought it might be a good idea.  I checked
around and found Jane, a tiny, muscular woman from Seattle, 5'2" and ~120
lbs., that could bench press my weight.  (If you're Humpty's shape and the
nursery rhyme's age always look for a small muscular woman for a dive buddy
and alternate air source.)  The best part was she breathed the long hose,
had her octopus bungeed under her chin, but still had the stroke cajones to
have her timepiece on her left hand, wear a Trans-Pac, and have a
computer.  When I saw the convolutions of DIN to yoke on her first stage, I
knew she was the woman of my wet dreams, literally speaking.


                         Giiii, DIR Raises Its Wet Head and Relieves My Fears

         Still, I was a little taken aback when she said she'd only done
~50 dives, and she was sporting a brand, spanking new Nik V (or at least as
new as they come since Nikon ceased production).  When I pressed her for
particulars, she said that she had taken a DIR course and that her DIR buds
had taken her out for a rigorous 10th dive when she finished her 4 OW dives
and her 5 AOW dives.  They took her to a dive site named Deception Pass (or
maybe she said Deception Point (no doubt Ed Graves knows); all I know is
that deception was involved).  Apparently, the difficulty of the dive
involves the condition of the tides at this dive site, and when she made
her buddyless dive in less than optimum conditions, it was an occasion for
great risibility among her DIR buds.  Whatever they did to her, it was a
good thing because she accepted my looniness and some odd conditions
without the flip of a fin.


                         Better Diving Belize, Puhleeze, 1st outrage!


         People come to associate Belize with good viz and scant current,
so when of the non-diving DMs (my favorite kind if they can't find stuff,
and I never saw a DM in the water) said, "70' viz, no noticeable current,"
I believed it.  Always pay close attention to the dive briefing, if the DM
is right it can save you a lot of trouble, and if the DM is wrong, you have
something to be aggrieved about.  This was one of those blue white dives,
the color of skim milk, where the only thing one sees is tiny little flecks
in the water roaring past and the water's color up, down, and all around is
the same.  It was one of those dives during which you follow a compass
heading certain that it is wrong until you actually get to the wall.  I had
the feeling that if Jane had gotten to the wall she would look around for
me for a minute and then ascend to the surface somewhere around
Timbuktu.  Rotten SOB that I am, I left little Jane to this fate, and I
decided to try to find the U bolt and swim back to the hang bar thus
ducking being trolled back to the boat (or worse, lost).  The wind was
opposite the current, so I kicked my fat little heart out going up the
mooring line and then I had a more leisurely 5 minute swim the 25 yards to
the hang bar which was surprisingly close to the surface give the size of
the lead balls hanging from it.  Surprisingly, Jane couldn't see the sense
in ascending and drifting away and amazingly she too found the U bolt, so
we both ended up back on the hang bar by ourselves.  Despite our remote
location, Turneffe, there was a remarkable amount of boat traffic which I
noticed was all coming from the Nekton Pilot when I got back on the dive
deck.  Never one to leave well enough alone, I could hardly wait to get up
to the sun deck from where I'd yell to every diver being towed in, "70' viz
and slight current, right?" as if I hadn't been on the dive.  A fine lesson
for DMs and divers alike....  (BTW, even in bad viz if you know how deep
the mooring is attached to the reef, it's remarkably easy to find on a
wall.)   Later when I saw Jane nearly in tears and asked what was wrong,
she said the dive made her nostalgic for Puget Sound.  Right then, I knew
I'd never get a chance to see large octopi.


                         The Dacor Caribbean - BC of Death, 2nd Outrage


         Old Humpty figures that a bc should hold three things:  hold a
tank, hold up divers to give dive shops extra revenue, and hold
air.  Before the numbers of new divers leveled off, Dacor figured that only
the second of these items was important and didn't hesitate to sell bcs
with straps slicker than teflon that never held air.  My first Dacor bc
wouldn't hold a tank whether the straps were wet or dry, but when I saw
other divers with Dacor bcs clutching the boots on their tanks,  I figured
that this was an aid in teaching the diver not to use his hands
underwater.  My second bc which I got in the mid 80s would hold a tank
(provided that the straps were wetted and enough time was spent tightening
them on the tank), but wouldn't hold air.  I figured since it was called
the Caribbean it didn't have to hold air since if you were in the Caribbean
while diving with it you wouldn't need a wet suit, and if your buoyancy
were right, you wouldn't be putting any air in it, an aid in teaching the
diver the importance of neutral buoyancy.  Unfortunately for me, the tour
operator sent out a lot of flyers saying that the water temperature was 72
F., wet suit temperature even for fat boys.  Thus, even though my winter
experience in Belize was different as was that of friends who dove these
very sites in the winter, I eschewed the skin and brought a wet suit.  Duh,
doubly dumb!

         The U bolts which anchor dive boats at Lighthouse Reef and
Turneffe are generally right on the lip of the wall, so sometimes the dive
boat hangs over the abyss and sometimes it hangs over the shallows.  When
diving over the shallows one would gently put some air into his bc and
slowly drift down close to the bottom before making yet another
adjustment.  Over the abyss, however, even with compression of a wet suit
accelerating one's descent there was no reason to start making adjustments
until ~100 feet if one wanted to begin the dive at ~130 feet.

         Before I go on, let me try to explain the design failure in the
Dacor Caribbean dump valve.  At the end of the shutoff valve is a thin
rubber gasket which is held against the bc with spring pressure and which
will allow air to escape when the pressure inside the bc gets greater than
ambient pressure and the pressure exerted by the spring.  Unfortunately, if
there is negative pressure inside the bc, as there is if no air is put into
the bc and the air inside the cup which holds the dump valve away from the
bc loses volume due to the increasing ambient pressure, the rubber gasket
can get pulled inside the cup to which the dump valve is attached.  Then
when air is introduced into the bc, the spring is sealing the opening on
the cup with nothing allowing the air to rush out the dump
valve.  Unfortunately, pulling the string on the dump valve will not get
the spring high enough to allow the rubber gasket to reseat itself so the
dump valve must be taken apart and the gasket must be pushed in with the
finger or a similar cylindrical tool.

         Most people think of diving as a sport, but some older, plumper
people think of diving as more a mental activity somewhere between reading
and looking at fish in an Oceanarium.  I fall in this latter group, and as
I was accelerating downward, at ~120 feet I realized that my bc wasn't
holding air and I would either have to drop weight or kick my feet.  Quick
as a wink I had four pounds out of a weight belt pocket when it occurred to
me that I would look like a nitwit on the hang bar with my fintips pointed
towards the sky, so I had to kick my way over to the wall and then kick up
the wall.  That's where I discovered that it's a lot easier getting a bag
of shot out of a weight belt pocket than fitting it back in.

         Jane kept gesturing towards my dump valve and then holding her
thumb and index finger about an inch and a half apart which I couldn't
fathom.  I did know that I wanted to hide from her somewhere so I could
take off my bc to see if I could fix my dump valve without risking
distressing her.  It was nearly impossible to give her the slip, but I
finally succeeded.  However, when the same problem recurred on two later
dives, I just took off my bc in front of her.  When she saw me do this for
the first time her eyes got a little wider, but she actually helped me get
it back on after I reseated the gasket, so the buddy system can work even
with new divers.


                         The Canon S300 Should Not Go Into the Water, 3rd
Outrage


         YMMV, but this is what the representative at the Canon Factory
Service Center in Hanover Park, Illinois said to me when I reported
flooding the camera.  Are they easy to flood?  Well, this is my fourth
underwater camera and I've never flooded one yet.  I've flooded a strobe,
but this is the first camera and given only one O ring which is very
visible and a light greasing using the grease that came with the housing,
it shouldn't have happened.  I talked to several people and gathered that
impact, water, and sand voids the warranty.  However, I was offered another
camera at cost and being slow to learn I will take Canon up on the offer
and will buy another housing from Canon.

                         Some Good Stuff


         My disguise of this Humpty fellow may be getting a little thin, so
if you have any suspicions don't let anyone know because I'm not going to
defend his stupidity or his misapprehension of any physical facts.  I've
promised to put the pics he got on the web if I can find an easy way.  He
found and shot to death a longlure frogfish and also tarpon, hundreds of
horse-eye jacks, an accommodating hawksbill, and the usual cast of
characters.  He notes that the Canon S300 with its minuscule flash doesn't
do well beyond ~3 feet but is still happy with his results.  Also he
apologizes for doing so much grumbling.


DPTNST,


John