Our fourth "chapter":
EVERYTHING THAT WENT WRONG – AND DIDN’T BOTHER US AT ALL.
1. Shedding the Old Skin for New Neoprene
We made our checkout dive in front of the Dive Inn, at Cha-Cha-Cha pier. Having gone out and back on this location 6 times during our certification course (4 times as an alternate to the prescribed “pool” dives and twice for our open water qualifying dives), we expected to be able to take in a nice hour-long tour as we reacquainted ourselves with the basics and got comfortable in our brand new gear. Michelle turned us around the moment my air gauge showed 1700. We were heading toward shore after just 40 minutes. I figured at first that she was just being ultra-conservative. As we walked up the beach, Michelle’s goose-bumps and blue lips indicated the real reason she had sped through the dive. This was surely a sign that our week could quickly turn pretty crummy – if we didn’t find a better suit we would probably have to skip or cut short a lot of dives. I, however, had been quite cozy in a new suit that I found on a clearance rack just before we left, but of course I wouldn’t leave my buddy out in the cold.
It turned out that since the last time we dove Michelle had toned up. Her revised physical condition left her old wetsuit a loose fit, and at the same time made her, shall we say, slightly less well-insulated under the skin, too. The new suit, however, was actually almost too tight for me, and on our next dive Michelle agreed to try it on. After some entertaining wiggling, she managed to squeeze into it - and I never got to wear it again. Fortunately my older diveskin, the third suit we had packed, was still a snug fit for me, and it turned out to be all I needed.
2. You Can’t Open the Camera Case Underwater.
After being buffeted and slightly bruised getting in and out at a windy, wavy Karpata the evening before, I talked Michelle into making a few dives on the south half of the island. At Salt Pier it was her turn to take the camera down. After doing all the standard pre-dive checks we jumped in, swam out and dropped down to explore the underwater colonnade. Shortly after reaching 50 feet, Michelle asked me – with emphatic hand signals, what was wrong with the camera – it would not shoot any pictures. I immediately discovered that this massive malfunction was a simple human error. The camera – a Reefmaster CL – must be switched on from the inside before going in the water. Thus, on this dive it would be nothing more than a small, annoying buoy. We decided to continue the dive rather than abort. Although none of it could be captured on film, the spotted morays, trumpetfish, damsels, angels, trunkfish, drums, barracuda, tarpon and finally the cluster of a half dozen silky-smooth sharptail eels we saw made us forget about the inactive camera. As soon as we exited, Michelle’s first words were “we are definitely doing this site again!”
The upside of this goof was that Michelle immediately took it upon herself to learn all the details of the camera’s operation – including loading and unloading the film between dives - tasks she had previously ignored completely in deference to my affinity for mechanical things.
3. The One Light Dive
We had already made one good dive at Salt Pier, but had to go back to take all the photos that we didn’t get the first time out. Rather than simply repeat our prior trip, we decided to make our second pier perusal a an evening outing. We geared up and went in just past 7 p.m., as the sunset’s orange corona faded from the horizon. We were equipped with a U.K. Light Cannon and a smaller 8-cell Princeton light, highly touted for its potent beam from a small package. Both lights had apparently new batteries, and both lit up fine in the car. Once in the water, we switched on the lights. It takes about 20 seconds for the HID bulb in the Cannon to fully fire up. In exactly that same amount of time I watched the bulb of our other light fade away and wink out altogether. A short perhaps? Nope – totally dead batteries. And where were the spares? Back at the room, of course.
But no simple failure like that was going to halt our plans, so we continued the dive, now with just a single light between us. I carried the Light Cannon – which frankly is like having your own personal stadium light – and swam along behind Michelle, easily lighting her way wherever she went. A few minutes after reaching the bottom, the lights on the pier blinked on, glimmering down through a school of thousands of small fish. From there we wandered around a bit among the already sleeping parrotfish and spent most of our time marveling at collections of sponges and coral on the pilings, along with the many fish and shrimp that populate them. Almost an hour later we turned for shore, using the pilings as our guideposts as each one came into view as a distant reflection in our single long beam of light. Another equipment problem from another easily preventable error, and yet another equally wonderful dive.
4. How Did That Cactus Get in There?
Washington-Slaagbaii is worth the time and the few dollars spent to enter. It is even more rewarding if you like to drive “off-road” but don’t have the time or money to make a regular hobby of it. The trails through the park are not especially difficult to navigate in the little RAV4’s that are common at the rental agencies. The park map indicates that the “short route” takes several hours. Unless it is nearly noon, you are trying to get two full dives in before the park closes at five, and are lucky enough to not have anyone puttering along in front of you the whole way. If you are so lucky – and so bold as to bound over the terrain at the highest safe speed the vehicle and road can tolerate - then it only takes about 25 minutes to scurry all the way to Playa Funchi for the first dive, another 15 to sprint over to Boca Slaagbaii, for lunch, a nap and the second dive, and finally just 30 minutes to get all the way from there to the exit – with the park ranger tagging along behind if you are not heading out by 4:00 p.m. There is one likely side effect though, which we promptly discovered the next afternoon.
It only took 10 minutes to swap our flat tire for the fresh spare, and the next day we used our mid-day surface interval to go to Lisa Gas for the needed repair. Wilfredo, manning the shop next to the gas station, pulled about a dozen hard cactus spines and a couple of sharp stones from our deflated tire, patched two punctures in its inner tube, got us back on the road in less than an hour, and did it all for only 8 guilder. We hardly even saw this as an inconvenience. However, we did limit our driving after this to no more than 30km when we were on anything other than a paved surface.
5. A Gearless Night
During our trip we alternated between dunking and hanging gear at the dive shop and hosing it down and hanging it to dry back at our apartment in Belnam. After a great morning of turtle watching, we had hung up our gear at the shop and taken a longer-than-usual afternoon siesta. Our plan was to make an easy 6 p.m. dive, so we headed back to the shop for our gear at just a bit past 5. When we arrived the shop was locked up and empty. Although the posted hours were “8:30-5:30 nonstop”, we had been advised that the shop was taking a lunch break daily. We did not know that it was closing a bit early if there was nothing going after 5:00p.m.
After we had shrugged off the fishy discomfort of being stranded on land and unable to get back into the water, we resolved to make the best of it. After all, we hadn’t sat back and simply enjoyed a sunset yet – at least not above the water’s surface. We spent some time at the Plaza’s beach, but then decided to head down to Pink Beach instead. It is a wonderful experience to be able to enjoy a quiet, moonlit beach completely to yourself. The next morning we were both relaxed and refreshed, with more energy for the dives yet to come than we had started with on any of the previous mornings.
6. Leif Gets Almost Lost
Note to self: the next time you go to Bonaire, get a full roadmap with the names of the streets included, to replace the much less helpful tourist maps. Apparently I got turned around one evening on the way back to Belnam from Rincon – and ended up making a thorough tour of both Antriol and Nikiboko in the process. Despite the common perception that male drivers never do so, I even asked for directions. Two local boys described a course that sounded to me like the route to Spelonk, so I did not try to follow it. Soon I simply gave up on following the streets and resorted to navigating by the stars. Once I looked out the window and up into the starlit sky, I quickly re-oriented myself and headed generally west, knowing that the seaside road I needed would ultimately intersect my path. In minutes we came out of the neighborhood, just a few clicks north of the airport. All in all, we only spent about a half hour wandering about. I think Michelle secretly enjoyed seeing me not be completely well-oriented for a change. Still, it’s nice to know that ancient skills still work in a pinch.
7. The Upside Down Gauge
As with most other mechanical things, it is apparently the first few days of use during which one expects to “get the kinks worked out” of new equipment. One of our brand new Dacor gauge pods had precisely such a kink. On our first dive all was well. After the second dive we noticed that the depth gauge was slightly canted counterclockwise in the console. With each successive dive, this particular gauge, of its own free will, rotated another 10 degrees, until it was rotated to exactly upside down in the console. Despite our best efforts to rotate it back into normal position, it would not budge from this inverse orientation. As Michelle was growing intolerant of this nuisance, I sought a means of prying it out so I could re-insert it in its original, upright position. I finally resorted to a very gentle use of our rental car’s crowbar, which incidentally had a nice, clean hubcap popper blade on one end - just small enough to be the perfect tool to assist me with the extrication of the gyratory gauge. By the time I got it out and then back into its console I had noticed the slimy film of oil it had been secreting into its boot. Fortunately both Michelle and I had come equipped with brand new wrist-mounted dive computers, so our console depth gauges were redundant. Despite the apparent oil leak, the gauge continued to work accurately. However, by the time we got home it had a small air bubble under the glass, so back to the manufacturer it goes – under warranty, thankfully.
8. Out of Air
During the first eight dives we made, one of our two brand new Dacor “mini” sized air gauges – ostensibly checked out and tested by the dive shop we purchased them from in Dallas – always read a few hundred psi lighter than what was actually in our tank fills. By the end of each dive the gauge would nonetheless give an apparently normal reading – I had been expecting to end each dive with about 200 psi less than Michelle (girls typically using less air, or so I’m told). After this happened the first few times we even swapped gauges on the same fresh tank to confirm that this was just a consistent calibration error. Thus, when we started our ninth dive – Angel City to Hilma Hooker and back - my starting tank pressure of 2700 psi didn’t concern me in the least. As we progressed everything seemed quite normal; down to 1900 by the time we first saw the bow of the Hooker wreck, 1400 as we started south back toward our Angel City entry/exit point. At 45 minutes into the dive, having gently glided back to 40 foot depth, I still had 1000 psi – doing fine. Five minutes later, now at just 35 feet, still 1000. Michelle was down to about 800. I figured that all my work on breath control was finally paying off. Five more minutes later, still going along at the reef crest at 30 feet and just about to turn toward shore – still reading 1000 psi. “Hmmm, that’s odd” I thought. Then it hit me what was wrong. At almost exactly that same moment, my regulator stopped feeding air on demand and I instead found myself puckering up and sucking hard against an empty tank. As I was only a few kicks away from Michelle, I reached out and tugged at her spare regulator. We spent a few moments while I demonstrated to her that neither of my regs had any air to feed at all, regardless of what the gauge said (which was still 1000). She still had over 500 psi in her tank, so we continued along the planned route in much closer formation. As we worked out way up toward the beach, I went back a few times to try to pull another breath through either of my regulators, just to see if perhaps there was simply a clog that could be unblocked. This reminded me of the act of sucking an extremely thick milkshake (you know, the kind that stays in the cup even when flipped upside down) through a very skinny soda straw. Five minutes later we came to the surface right where we had expected. Even Bas, who had come with us on this dive (actually, he had suggested it) had run his tank down into the “red” area, and he had not been stopping to take photos and then kicking to catch up as I had. Thus, I knew that it was the equipment that had the problem – not me. When I disconnected the first stage and opened the tank valve I honestly believe I heard a slight gasp as the tank sucked in a lung’s worth of air to equalize from the near-vacuum I had drawn it down to.
After the dive Bas was kind enough to loan us a spare gauge console, so Michelle and I did not miss any diving opportunities. I left the bad gauge attached to my first stage, though, to see if I could determine what the root cause of the problem might be. For the rest of the trip I had great fun showing others the readout of my chaotic instrument – at one point it said I had 5500 psi on a fresh fill, at another point it showed 3000 psi when it was not even hooked up to a tank. So, back to the manufacturer it goes – under warranty, of course. I hope that my pair of bad experiences with these Dacor gauges is not indicative of that brand’s quality overall. They were nice gauges - until they started screwing up after less than 2 dozen dives! In a few weeks I expect to receive either repaired or replacement consoles. Should I trust them or start looking for something else?
Coming Soon: The Detailed Dive Log, Underwater Pictures (if any turn out...) plus a review of Kodak's "Sea Processing" for film photofinishing.
Until then...
-LS (Serious PBD Sufferer) |
By Leif S on Monday, July 8, 2002 - 4:26 pm: 
