Unrefreshing Dip

I knew there was a problem when the first thing we could see on shore was a giant ostentatious “Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville!” sign. The port city was a tourist cesspool, and I was glad to my bones that I would only see it twice briefly.

It was somewhere around 8am. I’d gotten up bright and early, oddly chipper on 2 hours of sleep. Breakfast scarfed down in 2 minutes, and I was only 3rd on line for the 1st tender to shore. Which arrived 30 minutes late.

It was better on the water - the sky was blue, the water was bluer, the air was warm and the breeze was mild. The boy next to me, clutching his high-quality scuba gear, seemed the cute blonde surfer type. Quite appealing, yet I had that chewy feeling in the back of my mind that was becoming too familiar to me on this cruise. A brief chat confirmed my fears; Matt was a high schooler, diving here with his family. I was suddenly glad I had chartered a different scuba company.

Really, I can’t tell you much about Grand Cayman. The port town sucked. The beach was pretty. There’s a famous sandbar on the other side of the island where tourists can pet stingrays. Endangered iguanas roam around somewhere. Whatever. I was here solely to dive.

Until this point, I’ve been a spoiled diver. The boat in the Outer Banks had an indoor cabin and a grill on top. My dive boat in Australia had bed and a full kitchen. The boat in Cayman was a crappy little speedboat with one puny outboard engine. It fit eight people, barely, and the plastic awning did little to stave off the skin cancer. Backing right on to the beach was a neat trick though.

As I understood it, they were to pick me up on the beach and bring me down to the dive shop. Wrong. The boat was the dive shop, should’ve put on my bathing suit on shore. I was presented with an ill-fitting wetsuit, incorrect weights, flimsy plastic flippers, no gloves (I counted 24 scratches on my hands by day’s end) and no dive computer. Hell, they didn’t even have dive charts; it was a choice of sticking right next to the dive leader or risk getting the bends, a condition also known as decompression sickness, a fancy term for nitrogen bubbles turning your blood into foam.

The divemaster was a much more experienced diver than me, no surprise, which partially explains why the beginning sucked. The coral tunnel in the beginning was difficult enough as is, nevermind the weights which caused me to alternate between sinking into a crevice or rising perilously out of control. And nevermind the leaking mask, cheap piece of shit. And the agonizing pain of my ears failing to equalize pressure at 100 feet and no one stopping to look back or care. Point is, when they returned to the tunnel at the end of the dive, I abstained. I’ll risk the bends.

It took me nearly the rest of the dive to recover and get my bearings back. I enjoyed what I could, peering into giant sponges, marveling at waving Sea Fans and timid Christmas Worms (as festive as they sound). Pretty coral and neat fish were there to be seen, but the undeniable fact was that this reef was neither as vivid and varied as the Great Barrier Reef, nor were there any giant fucking toothy sharks to be found. It was, in a word, underwhelming.

There was also a mysterious green goo seeping into my mask. I figured it for algae, but couldn’t wipe it off. I also fingered rampaging snot as a possible culprit, but no snot was this shade of mutant green. The mini lava lamp in my mask was fascinating in its own right, but I found it distracting, as much for its enigma as for its visual impairment.

I decide to call this dive a wash. Enjoyable, in parts, but nothing to write home about. As I made my way to the anchor line to ascend, I saw a plaque installed on the reef. I broke away from the ascent to go see. Last time I’d seen such a monument, it was the gravestone for a lost young diver – as a fellow diver, I had to pay my respects. I settled on my knees gently in front of the sign, and wiped off the silt and algae. The sign said, in large somber font, “Please don’t kick, stand on, or rest on the coral.” How touching. I gladly obeyed the sign and made for the surface.

I felt crappy when I came up, and only felt crappier when I looked around at my fellow divers. One was an old woman. Another was a fat man. Three more were his children, the youngest one at 12 with nearly twice as many dives as me. One British chap. And me, the idiot who can’t float and somehow got a bloody nose.

That, by the way, explains my mystery goo. Water absorbs light, starting at larger wavelengths and going down the spectrum as you go deeper. Red doesn’t exist at 100 feet, so my blood looked a fantastic shade of green. Basic physics lesson for you, and a heads up if you consider a hobby in diving. The reefs down there aren’t nearly as bright and colorful as you see in photos; those photos are taken with expensive cameras with bulky intense flash rigs. Like the one the 12 year old was using.

I spent my surface interval mentally preparing for the next ordeal, chatting with the Brit while secretly wishing he were Australian, and greedily eating all the free powerbars offered to me. The boat motored elsewhere.

One of the first things I determined on the second dive was that while I was no longer in arduous pain and my mask was less leaky, I still had shit buoyancy and was regularly kicking and crashing down on the coral. That was still forbidden here, but atleast with no sign I could claim ignorance.

On the upside, this second site was arguably better. The coral seemed brighter and more varied, probably because we were closer to the surface. The fish were bigger, and I even spotted a stingray locked in a synchronized swim with another fish, matching zig for zag perfectly. A burrowing eel was to be found. But hands down, the best finds were the turtles. Cresting a coral ridge, I found myself face to face with a smallish sea turtle, which I correctly guessed to be a Loggerhead. It was clearly young, as the carapace shell was only the size and shape of my head (that is to say, bulbous and splotchy). One of its rear fins was entirely missing, a brush with a shark or fishing line, but the turtle seemed unaffected. It grazed on little creatures of the reef, paying me no heed despite being close enough to touch. The second turtle, found near the end of the dive, was not much bigger – also a juvenile – but had all limbs intact and glided over the reef gracefully. I joined it, matching its deliberate pace, its every rise and fall and turn. We were neck and neck in our slow race, and I felt more connected to it than any other animal I’ve encountered under the sea. This enchanting minute alone was worth all of the cost and pain and humiliation this dive and cruise could throw at me.

As soon as the turtle turned and sauntered away, I regretted that thought. I was gripped with a sensation more powerful than my earlier sinus implosion. I had to pee harder than I’ve ever had to pee in my entire life. The urge was overwhelming, mentally deafening. No big deal, you might say, just piss away. But I refused. I’d endured enough humiliation this day, I was not about to warm my wetsuit and give my boxers an unmistakable smell for the rest of the day. No, I resolved to hold it.

This put me at a crucial crossroads. The turtles had renewed my appreciation for the deep, and I wanted to stay down and examine all of Creation’s intimacies for as long as my tank and foamy blood would let me. On the other hand, I had to go so bad it hurt. So I compromised; I continued to scour the reef to find new animals to distract me, while praying the divemaster would call Time’s Up.

Somehow, miraculously, I endured. The divemaster summoned me to the anchor line, and I immediately raced for the surface. He stopped me. 3 minute safety decompression stop at 15 feet, standard safe practice. The single longest 3 minutes of my life. The divemaster noticed my leg uncontrollably quaking, but rather than comprehend and sympathize, he simply demanded I stop, the cruelest sign language I’ve ever seen. But my willpower is vast, and I survived. I let all the children go climb first, before I hauled ass up the ladder, threw down my gear, ripped off my wetsuit, and jumped over the side. I barely had the time to pull off my boxers and hold them over my head before the torrent let loose. I never pissed that long or that hard my entire life.

That moment, I accomplished two life goals. I had finally gone skinny dipping, and I flashed an old woman. She was the last up the ladder.