Learning to Scuba

Photo credit: Thanks to the Mercury News for this shot of
Monastery Beach near Carmel, California.

It was the most relaxing feeling imaginable. Floating on my back like a buoyant cork, drifting up and down on the warm ocean waves, sliding playful down into the trough between crests and up to the top of the next as each wave passed by.

I took a deep cleansing breath and let my mind slow to a meditative pace and watched, straight above me as small white clouds shifted with each rise and fall, letting time pass without a care – until, what the … suddenly the whole ocean disappeared from beneath me and I was falling with nothing but misty air between me and the hard shore of packed wet sand. I was too surprised to even scream as my sky view disappeared behind the giant wall of angry white water. This was going to be really – REALLY unpleasant.

Dad ‘s going to be so proud of me.

I had just moved into my first apartment in Silicon Valley to start my first professional job on a large computer assembly line. I enjoyed that I was jumping into adulthood, paying my own rent and utilities, starting my own life — just like a real grown up.

One of my first decisions as an independent man was to finish learning a sport that dad had started me on. I signed up for a local junior college class to become a certified scuba diver and a couple of Saturdays later, I found myself sitting on the floor of an apartment recreation room that our instructor had rented.

This guy was a typical manly man, very full of himself but seemed to know his stuff, so I decided to give him a chance. I really wanted to do this.

I’ll call him, Manly Mark, and he gave us quite an introductory lecture about learning to dive safely. “Folks, if you don’t do this correctly, you can die.” He took the time to make eye contact with each one of us, drilling in just how serious he was. “I’ll insist that you pay attention and demonstrate that you understand things before I’ll certify any of you. Every student I’ve certified is still alive. I don’t want any of you breaking my record.” I couldn’t help but look around trying to predict who would struggle. One gal, Becky, had a look that did not inspire confidence.

I already knew from dad that there was a dangerous side to diving and was ready to pay attention. Over the next 12 Saturdays, he lectured us. He put us into the pool with various pieces of gear and leaned on us to do everything correctly. He was a great instructor. He also consistently behaved like an adolescent macho jerk which kept me from wanting any more of his time than required.

I was easily catching on because much of this dad had already taught me. Becky, on the other hand was always awkward and struggled. I worried that she might not be well suited for scuba diving. Her friends Andrew and Jessie also caught on and stayed nearby to help her.

The class included several dive trips to demonstrate our skills. One trip was to learn how to enter the ocean against big waves. Monastery Beach is a small but dramatic public beach just south of Monterey and Carmel, California. If you look closely at an ocean floor map, you will see how the Monterey peninsula acts very much like a funnel – focusing waves from a deep offshore abyss into a small rounded south-east corner of the shoreline.

Monastery Beach has a nasty reputation. The locals refer to it by the less-than-honorable name of “Mortuary Beach” because so many people have died there. Manly Mark knew that on any given day, the waves here could be huge.

At the beach, I marveled that I was able to walk to the edge of dry land and be no more than twelve feet from a wave crest more than six feet above my 6′ 3″ hairline. This was no smooth, gently sloping shore. It was deep water right up to shore. These giant waves crashed and fell all within about ten feet of the shore.

Wow- this is so cool! Did Manly Mark really say we’re going to enter the ocean from here?  I thought and tried to decide if I was thrilled or terrified.

My dive buddy, Ben, yelled out , ”Oh yea! Going to be epic – you first little buddy.” Ben was bigger and taller than everyone so of course we called him, Big Ben, because the laws of physics that pertain to sarcasm cannot be denied.

Manly Mark had us gear up and line up within arm’s reach of those huge walls of angry water and, yelling loudly over the crashing waves, told us, step by step, how to get safely in through the surf. We succeeded and soon found ourselves about thirty feet from shore floating in small groups with our dive buddies.

The ocean off the coast of central California is not the crystal-clear water so famous elsewhere but is more often cloudy with drifting silt. The water is dark with highly defused sunlight, but we barely noticed as we followed his instructions about rolling carefully through thick floating kelp to avoid getting dangerously entangled in it before kicking our way down into a forest of the stuff, swimming three-dimensionally through a world of tall waving sea-trees. It was dimly lit, alive with everything in motion and nothing short of magical.

Afterwards he summoned us back to shore where he shouted, “One more lesson for the day. Everyone, drop your gear: weight belts, masks – everything except your wet suits.” We did so without knowing why. “Okay, enough work for one day, everyone head back into the surf and enjoy some bobbing in those monster waves!”

We cheered in mass because we all realized how much fun this was going to be. We would get knocked around by the waves, but in our black neoprene wet body suits without our heavy belts and gear, WE WERE UNSINKABLE. To mixed shouts of “Kowabunga’s” and similar screeches, we hit the water and popped up like corks laughing and spitting salt water in proportion to the quality of our entry, but even the washing machine effect of churning us through the breakers, barely slowed us as we shot to the surface. It was incredibly fun.

Okay, I have to give this round to Manly Mark. What a great idea!

I was still laughing and spitting salt water after shooting up through the waves like a sub-launched missile when Big Ben, shot up near me. For a moment, I thought he might actually clear the water altogether. He was laughing and spitting water and making horrible gagging sounds. The class played for a few minutes. Even Becky was having a great time about 20 feet south of me, when Manly Mark called us back for lunch.

Seriously Mark!? You expect anyone to eat after that ride?

But people began to make their way in. This part proved to be much tougher than getting out. The waves were still moving us up and down within about 12-15 feet of altitude and we needed to carefully time our exit to be close to the beach or risk being pounded by the breakers.

Dang – maybe Mark knows what he’s doing.  How am I going to do this?

I watched as Big Ben mangled his return to the beach and tumbled up through the wash of sand and churned water, but he survived. This is when I noticed that Becky was in trouble. She was rightly scared to death of this part. Andrew was there again to help, and I smiled as he literally wrapped his arm over to grab her arm pit and drove her through the exit, timing it almost perfectly. She came out on all fours but looked much more graceful than whatever it was that Ben just did. Her smile returned as she stood up and thanked Andrew.

I, on the other hand, didn’t want to leave just yet. Those waves were wonderful. We’d packed our lunches, so no one actually needed me ashore. I chose to just enjoy the bobbing for a bit longer. It was the greatest waterbed ever; letting gravity slide me down into a deep trough and coasting up to the crest of the next so I settled into an easy, relaxing cycle of riding one of nature’s greatest carnival rides ever.

Just another quiet day at Monastery Beach

Big Ben, the good dive buddy that he was, stayed on the edge of the beach waiting for me. Dive buddy rules were clear. He could not leave me in the water alone but coming between Ben and his lunch was a lapse of wisdom that I completely missed.

“Wilson – get your butt in here!” he called out as I rode the crest of a big wave. I looked down at him and gave him my best you-must-be-kidding smirk just as the wave passed and waved bye-bye as I slid down into the next trough.

This is so great.

Big Ben had to be a biker or something crude because his language, while still playful, decayed quickly into verbiage I’ll not repeat, and I continued to smirk at him from high above him on each wave crest. I was particularly taken with how close I was to the beach where Big Ben had his hands on his hips trying to figure out how to reach me and pull me in so he could go eat, but I was just out of reach and could turn my head to mock him with a wink or once even with a blown kiss and smile before riding down into the next trough.

Dang but this is really fun.

I was having so much fun that I missed how I was drifting slightly closer to the beach with each wave and so was surprised when I was suddenly too close to the edge and never saw that next trough. I figure I fell backwards about 12 feet into the churning water at the base of the collapsing wave. I was amazed at the view of that giant wave breaking right above me. Angry exploding water buffered my fall from beneath but slamming into the beach still knocked the wind out of me. There I stayed while all that falling water overwhelmed my wet suit and pinned me to the crunchy sand bottom, forcing said sand into any unprotected body opening and even up inside my wet suit.

So maybe this is how I’m going to die.  Am I okay with this?

I was a bit slow to pinch my mouth shut and prayed it would stop soon because I had almost no air and couldn’t move until this pounding stopped.

I tried to move, but one arm was not cooperating. I needed to deal with this mouthful of sand before I’d get any air. Both sinuses were also packed with sand and at least one small, very annoyed crustacean.

Seriously, a crab up my nose?  I hope Ben doesn’t see this.

As the storm of water and sand and seaweed began to slow, I felt myself moving toward the shore. It was counter intuitive.

What the heck is going on? I need to breath – like now!

The water around me began to calm down and I finally realized what was happening. It was Ben dragging me by that one arm to safety. He was laughing so hard I thought he was going to choke. Finally, he dropped me on the warm sand, not more than six feet from that receding wave. He then sat down near me, almost in tears of laughter. He leaned close to my face so I could hear him over the crashing of the next wave and yelled, “What’s the matter Wilson? Get an O. S. wave?”

But I really needed air, so I rolled over to spit out a mouthful of sand and finally gulped a fresh breath. Then I used my finger to dig out as much as I could. Talking proved tougher. I finally choked out, “What –ACK –, is a — PITUY — O.S. wave?”

Big Ben leaned back and laughed, “It stands for ‘Oh S**t and that definitely was one.” I was still gagging on sand, but I knew I was safe, and air was getting where I needed it, so instead of fearing for my life I discovered how hard it is to laugh with both your mouth and sinuses layered with sand?

Well, Manly Mark signed all our cards, blessing us to go out and live as real scuba divers.

About a year later I heard that Becky had joined with a group from class to go diving and got separated from her dive buddy. They found her, days later, dead, having drifted to where the shore was very rocky. Apparently, she died on those rocks, fighting heavy surf – alone with no one to help her.

What could I have, should have, done differently, that might have better prepared her?

I also wondered if Manly Mark updated his class introduction to note that he had finally lost a student.

Rest in peace Becky. Even though we barely knew each other, I still think of you when I recall my own brush with death and wish that you’d survived yours.

Later, I discovered the hard way that my eustachian tubes were unsuited for water diving deeper than 30 feet. We’re all born with these air connections between the back of our sinuses and our inner ears. They flex with pressure changes, like driving up and down mountain roads, but mine simply did not compensate for diving pressure changes well. I estimate they cracked and blew out around 25 feet down and I came up spitting blood.

Yuck – this can’t be a good thing. This is why vampires make no sense.  Blood tastes terrible.

When asked, my doctor advised me to give up scuba diving.  “Some of us just aren’t designed for these kind of pressure changes.”

Nuts! I thought.  I wonder if I could try sky diving instead. If I can’t go down, maybe I can go up then back down — really — REALLY fast.  I’ll have to find out.

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