Dive: 90
Cabo Dive: 1
Date: 11/29/19
Site: Pelican Rock
Avg/Max Depth: 24/36
Temp: 77
TBT/CBT: 0:17/74:45
Weight: 18 lbs
Buddies: Curtis, Kristen
Addt’l Info: 3 mil shorty

We arrived at the the Manta dive shop in the morning, and I was surprised at the amount of divers filling out forms and being fitted for gear. I’m used to there not being very many people when we go places this time of year. The check in process went smoothly. Because the water temps are in the upper 70s this time of year, I decided to rent a wetsuit. I hate hate hate wearing wetsuits. They’re a pain to get on, a pain to get off, they feel gross… but because the water temps were a few degrees lower than what I’m used to, I decided to do the responsible thing and wear a suit, at least on the first day.

Our Divemaster, Sanne, recommended I go with a full length suit, but I was leaning toward a shorty. Sanna said to me, “Look around; everyone is wearing long.” To which I replied, “But everyone always wears long, and I always wear nothing, because I’m not…” This is where I trailed off, and she chimed in, “You’re not a pussy.”

This is when I knew I was with my people.

I decided to go ahead with the shorty, and Sanne grabbed a long suit as a backup.

There were at least 15 divers on the boat, in 4 different groups. It took a while to get everything and everyone loaded. We were diving in the local marine park, so the boat ride was only a few minutes, which seemed to be a wash for the added time of getting that many people ready. There were two additional people diving with us, David and Noelle.

The first dive of the trip always has me a bit nervous. Typically it has been a year or longer since I’ve dove and this trip was no exception. Once I’m making bubbles beneath the surface, the anxiety goes away and my body relaxes.

But not this time.

No, not this time.

The storm that rolled through a few days prior created a visibility of, oh, about 0.0 feet. Okay maybe that’s an exaggeration, but not by much. I’d say about a 2 foot visibility. I tried to stay by Kristen’s side, but I was getting so close to see her that I found myself on top of her a few times. On occasion Sanne would flash her flashlight at us so I’d know the general direction to go. I tried to keep the diver in front of me within view, but that basically meant I could see his/her bright yellow fins if they were close enough to kick of my mask. If I turned to look around me to find people, when I’d turn back Kristen had vanished.

We surfaced at one point. Kristen was ready to throw in the towel and swim back to the boat. I kind of wanted to abort, but I also didn’t want to give up, because I (falsely, spoiler alert) believed that if we kept going, we would reach a spot where the visibility improved. Sanne talked her into staying and we descended again.

It was more of the same nonsense. At one point Kristen held out her hand, and I took it with no hesitation. Now I could look around and try to keep track of anyone in the group and at least know she was still beside me. You know what I didn’t see beside me? The rock wall that I bounced off of a few times.

It’s funny because I wasn’t scared or worried about anything bad happening. We were right by the shoreline. There were boats and kayakers everywhere. We were in 20 feet of water. It’s not like we were out in the abyss down 100 feet and couldn’t see anything.

The two things that bothered me were the feeling of disorientation without being able to see anything, and the fact that communication underwater is difficult. It’s easy to say I’m okay, or something’s wrong, or I need to abort the dive. But what I really wanted to communicate was more along the lines of: I think I’m okay, but I’m kind of starting to flip out, and I don’t mind if we keep going but I’m not sure how much longer I can be down here if it’s like this, and will it clear up anytime soon? Because if not I kind of don’t want to do this.

We ended up surfacing and heading back to the boat. Two of the groups had already called it quits and were waiting, so at least we were all on the same page.At the time of writing this, I don’t have my dive computer information. It felt like we were down there forever. I would have guessed 20 minutes. Curtis said his dive logged in at 6 minutes, so there’s that.