18th August 2013

After my day off I started Confined water with 5 students.  It was an early morning start, 7am and after getting all the equipment ready, the students arrived but one had been sick most of the night, so that was one down  ...and then during set ups, another girl felt really ill, so I was down to 3 students ..joy!    There's been a virus going around, only lasting a couple of days but the amount of students, staff that have been hit with it is incredible.

Anyway, after a good confined session and finishing of academics I was in the office and 2 of my ex Open water students from my last course came in, saying that they wanted to do their Advanced course but only with me  ...I was pretty chuffed and managed to pass on the 3 students that I was currently teaching to someone else.  I'm so glad that I did because we saw a Whale shark, only a baby (3-4 mtrs) on our Deep dive.  They were over the moon but I don't think they realize how lucky they were.

After a fabulous deep dive and Wreck dive, I was scheduled for Surface cover.  Basically, accounting for everyone on the boat, equipment counts etc and being ready for any emergencies  ..Sods law that on the 2nd dive after everyone had gone into the water  ..I was sitting, looking at bubbles, trying to stay out of the sun and got up to get some water when I turned around and saw this big cruise boat heading towards us  ..thinking that it's going pretty fast, it's rather close and it's going to turn any second but it didn't. 

It hit the front port side of our boat, it's bow came through the boat and ripped all the wooden side panels out. It was like watching an episode of Whale Wars   ..for some reason I screamed  ..what the hell was going on, surely they must have seen us  ...with angry captains and the boat just reversing and mooring up on another line, I called back to Crystal and told them what had happened as the boat captain was shouting to get the big boss involved ...he's pretty hard to understand, so with a weak phone signal which kept on popping in and out, it was a challenge.   Iain our operations manager and a few Thai's came out on a speed boat to assess the damage and then spoke to the boat at fault.  It turned out that they had a gear problem  ...oh my goodness me..

Lets hope they pay for the damage, and it was lucky no one was injured. !


Simon, in the meantime was in the midst of a mammoth 7 person course, with no assistants.. This is a job for only senior instructors, and Simon was called in to replace an instructor who caught this bug going around. He had not met them before taking them straight to the pool for several hours of intense training... Its tough when you have not taught them academics, because it takes a while for them to trust that you know what you are doing.

His pool session went good, with a few problems and nerves which is usual. The boat dives the next 2 days however were very stressful.. With 2 students in tears before the dives as they were so scared.. It took a lot of encouragement to get them to dive... They did, and were grateful that they overcame their fear. Simon had to deal with someone in severe panic at 12m... trying to bolt to the surface... trying to tear their regulator from their mouth... but he held on, gently holding their hand and rubbing their arm until they had calmed down.  The student remarked on how safe they felt with Simon guiding them through their troubles...

And so, the course finished, Simon is now back on the boat for 4 more dive tomorrow, conducting 2 different courses (1 Deep Adventure, and 1 Rescue course)... With battered ears and sinuses... he needs to rest... and he is looking for that couple of days off... hopefully in the next couple of days..

x


Jenny