Excited to be a newly certified Padi Open Water diver, I headed back the following day and signed up for the 2 dive morning charter. The board said Dive 1 - The Lost Blue Hole Dive 2 - Reef dive. Lets go !!
Beautiful boat ride out to the Lost Blue Hole, I got buddied up with a diver who seemed more experienced. He had a dive computer, wetsuit and seemed to talk like a diver. Im sure he was thrilled to have this newbie diver as his buddy lol. Dive brief was certainly brief, the plan was to follow the DM and stay above 60ft. Depth to sand in blue hole was 200ft...and the start of it was in 40ft of water. So ideally we would hit the top edge at 40ft and then descend down to 60ft mark inside. We get to edge, follow DM over the edge and we are at 87ft almost immediately ! I had no dive computer, was told to watch my buddies computer :( But I had a console with depth and SPG. I signal to my buddy but he had veered over to wall to look at coral..All around me I saw other divers heading deeper. So I did my best to keep buddy in sight, but ascended up to 65ft..He eventually decided to join me. I remember his computer beeping but I had no idea what that meant. At this point the DM is now signaling us to come over to side wall as he is directing divers into what appeared to be some sort of opening in the wall. So I watched as each diver disappeared into the wall of this massive blue hole. To me that looked like the hole of death ! My buddy looked at me, I shook my head and off he went...then went the DM..lol One by one they all came back out and I am now looking at my SPG, which is showing just under 1000psi. We are still at 65ft so I signal to my buddy, but he has once again wandered off..I show the DM my spg and he signals for me to head up.
Acscend time, up out of the blue hole and make my way up to safety stop and I head back to the boat. In my head I knew that dive was unsafe..I couldnt really explain why.
The good news is the 2nd dive was a beautiful reef dive in 30ft of water. My take away from this dive day was I needed to be a better diver, have my own gear that I could rely on. Not have to rely on others to guide me etc..What I didnt understand yet, was how much work, practice and training it would take in order to get to that point.
But even with this experience, I knew that diving was about to consume me. I just had to figure out the path.
Cheers
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