How It All Began: Diving In

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The project was exciting. I was a sixty-seven year old grandmother and had set myself the challenge of going to America, learning to dive and be awarded my PADI diving certificate in three days. Then I would be equipped to dive anywhere in the world and, in particular, the Caymans where my good friend Merlin and I had a diving trip booked for the following week.

Lana, who runs Diving Divas in the USA, was my personal Dive Master and, following a couple of hours in a North Carolina swimming pool, where I learned how the gear worked, we began serious training in a nearby flooded quarry, Fantasy Lake. This submerged ‘theme park’ is an insight into the American passion for unusual weekend adventures. Amongst the sunken ephemera are a bus, a Cadillac and a small plane. On the shore a huge stone angel loomed over the lake in ominous, dignified silence. Slightly unnerving for the virgin diver.

Day One went well. The first challenge was to descend and sit on a small wooden platform forty-five feet down at the bottom of the quarry. There I had to flood my mask, remove it, put it on again and blow out all the water. Lana stayed close offering encouraging sign language. The next challenge was discovering how to remove my buoyancy jacket and tank, like an underwater Houdini. Lana continued to re-assure with eye and hand gestures. Once safely strapped back into the jacket the next task was to remove the regulator from my mouth (with the air supply!), throw it away and then grope behind my shoulder, find the hosepipe the regulator was attached to, put it back in my mouth and breathe again. Phew! And, Lana was still hovering alongside.

So, on Day Two, losing Lana forty-five feet down in the murky waters was unexpected and a bit of a shock.

My final test was to swim 100 feet along a marked out lane counting my leg kicks so that I knew how far I had travelled. I took off like a proverbial bat out of hell and, propelled by new turbo fins, I left Lana far behind in the murky waters.

I sped the hundred feet there and a hundred feet back in record time and was very surprised to find no sign of her. (Later I discovered she had lost all sight of me as I kicked up the mud on the bottom) I hovered, lost and slightly disorientated, and came to rest on the wooden platform where I sat, cross-legged breathing heavily through my life support system. Visibility was less than three feet. A couple of mystified fish came to investigate, swam slowly round and vanished. I thought of the angel above and decided this was not a memorial to a drowned diver but an angel looking after me. The novelty of being on holiday alone at the bottom of a gloomy lake was wearing off quickly and all I desperately wanted was to surface and breathe fresh air.

PADI rules are clear – if you lose your ‘buddy’ underwater you remain where you are for a minute before ascending. I sat motionless in the gloom, watching and waiting as the second hand on my watch crept slowly round. The long, lonely minute was finally up and I surfaced, (remembering my ‘safety stop at fifteen feet ) to find Lana on the surface frantically looking for my bubbles.

I was given full marks for decisive and correct action. I had earned my PADI diving certificate! I staggered out of the lake and flashed the angel a smile. In twenty–four hours I’d be diving in the clear blue Caribbean Sea.

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