Valet Diving Madam?

As part of the ‘Two for One’ Little Cayman resort package that Merlin and I had gone on there was VALET DIVING. And, yes, I have gone into capital letters because it was WONDERFUL and I loved it! Every day our personal gear was ready, checked and set up in the same place on our boat for each dive. (You still personally check your air tank is full – of course you would wouldn’t you?) Then, after a boat ride to the diving site the ‘valet diving’ went into operation again with a crew member helping me to put on my buoyancy jacket and tank. A steady, reassuring hand was always available to get me to the boat edge, because wearing those ungainly, trippy fins is destabilising. With a de-fogged mask and the regulator ready in my hand I was ready to go and explore.

Diving and being on a boat were new to me and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.  This wasn’t something I’d done in my youth nor in my middle age. It was a whole new experience and I was still slightly wary. There was so much to learn whilst responding to what seemed like a hundred and one instructions and demands from people, equipment and events.  The one constant was my fabulous buddy, Merlin, who was a stalwart friend and encourager. More of her and her unstinting generosity later. However, I soon found out that divers are a generous and decent bunch and when they discovered I was a geriatric ‘Newbie’ they were both delighted and encouraging with tales of octogenarians doing incredible diving. No pressure there then! The trip rapidly turned out to be a great adventure with much laughter, camaraderie and help from crew and divers.  

Dive masters and crew are interesting. They are an international bunch of people, mostly living away from their homes, who love their work, are besotted by marine life and know so much detail about the  day to day life of the animals and corals.  I discovered that many of them also have a wicked sense of humour and are a great support for each other. On that trip I wrote notes which give a flavour of several excellent dive masters. They all shared what they had seen recently whilst diving and what we should look out for.  “Therese is a very competent dive master and she’s a hard act to follow in terms of Irish humour at its best.” When Ramel and Anthony took over I wrote “Today we are enjoying Ramel’s scuba expertise combined with warm Caribbean humour. I love it ” further notes added “we now have good Anglo Saxon support from Antony who hails from the Channel Islands” and later I wrote “ We are a happy boat of divers supported by an international team of enthusiasts”. Diving is a serious business so to find safety and care mixed in with light-hearted banter and even at times black humour was fabulous.

I also wrote about the valet care I was experiencing “The crew are more than helpful in enabling this grandma to get in and out of the water. It can be challenging with large waves,  especially if there’s a heavy swell as I try to climb the ladder. The crew will happily take my fins off me whilst I’m still in the water, haul me aboard and carry the heavy tank away for refilling”. Oh Yes! Make life easy on yourself.  Reading my log of my first diving trip to the Caymans the memories flood back ” When we get back on board we are handed a fresh-water hosepipe to shower off the sea water. It’s so refreshing to wash away the sea water whilst standing on the stern in the sunshine.  Then we dry off on clean towels and help ourselves to biscuits, chilled fresh fruit and water from the portable fridge. It’s a fabulous basic and simple way of life. As we laze around in the sunshine, thinking about the incredible fish and corals we’ve just seen, we swop notes and ask questions about what we saw and what we think we saw. Suddenly it’s time for the next dive.”- It seemed to get better and better.  

Valet Diving is definitely there to make it easy and, yes, you might like to do it all yourself but for me it’s not a competition.  For me diving is about being able to enter an extraordinary new world using special equipment that allows you to see the most amazing animals and marine life. I’ll use everything that helps me to achieve this. So there’s no question in my mind Valet Diving is the only way to go whatever your age.