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This month’s article was written by the Caloosa Dive Club
Secretary and Official Scribe, Joe Arcuni. The Photo was taken by Joe on
the wreck of the USS Oriskany.
A new season, a new adventure, or just “balance grasshopper”!
I was going to write an article on what it
was like to dive recently on the world’s largest artificial reef, the
USS Oriskany or as the locals call it, the Great Carrier Reef or maybe
something comical about what it’s really like for divers like my wife
and me, a pair of devout procrastinators to get prepared for the
upcoming WARM water diving season. Which fondly reminded me why “we” (my
wife/buddy/best friend and I) are no longer among the group of lovingly
devoted die hard or hyper enthusiastic new divers that are willing to
brave cold air, cold water or both for the sake of a good dive or maybe
some spear fishing.
But…at one time when we were younger “we” most certainly were…as a
group of dive club members took a trip in early February about
fifteen-plus years ago up to the beautiful and much heralded Crystal
River dive site, to dive, swim and interact with the gentile (and often
misunderstood) manatee or sea cow…just like the colorful brochure said
and many other divers had spoken very highly of.
When we got there the place was crowded with people young and old, all
ready and raring to get going and see what all the excitement was all
about, it was a highly charged environment. As were my wife and I…new
divers thirsting for new sites, new adventures and of course for new
ways to use all this cool new gear.
The day time air temperature was around sixty, but as I remember we were
young, dumb and bullet proof and a little chilly air was not a
consideration. After a couple of hours of diving with manatees young and
old and swimming with a variety of fish that seemed to have gotten the
short end of the stick when it came to colors, we explored the safe
cavern areas took pictures and finally we took out our regulators and
had the thrill of drinking water, under water!
All of these thing’s were diving first’s for us and we still remember
them vividly, but the part of this adventure that we remember most was
part when someone said “hey, lets all go on a night dive, and being one
of those above mentioned hyper enthusiastic new divers I said, sure why
not! By the time we had dried out, eaten and were ready to go diving
again the night time temperature had dropped to around fifty and there
was a stiff breeze.
Most of our group had by this time made (what turned out to be) an
enlightened decision to pass on the evening dive. But…like I said,
“hyper-enthusiastic new divers” we put on our skins, pulled on our
rented 5ml wet suits (still wet from the earlier dives) and headed down
to the waters edge where they had rafts with trolling motors to get you
from shore to the head spring with ease. Well…at least it had during
the day, with its lack of wind and abundance of light, so off we went,
navigating with the aid of a dive light and fighting a gale, inched our
way over to the perfect spot above the spring, which as a plus had not a
single diver on it.
My intrepid wife hit the water first and after surfacing quickly
commented on how much warmer it was then the air had been only moments
earlier, and she prompted me to come on in and see. I know now that it
was I who was the young and dumb one, almost as soon as I surfaced after
rolling into the water.
Indeed the water momentarily felt warm on my chilled face and stiff
hands but as it crept slowly into the thin space between skin and
neoprene I knew my wife was a lot smarter then me and able to keep a
secret at least long enough for me to have this very thrilling
experience, I could almost hear her smiling.
Reality can be a real eye opener and in this case the reality
was that the water temp was a nippy seventy two degrees which is roughly
twenty four degrees below our normal warm blooded body temp, and this is
still a fact, regardless of how thick the cumbersome sausage casing
you’re wearing is.
After about twenty five minutes of looking at a lot of the same stuff we
saw earlier my wife gave me the universal sign for “its time to go
honey” as she looked me in the eyes, tried to wrap her arms around each
other and shivered, she paused only a moment to do this then headed back
to where we had parked the raft. We met at the side of the raft and I
climbed aboard so I could help my buddy up, but as I stood there, while
my beloved handed her fins up to me I realized that the temperature
had dropped down to (what felt like) the low forties and the wind had
picked up enough to put a light chop on the water. I believe for a
moment I felt the same as my wife had when she was in the water and I
wasn’t, like I knew something that she didn’t, but as soon as she took
off her mask and looked up at me from the water I knew the secret was
out and I also knew that soon, if we didn’t move quickly we could know
what the joy of hypothermia felt like. Together we coaxed the raft
around against the swirling wind for awhile until it managed to bump
into the place we wanted to go and we tied it to a post. Like climbers
without Sherpa’s we slowly gathered our wits along with our belongings
and headed back up to our cabin, we fell into our warm cozy room,
sitting, staring at each other knowing that the sausage casings that had
kept us alive, now had to come off and that they would fight back the
whole way. After the fight, which we won, we slept the sleep of
exhausted conquering warriors, the deep sleep of people who fought the
good fight. In the morning we laughed at our over the top bravado as we
had dove off a raft, alone, in a cold, windy and unfamiliar place to
look at rocks underwater at night, man ya gotta love this sport!
Which may somewhat explain why these days we lean in the direction
of warm water and are willing to trek to out of the way place’s where
they specialize in just that, to do it. Finally, an Old Norwegian saying
that I heard a long time ago say’s “there’s no such thing as bad
weather…only bad clothing”, so I guess we’ll see ya’ll under warm waters
this dive season, Joe Arcuni diver for life.
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