davethegrinch.net

Sarah says:
Perhaps some of you know that I’m not a very good swimmer. So the story goes, my parents hired me a swimming teacher when I was about 5 but I was such a brat that she quit. Funny enough, I spent all of my summers growing up at the beach playing in the ocean but could always either reach the bottom or wore my trusty innertube with cute pictures of seashells and fishies. If I could have an adult version of that innertube, I would. I decided enough was enough and took a swimming class when I was 19 and actually did learn to swim properly but something happened and I’ve blocked out everything I learned and now I get all choked up when I try to “do the breathing thing”. I also really, really don’t like deep water, dark water, I don’t like to think about, imagine or worse yet see the underside of boats in the water and I can’t think of anything more terrifying that seeing with my own eyes a shipwreck lying on the sea floor. I have a very hard time snorkeling and always panic a little for the first 5 minutes and don’t generally ever let go of the piece of the snorkel that is in my mouth allowing me to breath.
One would assume then that the last thing in the world I should try or would try would be scuba diving. I would completely, 100% agree with you on that. When David did his scuba certification course in Thailand last month I happily did not. But, see, two things have happened since then: 1) vacationing at the beach has become very solitary for me since my buddy now goes diving at every opportunity and 2) I realized that I’m defiantly scared of something that I’ve never actually experienced.

More…So…..I tried it. We went all the way out to the edge of the earth, OK just to the edge of Borneo but it took a really long time to get there, so that David could dive at this amazing, super-duper dive site called Sipidan. Supposed to be one of the best sites in the world. There’s an under-water cliff and the ocean depth instantly goes from 5m (15 feet) to 600m and you can see hundreds of sea turtles and sharks and all kinds of magical, electric coral. They charge *nearly* as much for you to snorkel here as to dive so instead of doing that, and before my brain could kick in, I signed up for a “Discover Scuba” day course. I thought it would be like the Discover Flying thing David gave me for Christmas last year where I didn’t actually have to learn anything - I just held on and flew the plane for an hour. Oh no……..little did I know the terrifying things I would do before the day was out.
My instructor was a fantastically patient guy named Chey from South Africa. I owe everything to him. My stomach rose to my throat and I felt like I was going to hurl as he explained that I would have to pass 4 skills tests, underwater - sitting on the bottom, before we would be able to go for a swim. I would have to: 1. remove the thing that lets me breath from my mouth and put it back in again, underwater. 2. Remove the thing that lets me breath from my mouth, toss it behind me, find it again, and put it back in my mouth, all while underwater. 3. Pretend that my tank has run out of air, remove the thing that lets me breath from my mouth, find his back-up thing that lets you breath and put it into my mouth, while underwater and 4. clear water from my mask by tilting my head up, pulling the mask away from my face and blowing out my nose - you got it, while underwater.  Getting INTO the water was scary enough for me. I had to roll backward off the side of the boat. The panic was already setting in. Then, while holding on to a buoy line, I had to get comfortable putting my face in the water and breathing through the regulator…………………………….45 minutes later, we were still holding on to the buoy line. After many, many babysteps, several panic attacks and several anxious requests to go back up, I was finally, finally sitting with Chey on the ocean floor - a whopping 10 feet below the surface. I did successfully complete my skills tests (receiving a very sweet underwater high-five and handshake each time) and I did get my swim but I can’t say I ever really *enjoyed* what I was doing. I fought off allowing my brain to think about what I was doing all day. I would move frantically from kind of feeling peaceful to feeling trapped and certain I would die a painful death at any moment. I tried so hard to just think “oh look at the fishies! Oh, that’s a cool fish. Oh wow, look at that!” but it was work, hard work. Chey was so very kind and patient and didn’t get at all cross with me when he found out from the other dive teams that we were just a few feet from seeing a sea turtle if only I hadn’t asked, after swimming for 45 minutes, if we could be done.
Being the kind of person I am - scared of everything - I’ve had lots of chances in my life to feel the difference between before and after. Before: all the blood draining to my feet kind of fear. After: beaming smile, walking on water kind of elation. I can happily report that I reunited with David at the end of the day with that proud, excited beaming smile and I couldn’t wait to tell him all about it. I’m still not sure if diving is for me….still don’t know if I’ll go through the course. I think I need to give it another go to make up my mind, just one more time………:)

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 15th, 2007 at 5:21 am and is filed under Global Travels, Malaysia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.