Diving achieved!
Jul. 16th, 2006 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbHurray for transport. Hurray for family who forgive you for being a selfish little shit and help you to achieve transport.
After all the drama, I was able to go diving today.
We were a group of about a dozen diving in off the shore. The dive was organised by the closest dive centre. We went down to a popular local swimming area and climbed down some stairs at the rocks. Visibility was bad; 1-2 metres. The water was calm, but boat activity caused some choppiness. The wind was a mild southwesterly, sun shining and skies clear, air temperature around 27 C, water temperature around 15 C. Being the least experienced diver there, I was paired with a guy who was a qualified instructor. Our maximum depth was 7 metres: further out 11 or 12 metres might have been achieved, but the current was running south and hard between an island and the shore. Going out that far would have made it harder to get back to our entry/exit point.
Underwater is a different world. You descend slowly, trailing bubbles from your BCD, pressure rising and falling in your ears. Apart from the Vader-esque sound of the regulator and your bubbling breath, and the occasional powerboat engine buzzing somewhere metres off, it’s silent. If you held your breath – which you will never do, because that could kill you very easily – you might discover the true silence which in this age of engines and overpopulation and the electrical hum of towns and cities seems impossible to find.
Kelp strands twine up to meet you. The water is murky. If you drift more than a metre or so from your buddy, you’ll lose him behind clouds of particles stirred up from the sandy bottom. Better to stay within touching distance, even to hold his hand. You drift over the kelp and the seaweed-hidden rocks, centimetres from the bottom. Even with a depth gauge, if you couldn’t see the bottom, you wouldn’t be able to tell up from down with visibility this poor.
There are crabs on the bottom, large ones, gnarled and barnacled, clinging on the rocks and swaying in the kelp. Larger outcrops loom up out of the murk, startling in their suddenness. You pass above a drift of unanchored seaweed, and the bottom clears to a narrow patch of sand.
You settle, shingle stirring at the pressure of your knees. Your partner shows you a hermit crab, scaring it from its shell and gently letting it return. There are shrimp hiding under thin shelves of rock, and a crab with red eyestalks and a shell big as a saucer.
Your buddy motions, and you move on, following his lead, fingers touching the sand for balance. Every so often you check your air gauge, your depth gauge, your watch: each time you look down, you’re surprised when a large crab you hadn’t noticed before scuttles out of your way; or when a flash of white glimpsed out of the corner of your eye turns out to be another crab hiding in the seaweed.
A dip in the seafloor, stone and seaweed spiralling on three sides. Your partner puts a small crab, so seaweed-grown that you can barely see what lies beneath, into your palm. Tiny claws tickle. He takes it back and returns it to the kelp, and a shoal of fish, each oval-shaped and about the length of your index finger, drifts out of the murk ahead of you, almost close enough to touch.
Beneath the fish, a lobster lurking in the shelter of rock and kelp. Your buddy teases it out with his torch, and, black-bodied, it retreats, evil-looking pincers tucked close by its carapace. You’re not wearing gloves, and you keep your hands fisted and close by your sides. You’re not going to put a finger near that, even when your buddy does.
When the time comes to surface, it’s too soon. Always too soon. You swim back to shore behind your buddy with little choppy waves slapping at your face and the current tugging at your flippers, and you swear that it’s not going to be six months until the next time. Not again.
And in other news:
I wish for peace, too: http://northbard.livejournal.com/99773.html (via![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matociquala).
ws,
Justice and Death. I wonder what that signifies?
After all the drama, I was able to go diving today.
We were a group of about a dozen diving in off the shore. The dive was organised by the closest dive centre. We went down to a popular local swimming area and climbed down some stairs at the rocks. Visibility was bad; 1-2 metres. The water was calm, but boat activity caused some choppiness. The wind was a mild southwesterly, sun shining and skies clear, air temperature around 27 C, water temperature around 15 C. Being the least experienced diver there, I was paired with a guy who was a qualified instructor. Our maximum depth was 7 metres: further out 11 or 12 metres might have been achieved, but the current was running south and hard between an island and the shore. Going out that far would have made it harder to get back to our entry/exit point.
Underwater is a different world. You descend slowly, trailing bubbles from your BCD, pressure rising and falling in your ears. Apart from the Vader-esque sound of the regulator and your bubbling breath, and the occasional powerboat engine buzzing somewhere metres off, it’s silent. If you held your breath – which you will never do, because that could kill you very easily – you might discover the true silence which in this age of engines and overpopulation and the electrical hum of towns and cities seems impossible to find.
Kelp strands twine up to meet you. The water is murky. If you drift more than a metre or so from your buddy, you’ll lose him behind clouds of particles stirred up from the sandy bottom. Better to stay within touching distance, even to hold his hand. You drift over the kelp and the seaweed-hidden rocks, centimetres from the bottom. Even with a depth gauge, if you couldn’t see the bottom, you wouldn’t be able to tell up from down with visibility this poor.
There are crabs on the bottom, large ones, gnarled and barnacled, clinging on the rocks and swaying in the kelp. Larger outcrops loom up out of the murk, startling in their suddenness. You pass above a drift of unanchored seaweed, and the bottom clears to a narrow patch of sand.
You settle, shingle stirring at the pressure of your knees. Your partner shows you a hermit crab, scaring it from its shell and gently letting it return. There are shrimp hiding under thin shelves of rock, and a crab with red eyestalks and a shell big as a saucer.
Your buddy motions, and you move on, following his lead, fingers touching the sand for balance. Every so often you check your air gauge, your depth gauge, your watch: each time you look down, you’re surprised when a large crab you hadn’t noticed before scuttles out of your way; or when a flash of white glimpsed out of the corner of your eye turns out to be another crab hiding in the seaweed.
A dip in the seafloor, stone and seaweed spiralling on three sides. Your partner puts a small crab, so seaweed-grown that you can barely see what lies beneath, into your palm. Tiny claws tickle. He takes it back and returns it to the kelp, and a shoal of fish, each oval-shaped and about the length of your index finger, drifts out of the murk ahead of you, almost close enough to touch.
Beneath the fish, a lobster lurking in the shelter of rock and kelp. Your buddy teases it out with his torch, and, black-bodied, it retreats, evil-looking pincers tucked close by its carapace. You’re not wearing gloves, and you keep your hands fisted and close by your sides. You’re not going to put a finger near that, even when your buddy does.
When the time comes to surface, it’s too soon. Always too soon. You swim back to shore behind your buddy with little choppy waves slapping at your face and the current tugging at your flippers, and you swear that it’s not going to be six months until the next time. Not again.
And in other news:
I wish for peace, too: http://northbard.livejournal.com/99773.html (via
matociquala). | You scored as BraveTabby. You are the Brave Tabby - still only a kitten, but ready to guard your friends and your territory. Claws - and swords - at the ready!
Which Bohemian Cat are you? With cats-in-costumes pictures - meow! created with QuizFarm.com |
 | You scored as XI: Justice. The blindfold arbiter weighs the evidence and passes judgement without fear or favour. There can be no appeal.Justice is not necessarily the same as Law. True justice seeks out the spirit of the law, not just its letter. If a law is bad then true Justice will set that law aside. This is the sacred responsibility of those given the power to judge. If well aspected in a Tarot reading, this card can indicate settlement of disputes, the achievement of a just outcome. If badly aspected this card can indicate corruption and failure of justice.
Which Major Arcana Tarot Card Are You? created with QuizFarm.com |
Justice and Death. I wonder what that signifies?
