Every year the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) Diving Society hosts an event called Total Submersion. It’s a week of boat and shore diving, parties, food, hanging with other divers and maybe even making new friends.

I managed to wangle some vacation time from May 1 to May 8, which when you work shifts punching a time clock, is no small feat. The weeks leading up to the event dragged on and on and the night before I left seemed to take a lifetime. I had to work until 9pm the night before and I had a 7 am flight the next day. Once again, I procrastinated packing, thinking I am such a pro I can do it in 15 minutes. But not only did I have to pack some clothing, but all that scuba gear. But I prefer packing the gear last so that I can make sure I don’t forget anything. From time to time, I have dreams that I am going on a long, exciting, exotic diving vacation and as I am boarding Air France or British Airways and the cabin door is closing, I discover that I didn’t pack my mask, or my fins, or my BC. Things you really can’t dive without. Occasionally I will dream that I forgot my purse with all my money in it, and very occasionally I’ll dream that I am boarding the plane completely topless.

But I digress.

I ended up not going to bed until 12 or 1. I had to leave the house at 4:30 in order to get checked in for an international flight. I couldn’t get any of my so-called “friends” to take me to the airport. I mean, they could go back to bed, or get an early start on a Saturday. But it all turned out well, as I ended up waking up at 4:30 am. I didn’t even have time to shower, I just threw some clothes on and bolted out of there. I just did make it in time. I only sat at the gate for a few minutes when they called my row and off I went. I didn’t forget to pack anything and I was wearing a top.

The flight was uneventful except for the male flight attendant trying desperately to flirt with the busty blonde in the row across the aisle and in front of me. From Houston to Georgetown, Grand Cayman, the guy was chatting with her stooped over leaning on the arm of her seat which put his ass directly in my face for approximately two and a half hours. Nice. He did manage to serve a couple of drinks but it took a lot to distract him from the blonde to, you know, do his job. I am pretty confident he struck out anyway.

The humidity festival is ongoing in the Caribbean and in Georgetown, the airport is the small Banana Republic type. They wheel the stairs up to the jet and we de-plane to the open air so the moisture can hit you like a bus right away. There was something new this year, they have enclosed the rolling stairs in some sort of plastic covering that quite frankly, looked like a giant hamster tube. That made it even hotter.

The Cayman Islands are made up of three small rocky clods of dirt called Grand Cayman, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac. They are located south of Cuba and west of Jamaica. The Cayman Islands are famous as an offshore banking center in the Caribbean. The islands are actually the peaks of a massive underwater ridge, known as the Cayman Trench, standing 8,000 feet from the sea floor, which barely exceeds the surface. The islands are therefore at sea level and this leaves them vulnerable to the sea, and worse, hurricanes. Grand Cayman is the largest, with an area of 76 square miles. I have never been to either of the two “Sister Islands” of Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, and I hear the diving is very good there. They are located about 80 miles east of Grand Cayman and have areas of 14 square miles and 10 square miles respectively. All three islands were formed by large coral heads covering submerged ice age peaks of western extensions of the Cuban Sierra Maestra range and are mostly flat. One notable exception to this is The Bluff on Cayman Brac’s eastern part, which rises to 140 feet above sea level, the highest point on the island and where everyone rushes when a hurricane approaches.

Grand Cayman was obliterated by Hurricane Ivan in 2004. Hurricane Ivan was a category 5 storm (the strongest rating on the Saffir-Simpson scale) and was the size of Texas. Think about it, Grand Cayman is 76 square miles. The state of Texas is 268,820 square miles. It swirled over the island for two days and basically ate it. There really wasn’t anywhere to go, not even The Bluff on Cayman Brac.

Fortunately, Total Submersion takes place before hurricane season. The weather is usually pretty clear when we’re there. The first day of diving was Sunday and after an orientation session we were off to the boats. At Total Sub, everyone is divided up into teams with a color designation. The first year I went I was on the Red Team. Since then I’ve been on the White team consistantly. There are repeat guests who go every year and some people who attend every other year or couple of years. I have been going back every year since 2007. I like the event, have made friends, and the diving is always a sure thing, unlike places like San Diego where the conditions can be unpredictable. However, the first day of diving was a little unusual as the seas were what could be considered rough for the Cayman Islands. The boat was rocking and bouncing and this, gentle readers, makes The ScubaJedi nervous. It’s the same feeling as when I’m on skis (read Adventures in Skiing) or on an out of control water sled (read Whale Riding in Rocky Point). I guess I feel a bit helpless as I know that no matter what, the water is always the boss and can knock you around any way it wants. Once I splash though, everything is much better. For the second dive we moved the boat to calmer waters to a dive site called Eden Rock. The first one was Little Tunnels because it’s full of little tunnels. Eden Rock is a popular site for not only divers, but for snorkelers as well. They come off the cruise ships that dock not too far away. I’ve heard of snorklers near divers will sometimes swoop down and grab a puff of air from a diver’s spare air hose. That, to me, is an invitation to having my fin shoved up a snorkeler’s ass.

The first two days, I am usually very tired after the morning boat dives, but on the second day, which was Monday, I managed to get in around 4 dives before becoming unconcious. There are optional dives you can pay for like a night boat dive. I got a rough start with night diving but now find it very comfortable and like it as you get to see all the creatures of the night that venture out to look for food. I signed up for the night boat dive and was looking forward to it to the point that I forgot my regulator. I left it in the room. A lot of people leave their gear laying around as it’s pretty safe but my regulator was expensive enough that I didn’t want to leave it laying around with the rest of my gear. It has a wireless transmitter that talks to my wrist dive computer and lets me know how much air I have and neat stuff like that. So I usually tote the wrist computer and the reguator assembly with me. So we’re under way out to sea and I commence to setting up my gear and lo and behold, no regulator! For those non-divers reading this, the regulator is the thingamajig that screws on to the air cylinder and a hose comes out of it and to your mouth, which allows you to breathe. It’s kind of important. So I began to whine and bitch that I was going to miss the night dive. I was pissed. But there was a spare reg on board and Scotty, one of the boat captains, helped me set it up. But then the low pressure coupling didn’t fit my spare air assembly so I began to kvetch again. Another diver on board happened to have about 5 spare low pressure hoses with him as it happened, and one of them fit. I was still a bit twitchy about using different life support systems, but I splahed anyway and saw many wonderous things.

I completed my 100th dive on this trip, and the last dive of my journey was the most spectacular of all. A site called Big Tunnels, which has, big tunnels to swim through. But it was like diving in the Grand Canyon only you don’t have to stop at the ledge and look down, you can cruise over the deep chasms and even dive down in them. I saw the biggest Super Male Parrot fish. Super Male Parrot Fishes are Parrot Fishes that were once female then decide to switch. The process is more than likley much cheaper and easier than when humans decide to do this. The life cycle of the Stoplight Parrotfish, which is most commonly found in this area is complex. But the SuperMales are really friggin big fish. They school, so you have to wonder what is after them, as there is always a bigger fish.

After Big Tunnels we went to a site called The Aquarium where, after I descended to a depth of about 30 feet discovered that my transmitter was no longer speaking to my wrist computer. The two obviously had a quarrel and were no longer communicating. Bummer. I went up and boarded the boat, switched off the air, switched it back on and everything was fine. But I didn’t trust it and decided to stay up top. Big Tunnels had been so spectacular I wanted to remember the trip with that last dive. I stayed aboard with Scotty and Trevor and took pictures of my feet.

The next day consisted of shopping so I swooped into Georgetown and spent money like a drunken sailor. I regretted it when I looked at the receipts and saw that I was going to have to live on peanut butter for a couple of weeks.

But, I can’t wait until next year when I can do it all again.

Until the next adventure,
The ScubaJedi