Always an Adventure

I signed up for a SCUBA dive the other day with (who else) the Swedes. We were scheduled for two dives in the afternoon. Our first dive is at Petite Tabac, which, as intrepid readers will recall, is the island where Jack Sparrow and Elizabeth were stranded. The seas are running at eight feet, and I'm not sure why they take us to this site, because the waves are breaking directly above the reef where we will be diving. We get in and assemble on the bottom at a depth of ten feet, and the visibility is very disappointing - only about fifteen feet. I'm hoping that it will improve once we get to a depth of fifty feet, but we have no such luck, and its truly one of the worst dives I've ever been on. Not only that, but our dive master is consistently stepping on the coral - he's the one who is supposed to be keeping us from doing that. (Although I'm not really sure how much it matters at this point, because, as far as I can see, the shallow coral in the southern Caribbean in now almost completely dead - well, the hard coral that is.) That's OK, though, because surely the second dive will be better. We surface and get back on board the dive boat, and when the Captain tries to start the engine, nothing happens. After trying for a few minutes, he takes the cover off the engine, and our hopes for a second dive fade when we see smoke coming from a wire bundle. He and the dive master work on the engine for an hour or so, as we watch the sun getting lower. The boat has no radio, and we are beginning to think that we will be spending the night on the island, eating coconuts and trying to find Jack Sparrow's rum cache. Then we remember that Elizabeth burned all the rum. "But, why is the rum gone?"

 

Eventually, they call another boat on a cell phone, and this fourteen foot open boat with a forty horsepower outboard starts towing our twenty foot dive boat in eight foot seas. What could possibly go wrong? We move along at less than two knots, sort of towards Union Island, but after the tow rope breaks twice, a larger boat shows up. They manage to hook onto us, but the rope breaks again, and the boss decides that there is too much weight in our boat, so he comes along side (in eight foot seas) and we scramble into the "rescue" boat. During the entire process, no one apologizes to us or bothers to explain what is going on. We finally get back to Union just before dark. Then I see that, despite the operator's assurances that my dinghy would be fine at his dock, someone has used it and stolen some bungie straps out of it. The owner offers us a discount, but we have agreed that there should be no charge for this fiasco. I'm the appointed negotiator, since English is my first (only) language. At some point in this process, the owner completely blows a gasket, gives me all the money back, and threatens to beat me up if I ever say another bad word about him. So, I haven't mentioned the name of the dive shop - but, by the way, it's the only one on Union Island. Really, you can't make this stuff up...

 

Thanks to my Finnish Friend Mike for these Photos