“Diver, diver, are you ok?”
A few days ago I finished my first PADI RESCUE DIVER course with an English gentleman, named Desmond. This course is always good fun! First of all, you get to learn some great new skills that are extremely helpful for diving and secondly, something terribly funny always seems to happen. We were in the pool on the second day of the course learning the skills. Scenario practice with Louise as the victim; she was tired at the surface and Desmond attempted to throw the tow line for her to grab. Instead of getting it behind her, he hit her on the head! It was perfect because I wanted Louise to end up an unconscious diver anyways, but we all had a good laugh after she groaned and collapsed in the water!
So, on the third day of the course, I took Desmond to Sumawan Beach, right here in Sanur. Thankfully, one of our Japanese instructors was conducting an OPEN WATER COURSE at the same time as my rescue course; so we were able to take out the Bali Ocean 2, our company’s boat and home away from home! After less than a five minute ride, we reach the dive site location. We couldn’t have asked for better conditions for the day. Visibility was incredible and there was absolutely no current to be seen. I gave a thorough briefing about what the day may have in store; hinting at the fact that he needed to be prepared for any and every scenario we were going to throw at him (and of course it was going to be every scenario!) Then I let the fun begin! We started off with an easy pleasure dive; exploring the site and being rewarded with some great finds. We found two stonefish, a baby blue spotted stingray, a banded snake eel, a moray eel, plenty of puffer fish, and as always lionfish galore. It was a very nice and relaxing dive, when all of the sudden Louise started breathing hard and panicking. Desmond reacted immediately and went over to check on her. She pulled up the sleeve of her wetsuit to show a black slash line with stitch marks on her arm and the word “cut” written below it. He knew exactly what to do; calming her down, he assisted her at the surface and applied first aid once we got her into the boat.
After a short surface interval and some miraculous healing by Louise, I discreetly sent her and Mangku into the water to place our “missing diver”, who always seems to have a blue weight belt on! When they came up, incredibly enough, Louise was tired and Mangku was panicking. You would hope that they could handle themselves better in the water! But luckily for them, Desmond was there to save the day again! He entered the water and towed them back to the boat. Minutes later we all descended together in search of the “missing diver”. Success, we found the diver with the blue weight belt!! Then Mangku became our unconscious diver and was carefully brought up to the surface, where Desmond proceeded to give rescue breaths, undo both his own and Mangku’s equipment, AND tow the victim back to the boat. I’m glad he can walk and chew gum at the same time or else that task might have been a little difficult! All in all, it was a great day and as always, a great course! It is still my favorite course to be part of and I can’t wait to do another one!