Day 198! Wow 2 more days till day 200 🙂 Pretty cool to know I’ve been traveling for so long and keeping up writing about my days. Traveling has definitely changed pace with the dive master training, but I’m enjoying it! I’m really looking forward to getting back on the road, but we still have a little under halfway left to go in Koh Tao, so plenty of more days of diving!

Today started off the same as yesterday! A nice bit of sleeping in and then waking up at 8am to get my day started. I find it funny that 8am is now sleeping in for me… when I was volunteering 10am was an early start! Times have changed (for now).

I got myself a muesli bowl for breakfast, to help fuel my mind for the couple hour lecture about stress and rescue.

Today’s class was about unconscious diver situations and rescue. This includes helping unconscious divers on and below the surface along with how to search and recover lost divers.

Class got done around 10am and since we weren’t needed until 11am, I went back to my room for a quick power nap.

I woke up and walked back over to Taco where lunch was waiting. It’s always nice having a free meal, it may be the same rotation of food every week, but it’s still solid Thai food.

I played a few games of pool as lunch wrapped up and then it was time to head to the pier! We were finally back at the main pier and not the secondary pier. The sun was out and the water conditions were supposed to be good!

As we made our way to the first dive of the day, we were met with clouds that rolled in and blocked the sun. This made the dives a lot chillier.

I had also just received a rash guard (a long sleeve underwater shirt) in the mail from Lazada and I chose the wrong day to switch from the wetsuit to the rash guard. Thankfully it fits and works, but I got fairly cold on the dives today.

The first dive was all about saving unconscious divers. But before it began, Chris jumped into the water for Kit to save him (thankfully not me again). Chris of course acted in his typical ways and Kit got dunked a lot, but eventually Chris subsided and let Kit rescue him. I helped drag his dead weight body into the boat and he gave both of us a big high five and a big laugh. This wasn’t the end of him today, even though he had his own class.

We ran through drills of saving unconscious divers on and below the surface with Kit and I playing the victims. Kit and I ran through the scenarios once each to get a refresher on them. We had to do a full rescue from the bottom of the ocean with a 100m swim to the boat in under 8 minutes. But because the drills took too long, we pushed it to our second dive.

During this dive, we spent a lot of time on the surface of the ocean… and it started to torrentially downpour while we were on the surface. This caused a bit of a current through the bay we were in with made me glad we didn’t have enough time to do the rescue in it. The weather definitely added to the intensity of the day though.

Before we got back in the boat, Chelsea and Guada took Sina and Grace to run through the skills one more time… and this is when Chris made his return. He dove into the water with full gear on and pretended to be a distressed scuba diver. I quickly jumped to action swimming under him, latching on to his tank with my legs, and inflating his BC… all the steps needed to be done. But Chris wasn’t done yet. Instead, he turned around and grabbed for my regulator.

I was unaware I needed to let it fall out of my mouth and instead he ripped the mouth piece (easily fixable on the boat) out of the regulator and it was still in my mouth. I guess in the tussle I accidentally elbowed him in the face, but all a part of him trying to prove a point to us. Apparently I missed a couple steps at the beginning and didn’t position myself in a way to stop him from turning around (things I wasn’t taught) but now I know! Gotta make mistakes to learn.

The second dive was a mix of a search and rescue dive and a hell dive. The plan was to have Sina and Grace search for a missing “person” (a hidden object) and the rest of us would just tag along. Then once they found the object we’d do a hell dive for them and then a mini (but intense) one for Kit and I.

But unfortunately, the search and rescue took a very long time. So we didn’t end up having time for Kit and I to have our own intense hell dive. We did make sure to have time for Sina and Grace to have theirs.

Over the next few minutes, we all acted out different distressed diver scenarios while Guada and Chelsea ripped off their masks, purged them with their regulators, etc. kit and I were also tasked to sneakily undo their tank strap so their buddy would have to fix it.

They did a great job and rolled with the punches really well.

I was shivering at this point, but the dives weren’t done for Kit and I. We had to go back down and do our 8 minute trial run of the rescue… well Kit did. Everything took too long so we only ended up having time for Kit to do his and he ended with exactly 10 seconds to spare. With all the waves and current, it proved to be a big challenge, so maybe it was a blessing in disguise that I didn’t have to do it yet. But I was looking forward to completing it and getting it out of the way.

At some point, I’ll do it with Chris… which might pose to be a crazier time, but we’ll see. All in the name of becoming a competent and better diver!

With that, Sina and Grace were now stress and rescue certified!

I was cold and tired, but Pauline invited Kit and I over for dinner at her apartment with a few others. So I got back to Taco, helped clean bags, and quickly took a shower.

I didn’t want to bring my full hungry self over to her place, so I got a taco before heading over.

Kiki, Pauline’s roommate, made us lemon pasta, which was actually very tasty! It was my first non-SE Asian pasta dish since leaving home… and man I didn’t realize how much I missed regular pasta.

We had a lovely couple of hours chatting and laughing, but I called it a night and made my way home.

Tomorrow, Chris had put Kit and I on the schedule for the morning boat to just navigate each other around. But a fun diver signed up… and he thought we were ready to take one out, so tomorrow Kit and I will be responsible for the fun and safety of our first shared client!

We’re both very excited to lead a client but it’s no different than leading each other or a class. I’m sure it will go swimmingly and I can’t wait to update you all tomorrow!

– Elie