Finishing the Diving.....

Over the past two months, ive been on a bit of a detox....i gave up smoking as i kept reading somewhere its bad for you!! And i only had two beers in the whole of November....

Mainly because of the diving, you see.....but then just when i get close to the end, i decide to break the ban and all hell breaks loose....

I only popped out for one, the owner of my dive shop, Shay, had opened a new bar in the centre of town, so myself and Andy were going for a beer.....we popped into the Reggae Bar just to have a couple there and watch some of the tourists fight each other in the local Thai Boxing 'beat merrry hell out of each other in the Winner Gets a Free Bucket" tournament held there every night...truly entertaining stuff!

Well, i hadnt quite planned on staying up all night, but a combination of Singha beers, watching the fighting etc, meeting Louise, i had a bit of a late one.....possibly about 5am finish. I cant remember exactly....i remember dancing on the beach, trying to steal a longboat, random strangers, lots of cocktails, well you get the picture...one of my favourite ever nights out!!

Which in the grand scheme of things is not usually a problem, however the diving instructors decided to drop the last test of all on me that day.....

I get a call about 1pm...i need to complete my Stress Test if i am to finish my DM on Friday....so i reluctantly haul my tired arse out of bed, make my excuses and leggit down to the beach to meet my maker.....

First i had to complete some skills and also rescue an unconcious diver from the sea bed and then perform a diver tow back to the boat whilst removing our equipment. Not too hard, not perfect but completed. Then the main event, the STRESS test.

Carlie (the other DM) and i, have to basically swap out entire equipment under the water >5m.......with only one tank working, meaning we have to share our air through one regulator too, no Octopus's allowed!!Two breaths each then swap.

Jeez, this was going to be fun....Carlie is a size 8 at maximum and im a generous 12 i guess.....so we had to swap, Carlie got to wear a larger BCD making it slightly easier........i wish we had video cameras. to see the carnage that ensued.......i kept getting my BCD stuck around my neck and to say we struggled was an understatement.....well me more than Carlie, she probably saved my bacon that day....

Bearing in mind that we also had the instructors throwing up sand in our face, trying to take of our masks in the middle of the swap and then the highlight of the whole event, they had an extra air tank which they were opening and firing at us from all directions....it was like being in the centre of an underwater earthquake..or a James Bond movie escape scene. Amazing.

We made it eventually, it took three attempts but we managed to swap kit under a severe amount of stress and completed the task....looking back it was superb but at the time there were seriously parts where i thought i was going to drown, i drunk litres of seawater that day...

.....and lived to tell the tale.....

next stop SNORKEL TEST...