“I Want to Go Snorkeling in My Bed"
Location: Drawaqa, Fiji
The tony award for best panicked diver performance by a student on Argo goes to Isaac.
What a day. We had a fantastic day 11, featuring a new guest: rain. Fiji has definitely been entering the wintery spirit lately, and I never really expected to feel like I’m walking down the streets of New York City on a rainy October afternoon… when I’m actually teaching scuba diving in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Nevertheless, the crew pushes on. During breakfast I pieced together the dive groups for the day based on instructor ratios and available equipment, which is sometimes quite the challenge with a full boat of students and only 19 scuba tanks (currently 18 because we’re troubleshooting one that’s decided to be difficult). I had Charlie lead a fun dive for our three scuba overachievers (the already rescue and DM certified), Rhianna, Harrison, and Jaden, while Jack took the group of advanced students for their final AOW dive and Emma took some recently OW certified humans on their deep dive. I had surface sitting bow time with Jen and Sadie and got to yell at a boat to go away for the safety of the divers. When the advanced students surfaced, I jumped in and taught my favorite rescue skills, which demands a lot of acting skills and invites students to really buy into fake-drowning their friends to make them better future rescue divers.
After pumping up the tanks and Nacho’s famous lentil soup and rice, two more groups of divers splashed for their deep dives, and a dinghy went out with Charlie to try to snorkel with mantas. They were unsuccessful but saw some cool coral. When the divers surfaced, the rescue students jumped in to steal their gear and crank out rescue 7, which they admit was not as bad as everyone else made it sound (huge). They all did great after an hour in the water, and then we showered and hunkered down from the rain in the salon and STUDIED, except for Skye and Sophie, who joined me and Shane on the charthouse floor for our favorite new game, Dutch Blitz, and some pumpkin spice hot chocolate and cookies (“girl time”). After dinner I asked everyone which two people on Argo they would rob a location with and what location. Personally I would have a great time with Kaya and Amy going crazy in a toy store. Others have grand plans to break into a lego store, walmart, or steal the literal moon. We ended with a squeeze meow and got to work cleaning the dishes and the salon.
Honorable mentions of today:
- The ferry that pulled right up behind us to drop anchor
- Lentils
- Another regulator in timeout. Classic.
- Nacho. Always.
- Shay’s facial expressions
- Everybody reposting Team Dynamic 2028 (follow @team_dynamic2028 on Instagram)
Alternative blog title quotes:
“Egg Dive!” — Someone
“I’m too old for this” — Nacho
“What a day.” “What a couple of everythings.” — Jack
Goodnight, sunshines, talk to you next time in Palau <3