Author: Elliott

Well. The last few days have been quite intense!

As I may have mentioned I was assisting a class of new divers.

That means I was an “in the water” assistant.

I was in the shop at 545am and out about 12hours later.

I had to prepare their gear, prep the boat which means loading tanks on the boat, helping to tie up the boat at the docks and dive site buoys, reviewing their buddy checks, briefing before dives, then my own gear before, doing a boat brief as we went out, helping to brief the dive site, overseeing them in the water, then reverse that as they got out and we returned.

I basically hovered over them so they wouldn’t cork up the surface dangerously.

Long day, but fulfilling to see young people experience something new.

I’m “off tomorrow” which means I can dive for me. I’m taking my vids so let’s see what I can get.

PS: there were many jellyfish in the water which I haven’t seen before. The size of small coffee cup saucers. A gentle current which means I could hover near them about a foot away and look closely. Just beautiful and oddly alien.

I sleep in tomorrow then dive in the afternoon. Will take the video cameras. I’m missing the “carnival” parades but will likely review some wildness for you.

So they are doing renovation of the deck while we have 20-30 divers coming through.

I asked why they didn’t work at night when we close at 7pm and the answer was this is the Islands…and they don’t really have high powered lights.

Should be done by end of day tomorrow.

My mattress makes my room smell like pickles.

Going to cover some of the birds. No gulls or pelicans here. The two(there is a humming bird that I haven’t gotten a good look at)(oh and there some birds that sound like doves that I haven’t seen) that have caught my eye are the following.

I will reference the following site: Project Noah for these shots. https://www.projectnoah.org/missions/2158146002

I will try to get a shot of the hummingbirds.

I’ve been asked to describe the island more.

Use this map.

My apartment is the red dot. The dive shop is the blue dot. I have dived (dove?) about half the sites in the oval but also one up north. The northern sites are harder to get to obviously (time, fuel) and are in rougher water. The more local dive sites are better for training because of the use of time.

You can get an idea of the development in Utila from a geographic perspective on this Google Earth Image. Mostly on the East End.

There is a large expat community here, and tourists and if I had to guess I would say it’s 20-25% of the population. Divers are about half of that and mostly Europeans, Aussies, more interestingly…Canadians. The non-diving tourists appear to me to be Honduran from the mainland. Just an assumption.

The citizens of Utila primarily speak Spanish but there is also a Caribbean patois, especially among the residents with the deepest roots here. Again an assumption.

Utila was British till mid 19th Century and there is apparently a long history of pirates. Will try to learn more local lore.

The food has not been especially notable and there are some reasons. Utila and Roatan are either totally or mostly surrounded by Marine Reserves. As a result extensive harvesting is difficult. That means most of the non-fruit, vegetables produce is shipped in. This is all my general impression based on conversations with locals and expats.

And to be honest, I am on a bit of a budget and have been kind of busy to do a lot of exploring.

Energy is expensive here (I am guessing that it will be $4 per day to run the AC at 77F for 8 hours for my 10×10 bedroom…plus a mini fridge, minimal hot water and ceiling fans). and the water out of the tap is not drinkable. All drinkable water is from 5G water bottles like at the office. Old water cooler style.

So fridges are small, and expensive to run. That makes food storage difficult as does the heat and humidity.

So stores are loaded with cans goods and some dry stores. Lots of rice, lots of baked beans. Lots of stands selling super fresh local fruit and selected veggies.

The first notable local food is a baleada. It’s like an empanada but a bit larger and softer. Fried. Has a variety of fills. Eggs are plentiful…tons of free range chickens.

I’ve been to a lot of islands in life, just moved from one. And it shouldn’t be a surprise to note that its hard life. You don’t have a lot of space, you can’t grow everything or make everything you need locally and most everything needs to come by boat or plane. Boats are slow and planes are expensive.

After getting into the water at about 615am to do the sweeping I mentioned in the earlier post, we prepped gear for 6 people doing their initial training.

Basically 6 Brits 20-30yo. They better be using sunscreen is all I will say.

We got in the water at about 830am for about 2+ hours of skills assessment. It had been awhile since I dove with first timers and, no offense, it was a bit amusing. No buoyancy skills, unfamiliarity with the basic equipment. And we are instructed to always have them in hands reach in case they do something stupid. They didn’t, but their were two instructors and two Dive Master Trainees(DMT, that me). So 6 vs 4. Zone Defense.

All went well and it’s good and gratifying to see students take first steps in something that is out of their historical comfort zone. I really enjoyed it.

We cleaned up, I had a hearty tuna wrap with a ton of veggies ($4) and a lot of water and was out the door by 230pm.

Today was a bit of a slow day.

I spent the morning doing some admin stuff at the apartment, feeding electric meter via PayPal and some other class reading.

I had tried to arrange a noon set of 2 dives, but I got asssigned a maintenance mission that would overlap in the PM.

Scuba diving training calls for the first 4 dives to be in confined open water, which is normally a pool. There isn’t really a sufficient pool here, so in the lagoon at the shop, they have laid out sections of blue tarp on the bottom in 6 feet and 10 feet of water.

This is where initial sections of training or basic skills are conducted. It works well here actually, but the blue tarps get covered in algae and silt. So once a week or so (I suspect longer) they “sweep” and “lightly scrub” the tarps. The two areas are basically 20’x20’ and 35’x20’ respectively. 3 of us were issued push brooms and told to get at as best we could.

We took about an hour to sweep scrub as best we could. At the end there was so much junk up in the water the visibility was maybe six inches.

We came back this morning at 6am tondo it again but this time just to get the silt that had settled overnight. There were four of us this time and it took us about 30m.

When we finished yesterday I was pretty pessimistic about our efforts. Today however, they were pretty pleased.

I chalk this assignment up to half hazing and half need. Everybody gets the assignment and we did well.

When done at about 6pm, I settled for a few Salva Vidas (local beers) with some of the instructors. I then headed to apartment to cook up some rice and spaghetti sauce. Quite good and made a couple days worth.

I Know, boring note.

Spent most of the day at the apartment snoozing and reading. I forgot a couple books when packing, so trying to think of a few things to read. Have a few picked out and will advise.

Came to the Dive Center at around 5pm to sign up for staff assignments and/or boat slots for practice. I practice tomorrow at 1pm.

I still need to dial in my kit. I ended up buying a very used vest style BCD for $100 since the plate/wing BCD I invested in is not conducive to teaching newish students.

As a way of background a BCD is a “buoyancy compensation device” and is basically an inflatable rescue vest.

Vest styles are good for surface control, a wing is more streamlined and good for underwater control (basically).

But each has different weight differences which means I have to change weights when I go back and forth. Anyway. That’s just testing. So I got the morning to test that out. Then out at 1pm.

Incidentally, it’s a completely different vibe to dive with Instructors and Divemasters when you are a student vs a trainee for those jobs. The scrutiny is somewhat un- nerving.

I’m gonna need to order water and pre-pay the electric in a couple days….I hate that administrative crap. My “land-lord” has someone come in to change the sheets and linens today but isn’t taking the responsibility for the elec/aqua. Hmm. Don’t get me wrong I can do it. It’s just odd. Whatever.

Update: And just got my assignments. I have to scrub the underwater “pool” which is a tarp laid out in shallow cove water at 4pm tomorrow.

Then I have to be at center at 6am Tuesday to rig gear for new students!

So I’m done with Divemaster theory after passing the second exam at 92%. Not especially challenging, but lots of dive table work.

That means calculating dive limits etc on a set of tables.

Lots of going back to front on this plastic card. And more complex stuff for those of you that are divers. Multi-level and multi-dive days. Doable, but a dive computer is so important to cut out the manual calculations.

I’m taking a day out of the water tomorrow. Might take a walk about and explore this little island. Sometimes it’s depressint to see some things.

I start assisting an intro class on Tuesday after assisting on a relatively advanced class this week. Should be interesting. I vaguely remember taking Open Water (which is the intro course this week) with Jordan 15 years ago in that shitty quarry. And I remember giggling watching young Savannah take the class in Mexico some years ago.

And on the test, I missed a question on which oxygen method to give an injured Diver. The alternatives kind of clashed with my EMT training a bit. Interesting.