Tioman (The Crazy Long Weekend)

Our Crazy Long Weekend (DMT)
5 - 8 th April 2007, Thursday - Sunday.

DMT (Dive Master Training) is one of the certification step for recretional divers. Starting from Open Water - Advanced/Specialty - Rescue - Dive Master. For DMT, it includes numerous theory lessons, exams, swimming pool and open water attachment. The tasks are, I try to put it in my own word as I'm nor really sure yet, endurance swimming and water treading, paperwork, rescue management, mapping the dive sites, leading dives (tied closely with navigation skills and human management skills) and other tasks etc etc etc.... It's all STRESS!

Finally, the dreaded weekend is over. Although it was not completely done, it’s over. Over. Over.

5-8th April Good Friday long weekend was our DMT weekend to be done in Pulau Tioman. Since two weeks before, I had stomach cramp and heart jump everytime I remember the date and the tasks that needed to be done.

On Wednesday night, a night before, me, Hubby and Froggie needed to drop by the dive shop for briefing. I was in quite a good mental condition after a week of hesitation and anxiety, but at the briefing itself, when I peeked on the schedule and my responsibilities, I felt my stomach knotted up together again. My group was consisted of four leisure divers, three girls and one guy. We needed to make sure everything connected to them was okay, van, room etc etc etc.

The thing that worried me, maybe other’s too, the most was we WERE NOT TRAINED for any of the task. We jumped straight from theory class to handling our own group, on our own without assistance. One of the advice they gave us was only, If you are scared, and you can be scared, don't show them, keep to your selves. HAH. And imo, my navigation skill was really up for questioning, it depressed me more. But I saw Froggie and Hubby more stressed out than me that night, because they were quite relaxed before, while I have divided my anxiety over two weeks.

After a not so good night of sleep, on Thursday, I kept doing stupid things at work because I couldn’t concentrate. At the same time I got my new computer, and needed to move out my files, so I was at least free of working deliberately. But I kept losing my phone and wallet, kept forgetting things and all along the day, I felt like taking a lot of caffeine that make my heart restless.

Dropping by the dive shop early, I cursed because the shop was locked. But because three of my divers, the girls would depart to Mersing by themselves, I didn’t need to check their dive gears. My guy diver, apparently was a diver I have known sometimes ago, so it lifted my moral up. We were busy checking, counting and making sure everything was in place and moved everything to the van, then we departed for Mersing. We reached Mersing at around 11 pm.


Friday – Sunday, 6th – 8th April 2007.

I finally met the rest of my group at Mersing jetty. After completing the paperwork tasks, I suddenly in charge with the first aid kit. Nevermind, I had done that before. But err, what should I give for particular complain and disease? At least, I mastered one knowledge first, sea-sickness pills.

After every divers was allocated (now we don’t have the luxury to choose our own place, we equipped ourselves with sleeping bags, in case, we had to sleep on the deck. Phuh. See what is the diff of the treatment between crews and customers.. yap, yap, yap, we were listed as crew now).

The sea was angry that weekend my friend. Ke… But indeed, the sea was unwelcome, whether the monsoon hadn’t completely left yet, or because it’s around the middle of the month, according to Chinese calender. Since the beginning of the journey, it was rough. We had a late night gathering trying to pick up some last tricks from the instructor, but not many things could enter my head as I was battling with seasickness and counter effect of sleepiness from seasickness pills.

We didn’t have much rest that night.

To make a long story short,

It was actually not that bad, but worse at some points. The plus point was, mine and Hubby’s divers had the habit to abort morning dives, sometimes day dives and apparently, my divers were all only Open Water Certificate holder, which unable them to do night dives, but I was told that they were Advanced Open Water, so this is one of the misinformation that I found quite important to be missed. But never mind, many things didn’t really surprise us anymore.

My first leading dive I had to stumble with a very shallow reef, that I had to curse and swear to find the other way out, plan B which I hadn’t planned at all, but it ended okay. One of my divers had difficulty to go down, so I had to help her descent. It was alright on the first time, but on the second time, it made me lost contact with all my other divers. It was a wreck dive where there were seven wrecks, and there was a reference line we could go down with. The best part was, both of my instructors pointed to the different direction when I asked which buoy led to the wreck. So, I was on the surface, ready to go down with four divers counting on my direction. I had got the direction in my mind, but one second before I landed on the water, my other instructor gave me a completely different direction. So I shouted and asked, and pricelessly, one instructor standing on the lower deck pointed to the right, and the other who stood on the upper deck pointed to the left. Finally, I got my bearing and right buoy.

But when three of my divers had descended, one was unable to. So I helped her and signaled to my three divers to wait for me below. The surface was choppy and the visibility was quite bad. After struggling for a while, I still managed to keep contact with all of them. But at the last moment when I finally got my last diver to descent with me, Dang, I couldn’t see the rest below.
We went down to the first wreck, I saw Hubby’s group, also with some missing divers. I searched for a while, while keeping my last diver on the line. After sometimes, I got to make a choice to send my last diver up first before I continued with my search. The instructor saw us and asked what happen, so I explained to him. We went up to the surface and I told him the whole story. He asked me to stay, and he went down to look for my divers. I was on top of my anxiety at that moment, I worried about what happened with them and partly wondering why they didn’t stay on the line, but first of all, I got to send my last diver up to the boat first. After I circled to back of the boat and made sure she was up, I went back to the front boat where the buoy was and circled around it while keeping my eyes down. I could see the wreck from the surface, a big scary shadow below.

The wrecks were purposely sank for exploration, but since there was nothing grew on the wreck except some mould, they looked dark and freaking ghostly. I saw few chevron barracudas below me, but I was too anxious to be afraid or even fascinated. Huh, I kept saying to myself. Sh*t, sh*t, let me out of this situation. On the other hand, I was quite sure that my divers were okay, and they might have been found by my instructor, but I was restless until I saw them again.

There were bubbles on the surface, so I went to the direction and descended down a bit, after I saw four figures emerging from the depth. Two yellow fins, and one beach short and one blue fins. It almost fitted my divers and instructor, but I didn’t have diver with blue fins! Apparently it was my other instructor with his Open Water students. Hit with disappointment I roamed the surface again, I still maintained my distance from the boat and I saw the second wreck, and below there, was the ones I was looking for. Happy, but a bit grumpy, I descended down and let them know my presence. We circled the wreck for a while, nothing attracted my attention anymore but my divers, I didn’t even remember checking my own air. I blew sausage from ten meters depth, and we did the safety stop and went up.

The dive was freaking nightmare for me. I put my anxiety for this training up above the anxiety I have gone through all my life before, anxiety before presentation, interview etc because I know this time I not only need to worry about myself, but I have to worry about others too, and the worse, being an extreme sport, little mistakes can go too far.

Brr..brr….

But above all, every surface interval, three of us would gather and gave each other moral support. We felt the strong bond being at the same page and the strong bond to stand at the end of the boat to beat the seasickness. I was okay, because I took a lot of pills! Mhehehe…

My girls.. huha.. aborted many many dives after. There was a very rough dive on Saturday morning. We were going to another wreck which was suppose to stay on 35 meters, but I don’t know whether because it was low tide or whathever, it became shallower. The sea was crazily choppy that morning. After jumping from the boat, we needed to swim directly to the line, that led us to the front of the boat, moved to another line, and finally, to the descending line. I was the last man because my group only consisted on one diver, while the other three aborted, so we combined with Hubby’s group. The instructor gave us mapping task, and I had to carry big slate board. I clipped the slate board on my BCD and jumped, I had to gather the group and made sure they were on the line with me. While holding onto the line, between the wildness of the wave, I felt out of breath although my reg was right on my mouth.

Our heads were being pushed up and down by the wave, I shouted at our two last divers who hadn’t put their masks and reg on place and obviously they were struggling to breathe. It was either they were too stressed to help them selves, or they were waiting for a chance to do so. Asking my self to calm down, I had to replace my reg with fresh air, and slowly returned to my regular breathing circle before I put the reg again in my mouth. We were suffering on the surface for quite sometimes because the group in front of us was taking their own sweet time. The transition from line to another line was rough, and our last diver was panic. When he tried to go down from the reference line from the first time, he suddenly let go his grab and shouted “My weightbelt!” I had to let go of my own grab as I was behind him. He settled his problem, and tried to go down again. But after descending around 2-3 meters, he suddenly let go of his grab again and surfaced. I surfaced too and caught his tank while I was still holding on to the line so both of us wouldn't be drifted away, and asked him what happened. He told me he wanted to vomit, seasick, and couldn’t continue with the dive and wanted to go up. He was a strong person, so I asked him whether he was able to swim back behind the boat and went up (we were in front of the boat at the precise moment). He convinced me he would, and I went down again to catch up with the rest of my group.

As every divers was descending down the same line, I being the last had all the bubbled blew to my face. The pressure was very intimidating, that I thought that had reached twenty over meters, but when I looked at my dive comp, it was only eight meters! At that point I realized that the big slate board had gone, although I was sure I clipped it properly, I couldn’t find it in my BCD. One of the divers had to stay on the line for a awhile when he had problem equalizing, and I communicated with Hubby in front to let him know one diver had aborted the dive.

When we reached the wreck, it logged about 23 meters only, so I took out my own slate board and started to do the mapping and took the bearing. The boat was broken in the middle, with thirty degree difference in direction. The current was pushing hard when we circle the boat, so Hubby decided not to go to the second wreck, as we almost hung horizontally on the wreck with the current against us.

While we were holding on, the other big group emerged from the blue and swam to the reference line to start the ascend. We also went to reference line as one of our divers had problem to stay negative. While we were holding, we saw a technical diver with four tanks and scooter moved gracefully against the current without effort, how we envied them! While doing our safety stop, I felt a very nasty stung on my neck and my lower left face. It was bloody painful but I don’t know what it was. When we surfaced, the stung left some nasty red marks. Bloody dive! Either it was bloody jellyfish, bloody sea lice, or bloody phantom fire, that were the diagnose I got. I rinsed with fresh water and kept that part dry.

The next dives, my three girls aborted again, they were not feeling well and they weren’t excited with the choppy sea, except one. So I combined group with Hubby again, with two divers from my group and four from his.
While we descended, the current was pushing us strong. At my mind, I needed to get down to the bottom, fast! So that I wouldn’t be drifted away. But I had to keep an eye on my guy diver, who had problem equalizing and my girl diver, who had problem fighting the current. I don’t know where I got the strength, maybe at the edge of my worries, I managed to pull the girl together with me fighting the current to the bottom. I asked her to grab the rock while I needed to check my guy diver, but she didn’t seem to understand, so I let her grab one of my hand, and luckily, from behind, my guy diver emerged from the blue. We preceded the dive, until we had passed the current, I could let the girl on her own while I was watching the group from behind.

At the end of the dive, the current was ripping again. After gathering my last three divers, two of them was drifting to the top, I left them to Hubby and swam to help my girl who was hanging on desperately on the rock. We decided to spilt, I was with a guy from Hubby’s group amd the girl. We were at around nine meters, above us was a rock formation, standing on six meters, just nice for safety stop. So I asked them to let go and grabbed that particular rock. The guy was drifted but he swam back right at the time when me and the girl managed to hang on the rock. He was obviously struggling not to be carried away, so I offered him my hand. But, maybe being a guy or a guy who didn’t want to be helped by a girl, he refused my hand and swam by himself to the rock, and he failed to do so, he was drifting away but managed to sign to me that he was going up. I signaled okay to him, See lah! Don’t want my help! Grr.. But I thought he was strong enough and it was not a must to do the safety stop and I couldn’t leave the girl. Anyway, I saw him surfaced safely so I concentrated on my last diver. The poor girl didn’t wear gloves so I asked her to grab my arm instead of the rock. Not really a recommended practice, but I had to do our safety stop with one hand up so that the computer could count down, as ourselves were slightly below five meter.
After that, we ascended together, I was so happy to find everyone safely on the boat.

So it was our hellish weekend. I didn’t join the last two dives on the last day, as my injury was working up and my girl divers had gone back to Singapore.
Overall the dive, although we didn't really care to notice, we saw a lot of cuttlefish, we always see many of them after monsoon, saw a very big black spotted stingray, two turtles, chevron barracuda, and again, giant barracuda (again, I didn’t know I was few meters away, gosh, guess I would never see that guy on night dive) but overall, nothing much to be seen, we decided maybe it’s time we cross Tioman for diving, especially after this rough experience.

However, one thing that lightened me up the most, was when one of my diver who got separated from me and her buddy during the seven wreck dive, said, "I'm not worried about (her buddy), because I know she is safe with the DM." Not sure whether I was up to it, but it certainly made my day. :")
At least, we have learn, that DM is not just leading a dive, but how to manage divers; weak divers, strong divers, stubborn, divers with attitude, and dive conditions, unforeseen circumstances and how we should react in even of emergency or when things doesn't go with plan. And to sum it all, DOH.

All but all, as I said. It’s over. At least for now.
Let us go back and think why we decided to do this. But if we get through, let us be better.. At least, three of us have each other for encouragement and support, and that means almost everything.

__________________________________________________________________ A Positive attitude will not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
- Herm Albright.

Don’t panic.
- Douglas Adams