I put together a group of friends (8 people) to go for dinner and a movie and see the movie Morning Light put together by Disney. It was almost a private showing only 15 people in the whole theater. I can’t see them running it for long with that type of turnout. Good movie but probably wouldn’t see it again. Unfortunately for the movie producers it wasn’t a windy race so there was as dramatic shots as they could have hoped for. Those kids were very lucky to get such a great opportunity – I wish I was 8 years younger. It does show what offshore sailing is about for non sailors so I might use it to explain what I do and unlike most sailing you see in movies it is actually technically correct!

Last night after the 2.5 hour drive back from diving I was very sore and feeling my 30 years of age. No longer am I 20 my body won’t take the abuse! It was a long day (8am-2:30pm) of rescue scenarios which meant lots of getting in and out of the water including towing and dragging únconcios divers up the beach. Karl, Guy and I aced the last scenario so much so that Bruce out instructor said it was the best demonstration he had seen of teamwork etc.

The sceario is you are sitting on the beach getting ready for a dive and a diver comes out of the water missing his buddy. You have to question the diver to find out where he thinks he last saw the diver. They are not meant to volunteer information you have to ask the necessary questions. Then you have to kit up as a team, give specific instructions to ”people” who are ashore i.e. call 911, get oxygen and a first aid kit, post lookouts and look for bubbles, send someone to check the diver didn’t go off for lunch without telling anyone etc. You then enter the water and go down to the bottom where the diver was last seen and then start an expanding box search this was hard as the visibility was only 4 feet. We had one person navigating with a compass and one person looking to each side searching the bottom and amongst the kelp. We found the diver ”non responsive and not breathing’ and brought him to the surface. Between the three of us we did rescue breathing, took off the divers and our equipment while towing the diver to the shore. We than pulled him up on the beach and started CPR and administered O2.

The whole thing to 28 minutes from when the diver exited the water telling us he was missing his buddy to putting him on O2 and doing chest compressions. This was very fast for the conditions but in real life unless the person was in respiratory arrest for more than 6 minutes of that period the would be dead or have serious brain damage. It just goes to show how important it is to stay with your buddy when you are diving and not lose each other.

I am in Monterey staying at the Monterey Youth Hostel which is a very comfortable place that welcomes divers and costs less than a campsite per night! There are tons of Germans staying here for some reason they have all congregated here.

Class finished early today so I made the matinee show of The Duchess at the theater a very unusual thing for me to do. It was a really good movie and is based on an actual affair between the Duchess of Devonshire and Charles Grey (7 years her junior who became prime minister in the 1830’s).

Yesterday we spent the day in the classroom going through over 200 pages of the Rescue Diver manual and then a multiple choice exam afterwards. Having been brought up in the UK where we don’t have multiple choice exams I learnt it is important to read all the possible answers. If I had read properly it would have been 100% but for the two silly mistakes! I hasten to add that they weren’t life threatening ones. After the day in the classroom I burnt up my credit card at the dive shop – there is another sport that has kit that is more expensive then sailing.

Today we spent 5 hours in the swimming pool going over in practice what we had learnt in theory. Towing a diver to safety, what to do with a unresponsive, responsive, panicked diver, breathing for a non breathing diver and carrying people to safety. Of course I was given the 220lb guy (who was deceptively small looking) to firemen carry out of the pool not so easy when sliding around on the pool with fins that have no traction.

Tomorrow we are in the water at the Breakwater dive site doing it in the ocean. Hopefully I will get better at the multitasking neccessary to tow an unconcious non breathing diver to the shore through a kelp bed while giving rescue breaths every 5 seconds and removing their mask, regs, weights and BCDs and then yours without missing a breath. There is always hope…

Hope you are having a great weekend.

I picked up my nephew yesterday for a morning with Aunty Ashley. We went to the toy store as it is his 2nd birthday this weekend and picked out an Elmo toy which will drive my brother and sister in law crazy! Then we went to Blackies Pasture where we used to go as kids.

”This pasture land was where Blackie was “retired” at the age of 12 from his illustrious career as both a Cavalry Horse in Yosemite and a Rodeo Cutting Horse. He lived here happily for another 28 years. Children and adults stopped by to pet him and to feed him apples & carrots. He was a beloved part of this community. Blackie was deeply missed when he passed away at the age of 40. He was buried in this pasture and from then on it was known as “BLACKIES PASTURE.” A simple cross & small plack, plus a life-size bronze statue, commemorate Blackie as the town’s mascot. ”

Draeger the dog and Henry had great fun on the shore. It really is beautiful where I get to live. Maltese Falcon was anchored over in Sausalito you may be able to make it out in the photo.

I spent the day cleaning out my garage as it is full of useless items that I don’t use. My aim is to get to the point where I can in a day pack my belongings into it in an organised fashion and take off. So I went through one box of my beautiful creations that my mother had painstakingly and lovingly filed by year or subject. This box was age 3 to 9 including my school reports, every mothers and fathers day card I had written, the notes to the tooth fairy and Santa Claus. Even the congratulations cards from everyone on my birth and the girls names list that they had put together! Funnily enough what they called me wasn’t on the list – thank god they didn’t call me some of those names :-).

Anyways the point of this entry is that I came across my a page about what I was going to do when I was 27! I wrote it at age 8 and it made the boring depressing job of cleaning out the garage a little less dreary. Things were a bit different in reality – the summer of my 27th birthday I was racing across the atlantic in the Rolex Transatlantic Challenge – life turned out better than I could have dreamed of 🙂