Monday, January 8, 2018

Can Lightning Strike Twice Underwater?


I messaged an old friend and dive buddy, Dave, today, when he posted on line some pictures of a family fishing trip to Mexico. I have not seen him for a number of years, keeping in touch as many people do via Facebook and the annual exchange of Christmas cards.  I related that my next dive trip would be to Hawaii with my teenage nephew.  He mentioned that his teenage son, Cole, wanted to learn to scuba dive for some time, but they just never found the time.  Hopefully, that would be rectified this summer.  My two nephews had similar experiences with a long elapsed time between the discovery of the desire to learn to dive and the completion of openwater certification.  Dave wondered if we might all meetup soon to do some diving around Santa Barbara.

Dave was certified in 1985.  I helped teach the class as an assistant instructor and divemaster.  We did our dives at Arroyo Burro Beach and at Anacapa Island on the M/V Sea Venture. The following year, Dave quickly completed his rescue diver and assistant instructor certification.  A dive club trip to Catalina Island on Derby Day preceded a summer spent together on various diveboats from Ventura-area marinas to the Channel Islands.  I worked the deck as divemaster paired with Dave as the rescue swimmer.  We rotated with another divemaster-rescue swimmer team, working alternating dives.  On three- and four-dive days, each team managed two or three dives.  We harvested and cooked a fair number of bacon-wrapped rock scallops that summer on my Weber Smoking Joe grill.  A year later, 

Dave spent the following summer as a dive instructor at a Club Med village in Mexico.  When I visited him, I taught as a short-term replacement for an injured instructor.


I am hoping that lightning will strike the same place twice, albeit three decades apart, and we can show the younglings some of the places that we visited when we were young and divers.

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