Sunday, April 04, 2004
another weekend over
much as i love working on the boat. i was happy for this weekend to be over. time to rack up a few more frequent flyer points with my physio cause my back is not good.
apart from that: saturday: took my first group of divers for a dive as a divemaster. the experience would have been a whole lot better if i'd actually found my way back to the boat and didn't have to subject my charges to a surface swim. i mean, one of the reasons you want a divemaster is so they can show you all the cool stuff, have a fun dive, and find the damn boat. drat!!!
second dive, same two girls. to be fair to myself they had a great dive, right up to the bit when we _again_ didn't find the frikken anchor. ok, the boat did swing, but good navigation and less worrying about looking around all the time for the divers would have made life a lot more easy.
but the second dive was a cool dive, they saw heaps of weedy sea dragons, a blue devil fish, an angel shark (and i'm giving the signal, don't tough this frikken thing!) our cook seems to relate to these dumb sharks in a special way. whenever we go for a dive, if there is an angel shark within about 500 miles, she will find it and manage to annoy it. another cool little gurnard (i really should find a photo) and heaps of other little critters.
unfortunately when we got back to the surface one of the divers had a panic attack. this is common when your gear is too tight. at the surface you fill your buoyancy vest with air so you won't sink, but if it's too tight, you constrict your stomach and lungs, making it hard to breathe.
so saturday was a learning experience. which basically means i screwed up and need to learn from my mistakes. DRAT!
sunday was rainy and overcast, but the divers all had fun. the water was clearer and they found some interesting critters. after that we basically make like busy bees. running round like crazy pricks, stripping beds, geting everyone and their gear on the tender to take them back to the wharf, and generally going mad.
i had an annoying bit though. (yeah, moan moan moan). sometimes we take the divers away from the big boat in the smaller boat. they step down with their scuba gear on, then get dropped off at some other location and try to make their way back to the boat. it appears that we like to wait until the "last" second to tell people what is going on. the water is a little bumpy, so the small boat pitches up and down. i don't know about you, but i wait until the target step is easy to reach then i step down, next you step from the side of the boat, into the middle. things should be fine then, you either move back a bit and sit on the edge of the boat, or turn around to your right (if you turn left you smack everyone around you with your scuba cylinder)
ok, no worries. in my experience it's not that hard, except, when you step into the boat, boss number 2 grabs you. i don't know about you, but when my balance is difficult, any new influences cause me to stop and prop myself against them. and then he says either "step back" or "turn clockwise" and gives you a push. so i'm standing there, scuba unit on, and unbalanced, someone tells me to move and pushes me at the same time. my balance system locks me in place and i push against so i won't fall over. and turn clockwise? look up, turn clockwise, then look down and turn clockwise, hmmm, opposite directions. and look straight ahead and turn clockwise, it's nonsensical. i mean how hard is it to say turn right? every single frikken weekend. it's exactly the fucken same. they don't get clockwise.
so i'm trying to prime the divers before they get there. this is what's going to happen, you will do this or do that. and i've scored a fucken lecture off boss number one, because she thinks boss number two has lost control by my talking to them. i do see her point, because we had a few situations where boss no. 2 would mumble something (and the diver is wearing a hood so they hear nothing) and i thought he said for them to go, etc... etc... so they've got 2 people talking at once. i think he's said go, but he's really said "mumble bumble furgle wurble". fair enough. but i think that it's way too late to wait until everything is happening at once, and then expect someone who's getting sensory overload to get what you're saying all at once.
gibber gibber. don't get me wrong. usually it's all a sea of roses. lots of easy, fun dives.but i think we could make it a little easier. i'll have to think about it a bit and work out how to approach them. it's their diveboat and their operation. i don't want to tread on their toes. but i do want everyone to enjoy themselves and want to come back. i don't do weekend work for money, i do it for fun. if stupid things happen that make things hard, i don't like it. i'd rather everyone had a fun time, and came back to have another fun time. because if they are having fun, so am i. (ok that's a little selfish). if you wait for the last second and then start yelling commands, people, being people, will wait until they understand. we get a lot of repeat business. they have less and less problems until they understand it all.
give people information overload, then stress them out a bit with loud music and shouted, hard to understand commands, and surprise, surprise, things won't run smoothly. but what do i know. i'm only a deckie.
ok, now i've had my moan. i must say that usually it is all fun and games. there are just a few things that niggle at me and annoy me. they are so easy to correct, and when they all happen at once, then it's not fun.
and this weekend was fun, nice diving, staying up late drinking and socialising, and then more fun diving on sunday. now i'm a wreck hehehehe
