The IDC begins!

So much to write about, so little time!!

First day of the IDC today. It was kind of cool, because I already know most of the people on the course. Noé and Célia, James and myself from Sunshine and Mo (Moses) from Israel. The other two are a guy called Pierre from Sweden (who I know from the DM course, because he was doing his at the same time at Bans) and a guy called Alex, who I have seen a hundred times on the Bans boat, but don’t know really at all.

Today was relatively tame…..mostly paperwork, with an introduction to the course, an introduction to Jonas and Tim, our Course Directors (as if I didn’t know Tim!!) and we had to introduce ourselves. After that we had to do the five main DM exams again so that they can get an idea of what we might need to work on a little. I am kind of angry at myself about my physics…..even though I have been concentrating on it quite a bit. I passed all of the exams (whereas a few of my fellow IDC’ers didn’t), but that isn’t the point for me. It’s not even about being competitive (well, at least not with my colleagues)…I just want to ace all of this stuff and it annoys me if I don’t get great scores. Perhaps it is a wee bit of personal snobbery, but I figure that if I can go to law school for years and work in that profession, I should be able to ace a bunch of PADI DM exams!! Alas, I was a little slack on some questions. I am doing fine, but that small part of my “A” type personality that remains is kicking myself…..a lot.

Anyway.

So, yesterday I went out with Tim and a few others on the Trident boat for a forty-minute sojourn out into the Gulf of Thailand. I even got a t-shirt to prove it!! We did a couple of deep dives. I must admit, I didn’t even notice the depth, but the concept of pushing the boundaries was a thrill in and of itself. We visited a wreck called “The Unicorn”. That’s not actually its name, it has a Japanese name, but because that one is so hard to pronounce, it got renamed by the divers who found its location (coincidentally, the divers from Trident). The name derives from the fact that its prow is quite high off the seabed, which in turn thrusts the forward mast higher, somewhat resembling a unicorn’s horn.

The ship lies in between 38m at the top of the forward mast (there are two…it was a small freighter that was apparently purposefully sank for insurance fraud reasons in the late ‘80’s) and about 50m at the bow of the ship….which now sits in quite a bit of silt, so a large part of the rear is now inaccessible (oh no, no rear entry!! …sorry, couldn’t resist). We dived in and around the prow of the ship (and underneath the prow). There is also a thermocline that sits slightly above the ship, but this moves. Sometimes the thermocline is low on the ship, enabling divers to see it quite clearly…other times it is a little above the ship, which means that the water gets quite cloudy below and visibility is poor. We got poor. But it was still cool. I even saw a MASSIVE grouper swimming inside one of the holds of the ship, which was pretty spooky, when viz was so bad and I just sort of came up on the hold!

Quite a few of the guys were “narced”, a feeling of intoxication due to the increased partial pressure of nitrogen that has been absorbed into the body’s tissue. I may have also been slightly narced, but the problem is that I don’t think I would ever realize it. Not because I live in a permanent state of partial intoxication, but because the level of intoxication is usually so minor that if one is focused on other things, it is my belief that the intoxication is simply not noticeable. Regardless, I didn’t feel narced.

This ship is actually a little creepy….a guy was just pulled out of the ship recently who had been down there for two and a half years. As the story goes, he was mostly to blame as he had just passed his tech diving course a couple of days before and then went diving on his own and then attempted a deep penetration of a ship well-known to be heavily silted (although the dive operation that he went with …which wasn’t Trident…also shouldn’t have let him dive alone and should have had the means to send someone down to assist him when he didn’t surface!!). Still, awful way to go. His safety sausage was found half way out of a porthole in the room he was stuck in.

What is more crazy are the Trident guys!! These guys don’t let a permanent buoy mark the ship (to stop fishermen from stealing their lines and to stop other commercial ventures from profiting from their finding the ship easily). So they sail out to the ship, send down a sonar ping and then one of them jumps in and dives down in complete murk to tie the buoy line to the top of the front mast. Each and every time!! What is even crazier, is that the guy who dives down to tie off the buoy then dives down again about twenty minutes later. At the other end of the two dives, another one of the Trident guys, who has just surfaced from his second dive, goes back down immediately to untie the line!! Nice way to completely screw up your body!!

But, hey, I have now been down to 150 feet!! Awesome.

Oh, the missus and I went out for dinner the night before last too with Tim and Natalie. I wanted to say a wee thank you to Tim for agreeing to be the course director for The Toronto and New York Scuba Clubs and to thank Tim and Natalie for helping me out during my time here in Koh Tao. We also just wanted the chance to go for a nice dinner with Tim and Natalie before the missus left. So we went to Papa’s Tapas. This place could easily survive in the top 50 or so restaurants in Toronto. Damn good food. Damn expensive, but damn good food. Damn good wine too (which is a massive rarity on this island), which was our gift to Tim and Natalie during dinner. Boy, did the four of us pig out. Good times though. We took a couple of pictures too, which I will post in the next day or so…..talking of which, with this being the last couple of days of the missus’ stay and with me doing the IDC every day now, I cannot guarantee getting on to post for the next couple of days. Will try my best, but no promises.

And finally, we had a disappointing dinner at one of our choice destinations, but thoroughly enjoyed the company. James and Jon joined us for dinner and then Noé and Célia joined us for coffee afterwards. We went to a place called Porto Bello’s, surprisingly an Italian place. The food was very so-so. Nothing in comparison to the great variety we have been trying for the last five days. Ah well…..

This is the second time too that we have been within spitting distance of one of the island’s major attractions …. Queen’s…..a drag-show that is put on every night at 10 p.m. We just haven’t lasted that long!! I have a feeling that Heather is likely to drag me to that one….a drag show with real lady-boys!!

Ok, gotta run, Noé and Célia are making dinner for the missus, James and me…..hasta la vista…