Tag: Diving

An Inexperienced Advanced Scuba Diver

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Advanced diver reporting for duty. It’s amazing what the title of a certificate can imply. Having now dived a total of eleven times I am not advanced in experience or knowledge yet the title suggests otherwise. It does mean I can now dive to depths of thirty metres which is a vast improvement on the eighteen I’ve been able to for the last thirteen years. There are no guarantees but the plan is to dive more than once in the next thirteen. I’m a total sucker for courses and learning so at the very least I’ll be working my way through these as time goes on. I quite fancy doing some wreck diving, night diving, dry suit diving and the enriched air nitrox diving. Because I value life, and not just mine, and also because these are skills we should all have, I’ll do the rescue diver course eventually too. First before all of that I’ll just see what comes up and do some diving as the opportunity arises. If next years plans come together, judging by this year though I won’t hold my breath, which you should never do when diving by the way, anything is possible. The whole point of this was to allow for future diving and not just future courses after all.

There is a phobia called submechanophobia, which is a fear of submerged man-made objects like shipwrecks, submarines, buoys and other such things. I discovered this when discussing the sea with someone who suffers from extreme anxiety. I can appreciate the fear because when I’ve looked at images of sunken shipwrecks or submarines there is something eerily terrifying about them. Perhaps it’s the implication of death. The same exists for images of sudden drops that disappear into darkness or images of divers from a distance in the ocean with nothing around them for miles. There is something about these types of images that creates a fearful reaction, perhaps it’s some instinctive survival mechanism. When diving though it feels different. I can look over the edge of a drop that becomes nothingness but it isn’t necessarily scary. The mind is aware of possible dangers both rational and irrational but nothing like images manage to portray. When you are in and around it you understand how much is in the mind.

And that is one of the things that we can get from diving especially. Diving is not simply an adventure for the body but for the mind too, arguably more so. With all the water around and despite there being another person there, you feel fully in your own little bubble. Nothing else is going on. Nothing on the surface in our distracted little minds. You’re just under the water with the fish and the coral keeping yourself buoyant and focused. Even if you’re not keeping yourself focused you drift off into your surroundings, no opportunity to be anything but present. And for the last two evenings I’ve been so chilled out and not just from being tired or because I’ve had decompression sickness which I haven’t. Sailing and diving, I could think of worse hobbies and lifestyles.

Scuba Diving

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Thirteen years ago when I was but a twenty-one year old child, in a fit of decisive madness I did my PADI Open Water scuba diving course. This was during a six week trip through Thailand with a friend on the island of Koh Tao. It was good fun but despite getting the certificate the truth is we were probably too drunk when not doing the diving to have the mental capacity to remember anything. What I took from it though was that I was far happier below the surface of the water than I am on top of it. There is a vulnerability perhaps that disappears when you have a tank of air but more so you can see around you and the unknown becomes slightly less so.

There are still dangers, a rather aggressive and territorial triggerfish threateningly swam between my friends legs and when the instructor pointed this out, much to his consternation us idiots thought he was suggesting we go take a look at the lovely fishy. A few years later when I lived in Ibiza my boss was also a dive instructor and he took me out on a refresher dive. I enjoyed diving generally but having spent a majority of the last ten years as a barefoot traveller climbing in supermarket bins for food, diving has simply been cost prohibitive. Today though, for the first time in ten years I’m going diving.

…nine hours later…

I wouldn’t go as far as saying that was fun but I enjoyed it. Sometimes endured it but on the whole enjoyed it. I still struggle a little with equalising and getting my buoyancy right was a continual losing battle but it’s just something that needs a little practise. Ultimately with diving it’s one of those things that you can get better at but the secret is that if or when something happens you just need to avoid panicking. Admittedly making all these statements in four metres of water is one thing and thirty metres deep as you suddenly realise you’ve got a problem with your air and you stuck inside the wreck of some Spanish galleon would be an entirely different thing.

I don’t totally get off on diving but that’s partly because I’m still not very good at it and I do struggle to enjoy the sensation of salt water in my nose and mouth. Being Scottish I always like to believe sea water is to be appreciated from something I can stand on, and not the seabed. Saying that you do feel good after you’ve spent a bit of time in it and the longer around it, the more you want to get in. I imagine living beside the sea for a year and swimming everyday would have a dramatic affect on your outlook in that sense. Anyway, it appears I went and agreed to do my Advanced Open Water this coming week before I return to Scotland so I must have got something out of today.

What Now Then Plan Man

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Life is full of lessons. Every day if we choose to look we would see them and one way or another learn something. This year for many has been a learning experience like no other, not more or less than other things but certainly unique. There is nobody who could have predicted what has happened and nobody who couldn’t have learnt at least something from it. The last twenty-four hours has thrown another spanner in my face, or even in the works, let’s call it both.

Strangely enough very little has actually changed. I am supposed to go out to Greece to do a little renovation work on someones boat mid-September. I was going to do a little sailing with a friend for the first week and then work for three. The three was the limit because I had tickets for a comedy show on the 15th October from an already postponed Jonathan Pie performance from April. Unfortunately in the last twenty-four hours all has changed. For family reasons my friend has cancelled the sailing and because of this virus the show has been postponed yet again, this time to May next year. Third time lucky? Perhaps it would be wise not to plan.

That’s it though really isn’t it. Some lessons sneak up on us but some we’re fully aware of as we step into and experience them. Without a doubt I’m fully aware of the futility of planning. I say futility because my track record of never sticking to my plans makes them pointless. One reason I never stick to them is not because I don’t do anything but is down to my acting on a whim as things happen. It makes me wonder if the planning is to create a safety net in my mind as well as allow me to escape and fantasise when life is not so interesting. Currently life is interesting in certain respects but with it being unfulfilling in others I can’t deny I don’t let my mind run sometimes.

This year has made planning anything a complete waste of time. Strangely enough I actually really enjoyed lockdown because I knew I had no options, I was trapped in one place and you can’t make plans when nothing can happen. Traditionally having no options would be a problem but perversely being aware of and being lucky enough to have many creates a different type of pressure and stress altogether. This disappeared and while lockdown brought up different problems, at least the one of options was a weight off my back. “Poor you” I hear you saying and you would be right as there are people trapped and miserable all around the world but stress and weight on you back is still stress and weight on your back.

Anyway, despite little really changing my plans have gone up in smoke once more and something else will happen. Interestingly something else always happens and we just make the most of it as it does. Think of this year and all the new things people have done for example. That’s the beauty of a flexible approach to life but somehow even when that is clearly the way we still manage waste so much time and energy living in little fantasies of what could happen or be happening. It really is so difficult living in the present moment. And to just give an example, I have barely even been present while writing this, the whole time has been spent fantasising about spending the winter diving and sailing in the Canary Islands. The first step to overcoming a problem is to acknowledge the existence of the problem. I have a problem.

Memories & Living With La Cabra Negra

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Humour me, I’m going to be self-indulgent. I’ve been having some weird sensations recently. It has been a long time since I’ve gone this long without travelling to another country. Even travelling within one place. The lockdown has made me change habits. You can’t run off somewhere when you fancy a change if the whole world is on lockdown. Sitting on a jungle beach in Costa Rica, diving in the Andaman Islands or maybe with a mate of mine in Brazil. Just sailing somewhere warm like Fiji or the icy cold north has also entered my little realm of fantasy recently. But I’m also in a weird way happy not to be running off. As I said habits have changed and I see possibilities with this version of normality I have created. It needs to evolve and it’ll change immeasurably before I make it in my own image but I suspect all of those things will still happen at some point before and after I reach this point. I’m really happy with this too. These sensations though have nothing to do with future desires or ways of life. These are feelings from the past.

For much time I have forgotten my adventures, determined not to be that guy who just lives on his them, repeating them to someone until they get bored and you’re forced to move on. This forgetting though has also been because I have been creating new ones and haven’t needed to dwell on things that have happened. Now though without this ability to move on and find something new to experience, I am stuck experiencing a new way which I’ve allowed forced upon me. I different kind of forward. I have found myself over these last few months remembering past events or people and this began out in a sad way as in a way I wished I could go back to these moments. This is entirely natural. This has evolved though as now I have found myself experiencing these moments and seeing them through eyes that are happy to have had them. Instead of desiring their return I have been appreciating them, but more importantly in the strangest way experiencing parts of them once more.

It’s these sensations. This is the important part, the rest is a different special. To imagine yourself back in the moment and experiencing the forest air on the nostril, the sea water on the hot skin, the rain on the face. The emotion of seeing someone or experiencing a place that leaves you speechless. Even the sounds and visuals that I felt have been coming back to me. It’s hard to explain but it’s as if I’m experiencing memories with an intensity that touches on the actual moment as it happened, not just a thought of something that runs through my mind as a movie screen. I’ll go with it because it’s fascinating and I know it too won’t last forever. It’s all just about trying to understand. That’s all we can do. Be the cabra.