When I woke I fel awful, marginally drunk still. I was very tired. I had 30 minutes to prepare myself for my first dive.
Once I was dressed I ascended the steps to the deck and began to rehydrate myself with water.
At 07:37 we were in the water at North Point. We descended straight away, although I again had equalising problems which I assigned to the ear plugs, and reached a depth approaching 30 metres. I was concentrating on my depth and conscious of the possibility of nitrogen narcosis when upon reaching 35 metres I had a sudden strong sense of dizziness and felt the onset of a blackout. It was terrifying. I immediately grabbed hold of Ian's arm and signalled for us to ascend. I couldn't sign to him what the problem was but simply indicated that something was wrong. I was so frightened that I would blackout leaving Ian in a horrible predicament and all I wanted to do was surface quickly, but I forced myself to make a safe ascent with my buddy. The rest of the group appeared to be descending further . I sounded my shaker to alert the divemaster to our ascent and we gradually ascended to 5 metres and commenced our 3 minute safety stop. By this time my limbs were shaking uncontrollably. I was still gripping Ian's arm.
We completed our safety stop and surfaced, realising our dive vessel was some distance from us. I apologised to Ian for cutting his dive short and explained the problem to him. He wasn't bothered about the dive, we hadn't seen anything anyway. We located our dive vessel and the crew maneouvred towards us so we could exit the water without a surface swim. As soon as I degeared I sat on the dive deck drinking water, still shaking and feeling a little chill, then I began to analyse what had happened and the possible causes.
I concluded that I was tired and dehydrated from little sleep and drinking beer the previous night. I had considered it might have been due to nitrgoen narcosis but the argument didn't seem strong enough. I didn't feel drunk at 35 metres, I felt panic and knew I could not have continued the dive, even at a shallower dive. Nitrogen narcosis would more likely have led me to feel that I could have continued the dive for hours. Last night was the first time I had drunk more than one beer on an evening before a dive. Maybe I had had too much sun yesterday.
Once I had dried off I laid down on the deck resting and drinking water. Breakfast was served and I ate some food, then, as the sun became very hot and I was feeling cold, I took to my bed in the cabin and covered myself with a blanket. Ian suggested I was suffering from shock. I stayed there for an hour and slept.
When I awoke I felt much better and began to consider the next dive at 10:30. I decided that I would make it, I didn't not want to dive and more importantly I didn't want to be defeated. Ian asked me if I was going to do the next dive and I told him 'yes'.
We had a dive brief and commenced our dive at 10:35, at Koh Bon. I didn't have an equalising problem and made a descent to 24 metres. I saw scorpionfish, crayfish, octopus, painted flutemouth, coral cod, checkered seaperch, batfish, meyers butterflyfish, humphead bannerfish, moorish idol, collare butterflyfish, blue ringed angelfish, orange anemone fish, parrotfish, bird wrasse, titan triggerfish, black spotted toadfish and blennies. It was a good dive. When we ascended and were about to exit the water, I began to deflate the submersible marker buoy we had deployed, when Ian declared that he had dropped a fin and he could see it descending to the sea bed. I volunteered to go after it as everyone else had removed their fins and passed the buoy to the others to take care of. I partly deflated my buoyancy control device and finned down to secure Ian's fin at only 4 metres and the remaining air in my buoyancy control device took me back to the surface. I had successfully rescued Ian's fin, so now we are quite following my mask incident in Cairns!
But then someone pointed out that there was a submersible marker buoy floating away from the boat. 'Is that ours?' someone asked. 'Yes,' I said, 'but I asked someone to grab it for me.' So then I had to make another rescue mission to secure the buoy which meant a 50 metre surface swim. Luckily I hadn't fully deflated it and it remained buoyant. I was thrown a buoy and then dragged back to the boat for the third time following the dive!
During the surface interval I rested some more, along with everyone else on the deck, laying down listening to a terrible quality Elvis tape, and ate some lunch. I made sure I had gathered my belongings too as we would be leaving the dive vessel after the third dive and would transfer to Tab-Lamu via speedboat.
Our final dive was at Koh Bon, again, at 13:40. We experienced some very strong currents and pulled ourselves along by the corals, following the example of our divemaster. At one point, Cornelia was so determined to point out a scorpionfish to me that she almost touched it in the process! We saw a banded snake eel free swimming, giant moray eel, shrimps, cleaner wrasse cleaning the inside of a wrasse's mouth, small moray eel hiding in a coral block, blue ringed angelfish, checkered seaperch, coral cod, batfish, true anemone fish and a manta ray in the distance. Towards the end of the dive we turned away from the coral wall and swam towards the deep blue in search of the manta ray. Suddenly I felt the onset of the anxiety I felt this morning again and we were only at 12 metres. I turned to face the coral to steady myself and found that it helped. When I turned back again I fixed my eyes on Ian and refused to look into the deep blue, which I suspected was a factor for my dizziness. We then ascended to do our safety stop and I felt relieved. Marcus, Cornelia, Ian and I took some underwater photographs whilst completing our safety stop, then upon surfacing I told Ian that I experienced a similar feeling of this morning.
We had very little time afterwards before transferring to the speedboat so I quickly showered and packed and stamped my dive log before clambering aboard the speedboat, on which I rested again during the 60 minute transfer to Tab-Lamu. At Tab-Lamu we boarded the minibus and began the drive to Koh Khloi where we hoped to get a bus to Bangkok.
I discussed my experiences with Ian on the way. He suggested that I might be suffering from vertigo as the common factor of both dives was the deep blue sea. It has been known to disorient divers and so they feel dizzy although I didn't feel disoriented at the time. Still, it's the best explanation I have heard so far and Ian also recalls me saying I have felt dizzy on a similar dive before when we have been facing deep blue, in the Maldives. I hope his prognosis is correct because I don't want my diving career to be tainted by this day.
We couldn't get a bus from Koh Khloi so returned to Phuket, or more correctly, Patong Beach, so we could catch the bus the next morning. We booked into the Swiss Hotel on Sasson's recommendation and noted the offer of a 'lady joiner' for a mere TBT 500. Thanks, but no.
The sun glowed bright orange as it was setting over the Andaman Sea in Patong Beach as we arrived. As we drove into Patong Beach we spotted a Tesco supermarket and then further in we saw the first Boots chemist we had seen since leaving England.
We walked out to get some dinner and were disgusted to find so many European holiday makers. It was like the Costa del Sol, horrible. Obviously Phuket and localities are now the preferred Ibiza or Agia Napa. It was a shock and more of a disappointment.
The ever present taxi drivers, songthaew and tuk-tuk drivers, street hawkers and restauranteurs were striving for our custom. No matter how many times you shake your head and say 'no, thank you' their persistent nature continues, much to our annoyance. Surely they must realise they are not going to get our custom? Leave us alone! Still, the curry we ate was good although the accompaniment of Bollywood television was questionable.
After dinner Ian tootled off to the bar in search of Sasson, who he thought he had spoken to on the hotel telephone, but wasn't sure. I completed my dive log and fell asleep listening to the news on the war in Iraq, still unaware as to when it broke out. Ian returned some time later explaining that it wasn't Sasson he had arranged to meet in the bar...
Copyright 2003 Helen Fuller. All rights reserved.