29 Feb 2016
Good morning, Galapagos!
Today, I’ll be diving alone- Mark and Patti are headed to Gordon Rock, hopefully to find hammerheads, but it’s considered an advanced dive so you need either 50 dives or a prior check out dive. I have a whopping 17 dives under my belt and there’s not enough time for me to do a checkout dive, so I’m headed to Floreana on a different boat:
Dive #1 – Punta Cormorant
Our entry for this dive was a backroll off the boat, which isn’t something I’ve done with my camera. I did take it on one trip between my training dives and can giant stride with it, but it seemed easier to just roll in, then go back for my camera. So I asked the crew to hand it down to me once I was in the water.
I rolled in, turned to go back to the boat and saw my guide waving at me with my camera.
But in jumping with my camera, he hit the latch, unlocked the housing and flooded it.
Its alarm was screaming when he handed it to me.
I immediately passed it back up to the boat and aborted the dive.
Then I cried.
Guys, I know I’m new to this diving thing, but I’ve been diving with this camera since my certification. I made sure to get comfortable with it on my first post-certification dive trip and even brought it down with me on my Advanced Open Water course so I could shoot while waiting for my turn on skills.
To their credit, the crew on the boat was great and helped me use my tank to try to dry out the camera as much as possible and talked me into splashing for the second dive. Nothing more I can do for my camera from here.
Dive #2 – Champion
Today’s bad luck continues- my ear is seriously plugged and I can’t decend. I can make it about 14′ before the pain is too much, so I signaled to my guide that there was something wrong with my ear and that I’d just follow the group from the surface.
No idea what sorts of critters they saw at depth, but I enjoyed watching the marine iguanas dive down and chomp on the algae.
When we got back to land, I spent most of the afternoon at the dive shop office figuring out what to do about my camera. Ultimately, they agreed to cover 1/3 of the camera’s cost, the guide who jump with the camera would cover 1/3 and I’d be responsible for the remaining third. My camera has since been replace with a newer model, so hopefully that’s enough to source a new one because I disassembled the whole thing when I got back to my room:
and found a corrosion already forming on the cables:
and water in the sensor:
Yup, camera’s toast.
When I’m upset, I tend to loose my appetite, so I skipped dinner. I did check in with Mark and Patti, who gave me a couple granola bars in case I got hungry later and Patti took a look at my ear (the benefit of traveling with medical folks and having just finished a medical mission, she had her otoscope with her) and sent me to the pharmacy to start on antibiotics- ear looks like it’s got an infection brewing.
Great.
I know today’s been kinda a bummer of a day, so enjoy this tiny lizard I found in my room:
It can only go up from here, right?