SCUBA

John,

Sorry it has been a couple of weeks since I last updated this thing for you.  But when you asked to know more about what I'm doing in SCUBA right now I was right in the middle of some advanced training.  Now it's done, so I thought I'd let you know how it went.  Some history first:

It all started around my wedding anniversary in 2004.  Vikki set us up to do a SCUBA Discovery class where you show up with $25 bucks, a swim suit and they give you a crash course about the equipment and then turn you loose in their pool.  The idea is to get you hooked so that you will sign up for an Open Water course that will get you certified to actually go SCUBA diving.

Well, it was a surprise from her to me.  When she told me what we were up to I started to whine about how she shouldn't keep her hopes up for me.  You see, I got to go snorkel in Hawaii the year after you and I met at BYU.  I ended up drinking half the Pacific Ocean that day and it sort of turned me off to the whole idea of swimming in the sea.  It was that memory that was tattooed on my brain when Vikki told me what we were about to do.

Long story made short:  I loved it!  I was hooked and they pulled me right on in.  I got set up to do the Open Water course a few months later and have worked my way up the ranks ever since.  Most recently I passed off my Rescue Diver certification so that I can go with our Varsity Scouts this summer to Catalina Island and do some SCUBA with them there.  My son will be one of them.  I'm looking foward to it.

So let's take a look at some pictures that I've taken over the years.  I'll warn you now, the in-water shots from the first few years are done with a little plastic point-and-shoot film camera that I picked up somewhere for $20.  Those pictures are not that great.  As time went along I was able to get better and invest in a better digital camera.  It's still point-and-shoot, but does a better job.

Vikki was pregnant when I first got certified, so I waited until she had the baby and was ready to get certified herself.  It was not until July of 2006 before we went on our first actual open water dive in the ocean.

Vikki and Tom Turner in the Sea of Cortez at San Carlos, Mexico in July 2006.

San Carlos is a little village four or five hours south of the Arizona border and the only thing to do there is sport fish and SCUBA dive.  It was a three day trip and we had a blast.  The first day we dove in a little cove that was only about 20 feet deep to get used to our new sport.  The next day they took us out to an island where wild Sea Lions lived.  We got to dive with the females.  They told us if the bull male got in the water we should get out.  The "little" females were all bigger than I was.  They spent a little time checking us out and the rest of the time speeding right at us just to pull off at the last second.  It got the adrenalin going, to say the least.  That evening they coaxed us to do our first night dive.  Different critters come out at night like lobsters, octopi, and other creepy things.  My rented flashlight died half an hour into the dive, but it was an experience nonetheless.

We got five dives in that trip and really got our feet wet, so to speak.  It gave me the confidence I needed to go to Catalina Island of the coast of Huntington Beach, California a few months later with my brother, Scott, who you may remember from BYU.

Me on the left and Scott on the right diving off the coast of Catalina Island. September 2006. 

West coast diving is done in cold water.  This was our first foray into wetsuit diving.  Temperatures at depth in September is relatively warm at 65 degrees.  (My recent training was done in a lake at 54 degrees.)  We wore rented wetsuits and did pretty good.  It takes a lot of work just to get into the ornery things.  I definitely prefer warm-water diving, but Catalina is close and less expensive to dive, so it is good when you just want to get wet for a weekend.

A few months later Vikki, I, and our four kids took a trip to Jamaica to go to one of those all-inclusive family resorts.  It really was quite an adventure.  We were right on the beach.  The sunsets were absolutely beautiful.  They even had their own dive set-up and we took advantage of it.  We used their equipment.  We actually had bought our own stuff around this time, but we were not going to pack all that stuff along with everything else we had to take along.

Vikki and I did our first dive together.  I still had the cheap camera at this point, but at least I was getting better at it.  

Not a lot to do or look at where we were.  Not a lot of animal life either.  This is Vikki's least favorite dive of all the dives she's been on because of that.  Probably won't be going back to Jamaica any time soon.

But the water was very warm.  It was 87 degrees at the bottom.  That's pretty toasty.

She and I followed the group and had fun on this dive for the most part just because it was still new to us.  However, it is the only dive we got to do together because our youngest did not like the babysitting accommodations at all.  He screamed the entire time we were gone.  Needless to say, we didn't put their staff through any more screaming fits from him.

We had to dive separately after that while we were in Jamaica.

I met someone on the next dive that knew how a camera worked, so she got to take the next pictures of me.  Again, not a great camera, so not the best pics in the world.  But they document the trip.

This was a little plane filled with cocaine.  It went down in a storm many years earlier, so there is not much left of it.

This would be my first offical "wreck."  Not much of a wreck, but hey, you gotta start somewhere!

This was in 54 feet of water. Open water divers need to stay above 60 feet.  You are supposed to get more training to go deeper than 60 feet.  You are given a card when you are certified that you have to show to boat operators or dive outfits in order for them to let you dive at certain depths or conditions.

A resort dive operation is never going to do anything very technical, but at this point in my SCUBA I was not really ready for anything more technical than what I was doing here.

I got to sit in the cockpit, but the pics of that didn't turn out at all.  Better luck next time.  I had fun nonetheless!

                                                  
                                                                
In 2007 Vikki and I took a cruise to the Bahamas and this time we took our own equipment.  If you haven't figured it out yet, Vikki loves to travel.  She doesn't ask for much, so who am I to deny here any trip she want to go on?  In defense, she puts together incredible trips and does it for a lot less than any travel agency could do.  But I digress.

Vikki at a DC3 airplane wreck (on the left).  Me with my brand new equipment (on the right).

Can you imagine being dumped off the boat about 200 yards away from this wreck, swiming behind the divemaster with nothing but blue in front of you.  Then after a minute or so you see a dark outline and the closer you get it turns into the shape of a large plane.  This stuff is absolutely awesome to me!  You really have to experience it to understand it.  You realize you have to get certified now so we can go back to this site in the Bahamas?  You get certified and Vikki will get us set up!

Later in 2007 Vikki and I went to Catalina Island while we were visiting her folks in Huntington Beach. We caught a ferry in the morning, dove off the Casino Point there in Avalon, spent the day on the island and caught a ferry back that evening.  Great trip, but no pics.  The cheap camera broke.  That's when I got a digital camera.  

The next year, in 2008, Vikki and I were supposed to go to the Florida Keys for me to get my Advanced Open Water certification, but a hurricane blew right over the top of the Keys the week we were supposed to be there.  Since we already had the plane tickets, Vikki was able to get us diverted more north and we went to Disneyworld instead.  The Epcot center holds one of the worlds largest indoor saltwater tanks with fish, sea turtles, rays, sharks, etc.  They also have SCUBA in the tank and she got us in.  No pictures for that, but they did have a videographer in the water and we have a DVD of that trip.  Low on the technical scale, but a lot of fun.  Vikki hammed it up with all the little kids that watched from the observation area.  I wish I had a picture of that.

Last year we were able to get to the Keys after all.  This trip was all about my Advanced Open Water certification, so Vikki didn't dive at all since all my dives were tied up with the instructor.  We were there in the off-season, so there were no buddies for her even if she wanted to dive.  The advanced certification allows you to dive as a recreational diver up to 130 feet, but it is suggested that you stay at or above 100 feet.  Below 100 feet many people have a feeling similar to what you might feel using laughing gas at a dental office.  I did not have that sensation when I did my deep dive certification at 110 feet.  So, with more training, I might be able to more technical dives in the future.

That deep-dive certification was done at a Navy wreck called the Speigel Grove.  You can look it up on the internet to see pictures of it.  That was a fairly technical dive and I did not attempt to take pictures on either of the two dives I did there.  It was a huge ship sitting in 120 feet of water with a fast current.  I learned how to swim in the "shadow" of the ship to avoid the current.  But going down the decent line you felt the current the whole way.  It was strong enough I thought it would rip my mask right off my face.  We even had to drop in through a layer of jellyfish around 20 feet down to 40 feet.  There were literally thousands of them.  We had to nudge them around us with gloved hands to avoid getting stung.  Crazy fun!  Then we shared space with barracuda in the passages of the wreck.

Christ of the Abyss (on the left).  Me and my instructor Linus Franzon (on the right).

The rest of the trip was done in more shallow waters and I finished up my Advanced Open Water training.  It allows me to dive a little more aggressively and continue to train in more specialized things like wreck dives and deep dives without a divemaster.

This year, actually last week, I continued my training by completing my Rescue Diver certification.  It doesn't really allow me to do anymore than I am already doing, but it makes me much more aware of things that can go wrong.  Hopefully it will make me more calm in a rescue situation, or better yet, be able to stop a situation before it becomes a rescue situation.

We did the open water part of the certification in a lake here in the Phoenix area.  Dark and cold it was.  As I said earlier, it was 54 degrees.  But I recently bought a new 7 mm wetsuit that did great.  I was in the water for about 4 hours and noticed my toes were slightly chilled at about 3.5 hours.  Needless to say, it will do just fine for the type of waters I plan to dive in.

Just chillin, but very toasty while doing it!

We had to learn quite a few new skills for this certification.  We did a lot of drills in "search and rescue" mode where we had to drop down, locate a non-responsive diver, get him to the surface, doff his equipment, and get him to shore while the whole time doing rescue breathing.  These two photos show us in the process of getting the victim back to the boat or in this case the shore line.  I am "towing" the diver (actually pushing him and my buddy) while my buddy is doing rescue breathing.  We have already doffed his equipment and are getting him to the shore as quick as possible.  Once we are at the shore line I get my equipment off as fast as possible while rescue breathing is still being done.

Doffed gear and continuing rescue breathing until help arrives.

Once my gear is off I take over the rescue breathing while my buddy gets his gear off.  Once his gear is off we can get him the rest of the way onto the shore, cut his suit off while rescue breathing continues and then start CPR, hopefully getting EMS as quick as possible.  By this time every muscle hurts and you feel as if you can not move another inch.  The hope is that other rescue divers or EMS will be able to take over while you get your breath back.

There is more, but these are the only pictures I have of this training.  Hope I never have to use it.  But I will continue to train as if I have to.

With that in mind, good night.