I always wonder when will I use this cheap rusted knife. That was the first, and hopefully, the last, time I use it. I found out on that day that it’s going to be used to cure my stupidity.
When I started scuba diving during my open water days, I was scrambling to complete my gears- BCD, regulator, mask, fins, and those small accessories- that I wasn’t really sure when and how to use it, like my knife. I was like an eager boy scout on my first camping trip. Every time I go on a dive, religiously, I strapped in my $12 knife. You can’t go out without your shoes on, and so is diving without a knife, at least it’s a motto for me. As I look at it, I always wonder when will I use this piece of equipment.
For long, the answer came during my days when I was still on my dive master’s training with Ruvi.
“Do you know how to tie the reel in the clips?” Ruvi asked, referring to the line and reel of the SMB (or surface marker bouy). He had to speak a little louder as the boat’s engine was the noisiest out in the blue vast ocean.
Without waiting for an answer, he then showed me how he does it. On the reel where the line was kept rolled, there were several holes in the side. He let go several inches of the line and let it through one of the holes, as to make a loop, pulling the end of the SMB to the reel until it locks out. He then open one of his clips, hook the loop, and then started to twist the loop around the clip, just at the end. The last inch of the loop was hook back again on the clip on the same end. In this way, the line will not run free.
I look at my way against his. Same line, only that my twist was all the way throughout the stem of the clip and then my loop ended on the other end of the clip. The other end was hooked on one hole and then the other in the D-ring of my BCD. My SMB was in the pocket. I told myself, meh…this should be fine.
When we arrived at Kimud Shoal, Ruvi asked me to jump into the water first, and then followed by our two fun divers, a lovely couple from Sweden or the Netherlands. I really can’t remember, as they looked all the same to me. Based on their looks, the couple is enjoying retirement. The jump was followed by Shakhar, another DMT.
One of the many lessons Ruvi taught me was to look out at my divers during their jump, like it was our prized possession. It became my habit to look at the bottom of the sea after I do my jump. It icks Ruvi as the recommended conduct was simple- eyes on your divers.
As our diver’s jump after the other, I look at them as a divemaster who recently got the lesson. The last jump went to Ruvi, and I took that time to respond to my urge to look at the bottom, like when we saw the sign “wet paint“, and out of curiosity, we still try to touch the wall.
And there it was. The moment I look down was the moment I saw my stupidity. I saw my line going away from me. The line ran to the blue abyss of Kimud. I shouted at Ruvi about it like it was an emergency. At the moment’s spur, two divers who want to have fun, Ruvi doing his supposed responsibility, I lost my awareness. The next time I look down, I saw my line got twisted on the boat’s propeller. I yelled at the boat captain to stop.
The last call of the vessel, no matter how small or big it is, lies on the boat captain. And so, because of boat traffic in the shoal, he can’t stop as he still needs to do the last maneuvers. While I was trying to save much line as I can, the next thing I know, I took my knife and had no choice but to cut off the line.
When I look around, Ruvi was already down along with his divers. He made a quick trip to cut my line again on the end where the line got twisted on the boat’s propeller.
Finding no hope in recovering my reel, I followed Ruvi towards the other side of the shoal. As Ruvi looked back and saw me catching up to him, he signaled me to go back and recover the line. The wild wonder of his eyes as it met mine says it all on. Ruvi’s wondering why I’m catching up with him when my line and reel is still somewhere out there, sinking or twisted with another dive boat’s propellers.
I thought that the course of action was to let it go as the black-blue waters of Kimud swallow my reel, but it’s not. It has to be recovered. So, I swim back and locate my reel and whatever line that has left. Not long enough, I found my reel stuck on one of the mooring lines. I recover it and reel back the line, clearing up the evidence that other divers might see. When they’ll see that reel and line, they might think that some stupid diver, a divemaster nonetheless, lost a line and reel.
50 bars later, I catch up with Ruvi and found out that the entire show happened in just 5 minutes. In the depths of the ocean, I can hear the thump of my heart. Just then, I’ve realized that you can hear your own heartbeat. The skin beneath on where my heart is placed went up and down, as if my heart wants to jump out of my body. I remember a scene from the show Tom and Jerry, where the heart of the brown mouse did exactly that. When people say that they “can feel their heartbeat” to profess their feelings to someone or to describe powerful emotions, it’s an understatement to say that over the incident that happened to me during that dive.
When the dive was done, I went back on the boat and ditched my gears and then unzip my BCD’s pocket and reveal the tangled line that I kept, hiding the proof of my stupidity. I tied the lines, spool it again on the reel, ready for the next dive.
The best time to commit that mistake was during my DMT. I was thankful, at the least, that the sweet error happened when I was still under Ruvi’s supervision.
That fateful moment, the serendipity between Ruvi’s lesson on that morning and the line-that-ran-free had taught me a two lessons: first, listen to your instructor. Second, as I look back on what happened to me on that day at Kimud, I was thankful for my knife. In SCUBA Diving, anything can happen anytime.
I always wonder when will I use this cheap rusted knife. That was the first, and hopefully, the last, time I use it. I found out on that day that it’s going to be used to cure my stupidity.
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