Love diving, Diving love!

Love is in the air.  As divers we obviously prefer our air to be uncontaminated in anyway, but the reality is that many of us will meet our partners/spouses/significant others through our dive club, or on a course somewhere, or hanging around a dive boat.  There’s an honesty that comes with having a diving partner.  They already know about the hideously early starts to get to the slack water window on a dive site.  They understand the stress when your weekend trip is looming and you still haven’t managed to get to the dive shop for an air fill.  They are happy to abandon any idea that the garage will ever accommodate the car again as your collection of dive kit expands to fill the available space.  They know that you will finish your dive with hair resembling a bird’s nest and a smear of snot across your face.  And they won’t think any less of you for any of it.

In fact there is something evolutionarily positive about partnering up with another diver.  You’ve got a basic health screen for starters.  And there’s a reasonable level of physical fitness.  The ability to carry a 15 litre cylinder is a fine test for being able to carry the shopping in from the car or a laundry basket of wet washing.  Divers generally have a level of practical skills useful enough for most DIY.  And any Dive Leader who has successfully buddied a nervous, newly-qualified diver will have people skills to deal with most situations in life. 

I once took a diver out in Cyprus on a nice easy shore dive, but the slight swell running made getting back to shore one of those nauseating moments where the seaweed and us were moving in harmony but the seabed was doing its own thing.  This was too much for my nervous trainee who signalled and headed up.  We ascended together and on the surface she spat her reg out before she’d inflated her BCD.  Getting a firm grip on her, I reached for her inflator and hit the button.  My reward was a face full of vomit as her seasickness overtook her.  Never have I been so grateful for my mask and regulator.  But what excellent training for parenthood!  Anyone who has ever reared children will appreciate the desire to run away and get some SCUBA kit before changing an explosive nappy.  Even if your conscience overcomes you and you decide to stay with the baby, at least your breath hold techniques will come in very handy.

If your partner is not a diver then you will have to maintain the mystical air of the ‘deep sea diver’.  For non-divers our world can be a strange and confusing place, and their concepts of divers will be guided by Sean Connery as James Bond stepping out of a dry suit in Goldfinger.  His dinner jacket was immaculate.  I tried this once for a film themed fancy dress party.  I persuaded my dad to lend me his dinner jacket and dressed out of the back of the car, cunningly parked only 20 yards around the corner.  Fully suited with my dive kit on I walked to the front door and rang the bell.  It was July and by the time I had made my grand entrance perhaps 20 minutes had passed.  My pièce de résistance was to open my drysuit and step out.  And there I stood, in the crumpled, creased, soggy mess formally known as my dad’s dinner suit.  It was an entrance alright.  While paying the extortionate dry cleaning bill, I reflected on how the media portrays diving as such a glamorous sport and how we have a responsibility to keep that alive for our non-diving friends and relations.
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It’s only when we persuade the non-divers to come and try a SCUBA session that they will really understand what we’re up to and if we are lucky they may well be hooked too.  It’s possible to get married underwater in a number of places in the world.  Instead of saying “I do”, you can exchange “OK” signs and then go for the first kiss.  It won’t be a long, passionate, drawn-out snog!  But it will hopefully be the start of sharing life’s adventure with your buddy.  At least you should reduce the number of guests to something manageable as you can limit invites to qualified divers.  Why not score extra points with your dive buddies and make it a club trip?  After all you’re a diver – you can take the pressure!  Happy Valentine’s Day.