Dive School Cont.

Tue
We have begun our navigation dives starting with 750 m. We did it twice, I got to do it during the day and Switzer did his dive at night. I was only off by 20 m and scored a 96.7 out of a hundred. During the night dive there isn't a lot to do when your buddy is navigating it is black and you feel like you are in a tube creating a sense of claustrophobia. Before this course you had do sign a waiver saying that you weren't afraid of the dark, water (obviously) or confined spaces and now I understand why.after a while I began to notice little green flashes on the bottom and that when you waved your hand in front of you there are little green glittering lights. Being board out of my mind I began thinking Avra Kedavra and pretended that  magic shot out of my fingers then something swam through the grass right below us and startled us.

Thu
We finished our nav dives with a 3000 m test. My dive buddy failed and has to retest tomorrow so I will be diving it again. Near the end of my dive a Barracuda decided to swim with us for a little bit, they are scary looking.

Fri
Final checks on our dreagers and advanced closed circuit dive qualifications. We did a quick pace dive to time how long it takes us to swim 100m then did rout diving in the harbor where we did our ship bottom searches. In the murky deep water of the harbor you imagination goes wild and sees thing like the shadow of a massive shark. I got totally lost and had to do some major course corrections after doing some tactical peaks (you surface with only your head to get your bearing). The end of the day was filled with boat navigation and introduction to nautical charts.

Mon
Now we operate in 2 Operational Detachments (ODA and ODB) of 12 men and learned Beach Landing Sights (BLS) or where we infiltrate a beach. When diving as a group you all hook together and swim in a huge chain (we asked about sharks before our open ocean dive and were told "Your 40 feet long and scary as #%$@, nothing in the ocean is going to mess with you)". Getting all tied off is a huge chore trying to get all the lines in the right order but it has nothing on getting ready to BLS unhooking is an intricate dance of untying everything in the right order starting with your weapon, second securing your fins to a D-link then seperating 100 feet of line and storing it before you break the surface. You do all this while lying on your stomach in 3 feet of water with waves and in the dark and you can see why it's difficult. When everything is secured everyone stands up together and you hurry while being as quiet as you can to get out of the water and off the open beach..

Tue
To day we did BLS in the open ocean. We in ODA were dropped off a mile off shore then after 10 min of swimming on the surface (turtle backing) the Dive Sup began shooting airsoft at us and driving the boats at us making us do an emergency purge (clearing the dreagers of normal air and creating a pure O2 atmosphere, with a bad purge you will pass out because the CO2 absorbent doesn't take out Nitrogen). It was an exorcise for if we are discovered while on the surface. Diving in the open ocean with the closed circuit dreager was quite and relaxing, I didn't have a critical job so I was able to enjoy the ocean wildlife. Vibrant colored fish darted around us as we passed monolithic coral formations, I even saw a Puffer Fish. About 30 min into the dive we heard clicking and squeaking, thinking one of the dreagers was malfunctioning I began looking around for the source when two bottle nose dolphins swam up to us thinking we we rather interesting. The dolphins continued to swim around us for about 20 min getting close enough to touch as they investigated the human divers that don't make bubbles. As we approached the shore the dolphins took off as we had to fight wave movements picking us up off the bottom as slamming us down again while dragging us back and forth across rock, sand and coral. We hurried and prepared to surface and I notice some human legs out in front of us. When ODA surfaced we were about 25 feet from some snorkelers preparing to go out for a swim, they did not expect that the 2 red dive buoys floating in the ocean to be attached to 12 men with blacked out faces  
in camo with M-16's at the ready, pop out of the water.