Our equipment test went fine. We did a different kind of dive today, no tests, just float along with the underwater current. The tricky part was to follow our leader Jamie and not bang into any of the coral formations. But Jamie was a good leader and I trusted him. He had a job watching both Randal and me since we are still learning to stay at a specific level. Everyone is supposed to just follow the leader but he kept having to come back to get Randal or me to make sure where we were. I hadn't cleaned my mask's original film off well enough so my visibility wasn't as good as it could have been. The current was moving us fast enough that you couldn't really look long enough at anything so that was a bit disappointing. But all the gear worked well. After that we had to pack up all of the gear and get it back to DoraMac. Randal hired a small banca. There are no roads through Sabang so no way, by vehicle, to get the gear back to the one road out of town. The banca man, not much bigger than I am, carried most of the stuff onto the boat. Then he carried Randal piggyback onto the boat so Randal wouldn't have to walk through the water in his socks and sandals. There was a ladder from the boat into the shallow water and he carried Randal to the point where he could step onto the ladder without walking through the water. It almost worked and looked very funny.
We started off back to DoraMac. Our first stop was at Coco Beach Resort to donate some of our "already read" books. We had met a very interesting Dutch man who has helped develop the resort's coconut product line so that local families can earn a living making and packaging the products. I'll write more about him when I continue the story of our adventures with Carol. Then we continued to DoraMac with one short stop for fuel to put into the banca's small engine. When we got to DoraMac I was even more impressed with our banca driver who perfectly maneuvered his banca to the foot of our swim platform. He again carried most of the gear off his banca onto our boat. Randal paid him 300 pesos, 50 more than the 250 we had agreed on. It was totally worth it. (About $7.00)
As soon as we had gotten some of the gear settled, Randal put his back on and went under DoraMac to clean the prop. It took about 20 minutes since most of the gunk had been scrapped off in Subic. It was a bit disconcerting to have Randal down under the boat alone but I could see his bubble floating up to the surface. We had tied a line under the boat near the prop so he could pull himself to the surface if need be. But we had learned the basics and he was fine. And even though we had never learned to dive under objects which does take more training, the boat is not a large area, so okay.
Hanging to dry behind the cockpit.
Two tanks to use and 2 for spares
Now we just have to find someplace to store it all. That might be harder than the underwater mask removal!
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