I 'm floating inside a sunken ocean liner. It's darker than the inside of a cow. My small dive light barely makes a dent in the darkness. The last time I could see my depth gauge, it read 48 metres, which is a bit troublesome since the waterproof case on my digital camera is only guaranteed to 37.5 metres. My dive computer is beeping, signaling that I've exceeded my depth time and I'm now into decompression mode and I've never done a decompression dive before. Did I mention that ocean liner is lying on its side? So here's the burning question: Am I having fun yet??? I'm on Espiritu Santo, part of the island republic of Vanuatu. Vanuatu is in the South Pacific about 1,700 kilometres east of Northern Australia and west of Fiji. It was a French colony, but English is the main language, along with Bislama -- a type of Pidgin English spoken on several South Pacific Islands. If you're a Survivor fan, you might have heard of Vanuatu, as the show's ninth season was shot there in 2004. Vanuatu was a key base during the Second World War, used by the allies to stop Japan's march towards Australia, and is indirectly the reason why I'm visiting the country. So what am I doing in Vanuatu? Well, it is part of my "Bucket List." If you saw the movie you'll know a "bucket list" is a list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket. As a scuba diver who relishes diving on Second World War wrecks, Vanuatu is high up on my personal bucket list. That's because Vanuatu sports the only intact ocean liner, the SS Coolidge, which is lying on its side only a few hundred metres off shore. The Coolidge, built in 1931, was named after Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president of the United States. It measures 200 metres long and 25m wide and could accommodate 3,500 passengers. (By comparison, the Holland American Veendam is 220m long and can accommodate 1,250 passengers.) In 1941, the Coolidge was converted to a troop transport, painted gun metal grey and reconfigured to carry up to 5,000 troops. It was on one of these troop carrying out missions to Vanuatu that the Coolidge hit a mine and began to sink. The captain ran the ship on to the shore of Espiritu Santo, and by some miracle, nearly all the 5,000 troops and crew scrambled off the ship and waded ashore. A few hours later, the Coolidge slid off the beach and sank into deeper water. Diving the Coolidge One of the unique things about diving the Coolidge is that you can do so right from the beach. You wade out about 30m where you find a rope, then follow the rope down to the bow of the ship, which is fairly shallow, about 18m. However the stern is quite deep -- 55m -- a deep dive by anyone's standard. Almost all dives on the Coolidge are decompression dives. What this means is that because you have been diving at depth, you must make planned rest stops on your way back to the surface to allow your body time to expel the excess nitrogen that accumulated in your body. If you don't, you could suffer a nasty and potentially fatal case of the bends. Depending on how deep you've been and how long you've been there, you can easily spend upwards of an hour "blowing" off nitrogen. Because of the lengthy waiting, you probably won't have enough air in your tank to complete the dive without some help. That's why the dive operators leave extra tanks for their divers at predetermined depths. You switch over to them and, when your dive computer tells you it's safe to continue, you switch back to your own tanks and proceed on to the next stop or the surface. | | Decompression diving is not a skill that is taught to beginning divers. So if you're a new or a beginning diver, you might want to reconsider diving the Coolidge until you have more experience. My first dive on the Coolidge was to familiarize myself with the outside of the ship, and this went well. However, my next dive was a completely different story. The "must do" dive of the Coolidge is to visit "The Lady." She is a large three dimensional fresco of a lady and a unicorn residing in the first class smoking room. Divers come from all over to "kiss the lady" for good luck. I'm skeptical about this dive. First, it is at 38m -- much deeper than any of my previous dives. It's also deep inside the ship. In the past, several divers who have visited the lady have never returned. Allan convinces me to go by promising an experienced divemaster to accompany me. I reluctantly agree. David is my experienced dive master. I ask him how old he is. "Twenty-one," he replies proudly. My kids are older than him. We proceed down the rope to the Coolidge. I have a small diving light and my underwater camera with me. Things go well until we enter into the ship. I grab on to David's arm like a blind man crossing a busy highway. My other hand has a death grip on my flashlight. I worry that if I lose my flashlight, I'll be lost in the inky darkness forever. I begin chugging through my air like a steam engine. David gamely keeps pushing me deeper and deeper into the ship. We arrive at the smoking room. David pries the camera from my hand and motions for me to take the regulator out of my mouth and kiss the lady. David shakes his head and motions for me to do it again. I do it three times while he takes pictures. As we leave the ship, I notice that I have hyperventilated through most of my air. I show David my air gauge and he motions for me to share some of his air -- he has lots. We proceed along like a pair of Siamese twins to the first decompression stop where I switch to the tanks left at the site. After 20 minutes, it is time to swim back. Back at the dive shop, David is showing other dive masters the pictures he took. They are laughing uproariously. The pictures show me not kissing the lady. I am, in fact, kissing the unicorn! I confess that I would have kissed the unicorn's back end if it would have got me out of the ship quicker! by JEFFREY GROBERMAN |
