Hitching a Ride

I can’t say I wasn’t a little surprised when we woke in the Tubbataha Reef. I ought not to have been; Methuselah had made it quite clear that they knew how to navigate their sea. And here we were, right where we’d set out for. He was on the walky-talky with “ground control,” discovering where the Svetlana was at anchor inside the reef, on which atoll. At first, the fact that there was an actual “ground control” was a little surprising to me, but our being that far from any island, I thought it a brilliant idea. Control point, field medic, EMS seaplane, the only thing it was lacking was a confectionary.

I stepped down to the foredeck and leaned back against the cabin to watch the Svetlana draw near. It certainly wasn’t the Nautica. The Nautica was shiny white, sleek, apt to rise up and fly, its keel high and skimming the surface. The Svetlana was red hulled and streaked with ages of grime and soot. The only thing white about her was the salt stains. She was heavy, likely only able to muster a chugging gait, and that with the wind at her back. What can I say? She looked like a fishing trawler, sans booms.

She’d also been out two days. So should we have been, had we arrived on time, had the Nautica not been as broken as the flight that should have whisked us to her on time. Water under the bridge.
Bill, Ursula and Kim were on deck waiting for us. They’d endured a similar fate we had, even if their flights had arrived on time. But without a Jenny with them, Bill had to step up and spend his time on Palawan conferring with San Raphael, and ultimately leading his own little pack on their own fourteen-hour outrigger adventure.

Bill was a steady sort, if a little taciturn; his being a lawyer might do that; being sixty might have had something to do with it, as well. Tall, narrow, wiry, he’d been diving for decades. Ursula had not. But Ursula was still rather experienced, having been Bill’s trophy wife for the better part of a decade.
Kim was more like me, if a little older, her forty to my thirty-two. Kim was a solitary sort, a dedicated bachelorette, an executive expat, living in St. Petersburg. She was successful. Okay, maybe not like me.
We of a similar sort, Jenny, Kim, and I became a trio. Of course we would; we were of a kind: youngish, single, travellers, divers; prone to bookishness, lovers of food, wine and beer. Of, course we’d gravitate to one another’s company.

Jenny was exactly my age, in fact. And born in Ottawa. And adopted, too, although she knew far less about her background than I did. We gave one another a hard look after that, speculating whether we were twins. We couldn’t be, though; there was no mention of a sibling in my stack of birth and adoption papers. Maybe there wouldn’t be, either way. Either way, we became siblings for the duration.

But I’m skipping ahead. We arrived. We nestled up to the Svetlana’s lowered stair. We climbed aboard to a heartfelt welcome from the crew, from our fellow passengers, too, all two of them. That’s why we were able to hitch a ride. The Svetlana had been booked by just one person, a Japanese mogul for the private use of his daughter, who’d just taken up diving, and her instructor. There were no other passengers. It must have taken some negotiation by San Raphael to get us on board. But here we were, scaling the stairs nonetheless, welcomed by all, smiles all around. I’m thinking it had been pretty boring on board without a full complement of rowdy divers to fill its hold. We’d fix that.

We were shown to our cabin, the last available. The heiress had one, her instructor another. Bill and Ursula shared one. Kim had another. Jenny and I would have to share.

“No problem,” I said, “no different than a co-ed hostel,” as if I’d ever spent a night in a hostel. The closest I’d ever been to staying at a hostel was Cambrian Res.

What can I say about our accommodations? I called them Avant-guard Soviet Chic. They were sparse. They were narrow. They were decorated in the very best fake mahogany panelling. No expense had been spared.

They sweltered with the door shut unless the air-conditioner was on. Nothing ever dried in them, although things could freeze. The air-conditioner had two settings: tropical stagnation and arctic hurricane. Blankets were as thin as sheets, and as thermal. We took to sleeping with the door open. I’ll assume all the other rooms were the same as ours; Kim’s was; and both were a sliver of nautical bunks with a maritime head tucked at their feet.

A maritime head is a wonder of engineering, if not comfort, if you’re wondering, requiring you to straddle the toilet to shower, nose to nose with the sink. Not that you’d want to shower in it, not on the Svetlana; had we, whatever hadn’t drained would have lapped the toilet until doomsday. Water pressure was an issue, too. I soon discovered that for the brown to go down, I had to run the tap a little to get the water flowing in my room’s general direction.

I learned quickly: showers were on deck, my main bathe would be in the sea while wrapped in neoprene just after breakfast, with all bio breaks in the main water closet off the dining room, except in an emergency.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I loved it. It was an adventure. It was memorable, far more than any five-star stateroom would have been. Had it been such, it would have fallen from my memory like every other hotel room I’d ever had the pleasure to crash in. Quick, describe your room at the Sheraton!

We unzipped our bags, scattered out gear about, setting up tanks and checking regulators. Donned shorties, weighted belts, pulled on BCs, dragging on last cigarettes.

I met our runabout pilot, a spritely Filipino no taller than a twelve-year-old. I shook his hand, and slipped him an American Twenty.

“Keep a lookout for my bubbles, kid,” I joked. “There’s another twenty in it for you if I’m not lost at sea.”

At the end of every dive I made, he was idling no more than twenty feet away from where I surfaced.
Money well spent.