Location: Great Harbor, Peter Island
Today was an intense training day. We all woke up around 7 am and had egg burritos and muffins for breakfast. Our chefs, JJ and Tatum, did a great job. After we all ate (the muffins were delicious) we set up our dive gear and got briefed. The dive consisted of the skill of bringing an unconscious diver up to the surface and establishing positive buoyancy for said diver. We split into groups of four. Group 1: Asa, Wylie, Shane, and Gabi (they all claim that Asa and Wylie got attacked by a shark but miraculously fended it off with no injuries). Group 2: JJ, Logan, Ellery, and Lilly. Group 3: Tatum, Lanie, Lila, and I. Everyone was successful in surfacing an unconscious diver.
Around 30 minutes later, we started learning about “”Rescue Exercise Seve””. Rescue exercise 7 entails checking for responsiveness and flipping the diver onto their back, establishing positive buoyancy, removing your and their mask and regulator, checking for their breath, calling for help, two rescue breaths to start, beginning towing, and removing both of the person gear, continue giving rescue breaths every five seconds, get to the boat and receive help. This is a surface exercise, but we all needed to have all of our gear to make it as realistic as possible. We all were in the water at the same time, but four of us went to a different instructor, Rachel, Tommy, and Ri, to make the workload lighter on us. After about 1 1/2 hours of practicing we all went in for lunch, grilled cheese sandwiches. Shane was very excited; she’d been looking forward to this meal the entire trip. They were very tasty; everyone had 2, and some people were so big-backed they split the remaining sandwiches among each other. After lunch, everyone was very lethargic, but we still had more practice of exercise 7 to do. Tommy started playing Sand Storm to hype us all up to get our gear on. After some time, everyone was finally in the water, awaiting the briefing. It was the same as before, except this time, instead of mouth-to-mouth rescue breaths, we had pocket masks. Pocket masks act as a barrier and seal. It was all going well until Tatum was rescuing me, and the pocket mask broke. We continued pretending like it was functional, and it went well, but it was a little more difficult. After all that grueling practice, we were finally done. (Thank God).
Right after we got back we all showered and chilled in the salon while JJ and Tatum were cooking meals. Asa was coaching Ellery on how to play chess, and her (their) opponent was Tatum. Tonight’s dinner was Thanksgiving. It was okay, but not Thanksgiving-worthy. We had a guest for dinner. His name is Dave, and he’s in charge of all the videos and photography of ActionQuest (not TikTok). There was a moo-off between Ri and Tommy. Ri won, so we went against Dave. Dave won, then went against JJ, and JJ won. After dinner, we had a fƒemergency oxygen provider chat, and all got our certifications for it. Yay! The rest of the night is free time, so good night!!!