3 By Sea

We’ve finally started diving someplace other than the pool. And although the water is much colder and extremely turbid (to the point of being completely black at about 25 feet) it is good to be out of the pool and diving.

The weather here has been a little crazy. From the 20’s on Friday to the high 60’s to low 70’s on Monday and Tuesday, a few of us are experiencing some sinus issues. Under normal circumstances, no bid deal. But when being able to dive a requirement to continue the training here, it becomes a big deal. The biggest problem is the sinus squeeze. And I had a pretty good squeeze on Monday. I didn’t want to stop the dive because it was the only dive we were going to do. I did have quite a bit of pressure in my sinuses but didn’t think much of it after I was able to clear (on the 3rd or 4th try). When we surfaced after about 20 minutes, the bottom quarter of my mask was full of blood and fluids. This is a common side effect of a sinus squeeze so there wasn’t much concern on my part or the dive supervisors part. My dive partner was a little freaked out when we surfaced though.

After a quick visit to medical with a diagnosis of swollen sinuses and some blood behind my tympanic membrane, the corpsman gave me Sudafed, Afrin and Flonase. I’ve never really had problems with my sinuses before so I’ve never used these products. But they work.

Tuesday had us doing the same thing we had been doing Monday. We continued to work on Circling Line and Jack Stay searches. I sat out the dives on Tuesday because of the whole sinus thing. I didn’t really want to, but missing a repetitive day is better than not being able to dive later in the week when we start going over new stuff.

We had a Coast Guard PA visit us last week and here took these pics.  They’re pretty good.