I am in Monterey staying at the Monterey Youth Hostel which is a very comfortable place that welcomes divers and costs less than a campsite per night! There are tons of Germans staying here for some reason they have all congregated here.

Class finished early today so I made the matinee show of The Duchess at the theater a very unusual thing for me to do. It was a really good movie and is based on an actual affair between the Duchess of Devonshire and Charles Grey (7 years her junior who became prime minister in the 1830’s).

Yesterday we spent the day in the classroom going through over 200 pages of the Rescue Diver manual and then a multiple choice exam afterwards. Having been brought up in the UK where we don’t have multiple choice exams I learnt it is important to read all the possible answers. If I had read properly it would have been 100% but for the two silly mistakes! I hasten to add that they weren’t life threatening ones. After the day in the classroom I burnt up my credit card at the dive shop – there is another sport that has kit that is more expensive then sailing.

Today we spent 5 hours in the swimming pool going over in practice what we had learnt in theory. Towing a diver to safety, what to do with a unresponsive, responsive, panicked diver, breathing for a non breathing diver and carrying people to safety. Of course I was given the 220lb guy (who was deceptively small looking) to firemen carry out of the pool not so easy when sliding around on the pool with fins that have no traction.

Tomorrow we are in the water at the Breakwater dive site doing it in the ocean. Hopefully I will get better at the multitasking neccessary to tow an unconcious non breathing diver to the shore through a kelp bed while giving rescue breaths every 5 seconds and removing their mask, regs, weights and BCDs and then yours without missing a breath. There is always hope…

Hope you are having a great weekend.