*THIS* is the excursion we have all been waiting for – or should I say getting ready for? Those of us who were going to scuba dive had studied our S.C.U.B.A. manuals for hours, filled out all of the knowledge reviews, passed our written tests, spent two days practicing skills in the confined water dives, and passed all of our confined water skills tests prior to leaving on vacation. During all of the above, I was also spending HOURS surfing the internet and frequenting cruise messages boards searching for a company to take us out diving. I contacted 1/2 a dozen or so dive shops and scuba diving operators before finding one that would be a perfect match for our diverse group. The only picture I have with their name in it is this one.

First, I found that it was difficult to find a company who would take both snorkelers and scuba divers out on the same boat. That was a problem for us because we all wanted to stay together, if possible. We realized that we wouldn’t be together in the water, but we wanted to stay together to take pictures and share the experience as much as possible. If that wasn’t problem enough, we also had grandparents (not that THEY are a problem – lol) who wanted to come along to be in on the action and take pictures, but they didn’t want to get in the water. I didn’t find very many companies willing to take “riders” along. Then, IF we made it past all of the above points then the last question usually sealed the deal for them to NOT take us out (LOL). My last question was always.. “oh, and we also have a 3 year old.. can he come along?”

Even after letting people know I would assume full responsibility, I would sign any and all waivers, he would not go in the water, he would be under the direction supervision of a grandparent all of the time, he would wear a life jacket (we would even bring our own if they didn’t have one), one person in our group is an EMT, etc., .. usually the answer was still no. Now, tell me….. does he LOOK like he’s causing any problems on the boat? I knew he wouldn’t! And, grandpa wasn’t any problem either (LOL). He doesn’t like water nor boats nor swimming.

I understand that some companies have probably experienced problems with taking toddlers and so that’s fine. I understand, but I was still hoping to find a three generation family friendly company! Finally, when I was almost ready to give up on the possibility of all of us being able to go on this type of excursion together I ran across Eagle Ray Divers run by Antonio and Chellie. I emailed Chellie several times and even talked to her on the phone a couple of times as well. She assured me they could take all of the scuba divers and snorkelers and said they would be happy to have the grandparents ride along to photograph the action! And, then she said it was no problem bringing Nathan and I didn’t even need to bring our own lifejacket for him. They would have one for us. She was SO HELPFUL and encouraging! She took the time to answer all of my questions, some times more than once, explain exactly what paperwork we needed to bring with us since we were going to be doing “referral” dives, etc. She answered all of the questions that our instructor here said to be sure to find out before trusting someone to take us out diving. I just can’t say enough nice things about how patient she was with a nervous first time scuba diver’s unending questions! And, to top that off I was able to understand her! I can’t say that for 1/2 of the other places I called. Here is Chellie in the sun visor and black shirt talking to the grandparents.

I was a little worried that they may have thought we weren’t coming because our ship was late arriving and then we had a hard time finding a taxi. Oh, and when we did find a taxi I wasn’t 100% certain we would all arrive at the same dock. Everything happens in a blur when you’re in a hurry and in a country where you don’t speak the language. Anyway that’s another story. When we all arrived, Chellie and the Eagle Ray Divers crew were there waiting and ready for us!
Chellie introduced us to the crew. I can’t tell you how comforting it is to recognize a familiar voice when you’re about to send two of your kids off IN THE OCEAN without a parent going with them, take another child underwater with you when you really don’t think you could possibly be of any help yourself if anything went wrong, *AND* leave your little one on the boat. Not that we don’t trust the grandparents to watch the little one, mind you… it’s just one of those things when you have kids.. you worry about them when they aren’t by your side. I’m certain it doesn’t have anything to do with “control issues.” (LOL). Anyway, again, it was nice to have already established a connection with Chellie before we arrived. While they started helping everyone else first, I took a few quick pictures.The scuba divers were on one side of the boat and snorkelers on the other. The scuba divemasters, Antonio and Gustavo, helped us (scuba divers) get all of our gear on discreetly figuring out how much weight we each needed on our belts (LOL), checking the air tanks, hooking everything up, finding the right sized flippers and wet suits for each of us, etc. They were AWESOME! Their first goal was, obviously, our safety. The next goal was to get us in the water so we could start enjoying our dive experience! Since we had limited time and we wanted to get in two of our open water referral dives, they helped us get going very quickly!Said showed the snorkelers how to secure their masks, breath through their snorkel tube, etc. They didn’t need to mess with wetsuits, but they did need to get the right size flippers and make sure their masks fit properly. He also gave them safety instructions. Here he’s giving them a demonstration.
Emily and Melissa are getting their masks and snorkels ready in the picture below. Emily brought her own from home so she has already used it. The scuba divers all brought their own masks. The snorkelers, however, were trying theirs on for the first time and needed to get them adjusted just right.

For a long time, while we were taking our SCUBA classes Josh would get worried and ask one of us to not scuba. We weren’t sure which of us would stay behind and snorkel, but one of us would have if it really came to that. Fortunately, Josh decided he would be comfortable snorkeling with Amanda, after she decided she couldn’t scuba, so both Tim and I were able to scuba dive. Here we are all ready to go.

Here, Emily is getting her BCD buckled up and ready.
After we had donned the requisite gear, Antonio went over some instructions with us. He made sure we all knew what to expect, what we were going to do, and how we were going to do it. He made sure we were all using the correct hand signals, knew how to read our gauges, etc. At one point I was sort of zoning out. The fumes from the boat were starting to get to me, it was getting REALLY hot in the wet suit, *AND* it was hard to hear with the boat’s motor running as well as other boats making noise nearby, not to mention that I just have a hard time understanding accents (LOL). Evidently, he had asked if Emily and I were hot. We must have shaken our head yes because the next thing we knew he had someone come and dump a bucket of REALLY COLD salt water on us (LOL). It did feel good since we were sitting at the back of the boat in the full sun while most everyone else was under the canopy. After going over all of the instructions, we were finally ready to jump in. Well.. everyone else might have been ready, but I wasn’t. I’m not sure how I thought we were going to get into the water out in the middle of the ocean on a rocking boat (LOL). Here’s my brother jumping in. It was awkward with the air tank on your back, weight belts around your waist, big flippers on your feet making it nearly impossibly to walk, and a rocking boat making it difficult to stand on the edge of the rail to actually “jump” in. He makes it look easy. I was worried that I would just basically “fall” overboard (LOL)….. or that I’d linger to long and someone would have to just push me overboard!
There goes Em. I was the last one to jump in and thankfully there aren’t any pictures of *ME* jumping in. Here we’re in the water getting used to everything before we start to head under water. At this point, I was starting to get slightly panicked. I’m not sure why. I had come up from under the water… I did tell you we were wearing WEIGHT BELTS and we are in the OCEAN, right? I KNEW how to stay buoyant at the surface. I KNEW how to breath through the regulator or the snorkel. I KNEW how to do everything I was supposed to do yet I still felt slightly panicked. I was worried that Josh wouldn’t catch up to the snorkelers who had been jumping off from the other side of the boat. He hesitated just a bit and then they drifted off further than he was able to quickly swim to reach them. Anyway.. that and a zillion other things were running through my mind. I could have very easily said… go ahead boys… I’ll just get back on the boat and take some pictures. But, I couldn’t do that because I had just spent the entire morning giving Emily pep talks about carrying through with this dive and reminding her how disappointed she would be to have come this far and then not even give it a try. So, I *HAD* to go under for Emily! Here we are all gathered around to get a few more instructions from Antonio and Gustavo before heading down. He kept reminding us (probably directed at ME) to remain calm, breath through our regulators instead of trying to take a few last breaths of AIR (LOL). We’re getting our first glimpse of what’s under the water and we’re taking a few breaths from our regulators before heading down under. Our first dive was pretty shallow (compared to the abyss we swam next to in the second dive….not shallow as in standing up and touching the bottom). I think we were about down about 15 feet or so initially. As we became more and more comfortable in the water, we gradually swam along the reef going deeper as we went. Read further and you’ll see the underwater pictures in the next blog entry. This entry is just about the above-water things.After receiving final verbal instructions we get ready for our descent. From then on we’ll have to rely on hand signals and sign language for any communication. Here we’re slowly releasing the air from our BCDs and heading down under.The guides set the buoy where were descending to warn boats that we’re underneath. Further down we go. It was a really strange sensation to be under the surface in the *ocean*. Much different than being in the pool. I was always trying to look up, around, behind, etc making sure everyone was together. I sure didn’t want anyone to get lost at sea!
On the other side of the boat, the snorkelers were heading in a different direction with their guide, Said. I found out later that the captain took Josh back over to rejoin the snorkel group after all of us scuba divers were safely under water. Here the snorkelers are altogether and getting their final instructions before diving under. Said was great with them and I felt completely comfortable leaving Josh and Amanda with him while we were down under.I was glad to look at the pictures and see that Said had a floating device for Josh to grab onto as needed AND that Josh put on a life jacket. At the last minute JUST as I was jumping overboard I noticed he didn’t have one… hollered back PUT YOUR LIFE JACKET ON as I hit the water.. not sure if he even heard me, but someone must have noticed he didn’t have a life jacket on (LOL) because he has one on in this picture.Looks like Josh is all about keeping his head UNDER water! That’s how he was the last time we snorkeled, too. He caught on faster than the rest of us the first time.
Those of you who haev been reading the blog for any length of time might recall that Amanda was originally supposed to be scuba diving with us. She passed all of the knowledge reviews and quizzes, but stopped at the actual test and confined water dives. Knowing she would be snorkeling with Josh really helped and besides that she didn’t want to leave Melissa to snorkel alone either and we didn’t want Melissa to think she had to keep an eye on Josh if none of us were snorkeling with him. After snorkeling this time, Amanda is now thinking she would like to finish the scuba lessons and Josh thinks he’d like to take the Jr. Scuba class as soon as he turns ten this summer. I told Amanda that I really do think scuba is a little easier than snorkeling in that you aren’t always getting water in your mouth or nose and you don’t have to keep coming back up for air!

When we came up from our dives, the boat came over to pick us up. The captain was kept busy shuffling back and forth between the scuba divers and snorkelers! He was great. The entire crew of Eagle Ray Divers were awesome! They made our experience very enjoyable. Here some of us are hanging out in the water waiting for our turn to board the boat.Here’s my brother, Troy. He wants to go on and get his rescue diver certification at some point. Here Tim’s just hanging out enjoying the nice warm water! He’s looking over my shoulder as I type and said he “had a great time and loved EVERYTHING about being in and under the water. Can’t wait to go again”

Mike looks like he’s kicked back in a rocking chair and planning to sit there awhile (LOL). Here Emily is waiting for her turn to get out of the water. She did an awesome job underwater. We were both having a little bit of a hard time getting our ears to equalize on the first dive, but were finally able to stay on the bottom with everyone else. She worked SO HARD to get to this point. We took off all of our gear while we were still in the water. The guides helped us out of our gear and lifted it up to the others on the boat. Here I’m trying to get the BCD off while waiting for my turn to get on the boat.
Here come the snorkelers.

We couldn’t have asked for a better day to be in the water! It was PERFECT.

Inbetween our two dives, the Eagle Ray Divers crew had fresh fruit for us to snack on and lots of water for us to drink. You can’t imagine how thirsty you get when scuba diving. The air makes your throat so dry. Josh was short a flipper and the captain was kind enough to go back to the dock and get one for him during our mandatory break for the scuba divers to off gas. Some people went up on top of the boat to hang out. See Amanda peeking over the edge from the top?

Needless to say she was quite disappointed…..but she gave it her best shot and we’re proud of her!

The captain took her back over to where the others were snorkeling. She had a great time with them and she got to see some cool things there as well. Here she’s jumping in to swim over to Amanda, Josh, and Melissa.

If you ever find yourself heading to Cozumel and you’re looking for someone to take you out snorkeling or scuba diving you MUST look up Eagle Ray Divers! They’re the BEST!