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Comedy Buddy
By Mark Davies on 13 September 2008
Don’t get me wrong – my buddy is great. We’ve had some top quality diving trips together, we dive together well and we get on with each other very famously. Truth be told, once he gets himself in the water he’s a really good diver – probably more capable than I am. The problem though is getting him into the water!
To save his embarrassment we’ll change his name.
We’ll call him Biff.
The lights are on . . .
The thing with Biff is he’s a little forgetful. Okay – I’ll expand on that. He’d forget his head if it wasn’t screwed on. Not that forgetting his head would prove much of a handicap, as most of the time I’m sure it’s filled with nothing more useful than cotton wool!
I met Biff on a YD trip to Anglesey. It was perhaps not the most auspicious of first encounters as when I was parking my car I managed to back it over his torch. If I’d broken it I might have thought that everything that came after was some kind of revenge, but as it was the light was unharmed. I can only conclude that Biff’s antics are the natural consequence of his condition – he’s an air-head!
On that trip we didn’t actually dive together. I mentioned I was planning a trip to the Red Sea (my first) and that I was looking for someone to go with. Biff hadn’t been out to Egypt either and so he expressed an interest. And there started a diving friendship that has lasted for years – well, at least up until he reads this anyway!
On that holiday I got a first idea of what he could be like. Regularly I would need to remind him to put on a weight belt – but that’s a common enough mistake. Just, very common for Biff. It was only when we got home and started diving in the more kit-intensive conditions of the UK that I realised what he could really be like.
Bit cold, isn’t it?
It was another YD trip – this time in Eyemouth. I’d not dived there before and the skipper we’d booked was quite new. The day we went out the seas were a bit choppy so the trip out to our dive site was a little uncomfortable. The boat was somewhat crowded and so in the swelling seas it was rather awkward getting kitted up. I was perhaps not paying as much attention to my buddy as I might otherwise have done, but by that stage I hadn’t quite realised just what Biff was capable of. As the boat rocked and rolled I zipped him into his suit and he returned the favour. The inexperienced skipper didn’t have much of an idea of how to handle the conditions and we ended up with quite a bit of water washed onto the decks.
We jumped in and to be honest I don’t remember too much about the dive. The logbook says something about a pretty reef with plenty of fish and that we came up after 40 minutes because it was cold. Not surprising really.
The boat was a sod to get back onto. It had a ladder running diagonally down it’s side (never seen anything like it – before or since) and the skipper hadn’t caught onto the idea of turning the boat into the wind to keep it stable. We all struggled on the ladder – I even fell off it half way up – so we were not in the best of moods when we got on deck. Biff least of all. He’d been oddly freezing on the dive and so was quite keen to get on board and hadn’t needed the extra hassle. He couldn’t understand why he’d felt so cold until we’d got out and then we saw it. Lying in one corner of the deck, now soaking wet because of all the water being washed about. How he’d forgotten it I’ll never know, but there it was – his bloody undersuit!
Needless to say, that was our only dive of the day.
Fins . . . check. Mask . . . check.
So you are going on a diving holiday and you want to make sure you have everything. No doubt a few days before you go you make a list of everything you are going to need so you don’t forget something vital. You might even consider packing a day or two beforehand so you’re not in a rush. Does Biff do this? Well, to be honest I don’t really know – but I doubt it.
This would be our second Red Sea trip. We’d managed to book up an entire liveaboard this time. Some were flying out of Gatwick but most were setting off from Manchester. Those living a little far away stayed with me the night before our departure. Biff was within striking distance of the airport so we met him there. Of course we had the usual worries about whether we’d get our bags in under the allowances. One of our party had regulators dismantled and packed into a bum bag that on it’s own must have weighed 5kg!
I’d been fairly conservative in my packing – you don’t need much on a liveaboard after all. With a sigh of relief I saw my bags were only just over the limit and didn’t attract a charge. It was with some surprise that I saw Biff’s bag go on the scales and sail through check-in well under the 20kg allowance. It didn’t seem to surprise him though.
It was only when we got to Sharm and we were at the dive centre waiting for the transfer to our boat that Biff confessed the real reason why his bags were so light. For once he’d not forgotten any of his dive kit – that was all present and correct. But we still had to make some purchases at the shop. Why? Because Biff had got to the airport and only then had he realised that apart from what he was standing up in he’d completely forgotten to pack any clothes!
We bought him some T-shirts and for a punishment I got him some flowery women’s trousers.
He loved them and still wears them to this day!
A guided tour of North Wales.
We’d not been in the sea for months. We’d come back from a warm water dive trip in October and done nothing but quarry diving for the rest of the year. We were desperate to get some salt on our kit. Part of the problem had been getting time off together. I work shifts and Biff spends a lot of time working abroad. If we were going to get some diving in it would need a public holiday. New Year’s Day provided that opportunity.
It was a bit of a last minute thing so we had no opportunity to book a boat. It would have to be a shore dive. We’d also have to try and find some way to get air fills. Biff couldn’t manage it but I found a fill station open. I took both my single tanks – one for each of us. They are fitted with H-valves so you can easily attach the regs from a manifolded twinset and use them in much the same way. They’d be more suitable for shore diving anyway. I let Biff know I’d got them filled and that he needn’t bring his tanks.
We arranged to meet at a Little Chef on the A55 at about 9.00am in the morning of New Year’s Day. The plan was to dive from Treaddur Bay. We drove in tandem down to Anglesey and through Holyhead and on to the Bay. On arrival it didn’t look too good. The forecast had been for northerlies, so the Bay should have been sheltered. But when we got there the wind was coming from the west and blowing white horses directly into the beach. We weren’t going to get in.
We had a bit of a discussion and decided to try Dorothea. It wasn’t the sea and was yet another quarry – but it was a dive. I’d never been in the place despite my parents living right next to it so it didn’t seem like such a bad idea. I could get in a surprise visit to the folks while we were there. So off we went again, back onto the mainland and south through Caernarfon. By the time we got to Dorothea I’d already driven the best part of 200 miles. The last few hundred yards were the worst – trying to pick my way along the potholed path without tearing open the sump of my low-slung Audi TT!
So finally after many hours of driving backwards and forwards all over the north of Wales we were by the water and ready to dive. It started raining. In a rush I started struggling into my dry suit before I got too wet. With one leg in my suit and desperately trying to get the second in I was stopped in my tracks by that all too familiar exclamation from Biff. “Ahh!”
It always means the same thing. It was my fault this time. For once he had his dry suit, his regs and almost everything else. He’d not brought his tanks but I’d told him he didn’t need them. No, but what had he not thought to take off his tanks? You guessed it – his bloody wing!
No dive again – but we got a free lunch from my Mum.
Like a rabbit from a hat.
Biff’s ultimate came in Plymouth.
He’d just come back from a three week diving trip to Indonesia. He’d gone without me so it was a miracle that he’d survived it! He’d managed to cock-up his dream 200th dive whilst out there by going in to photograph pygmy seahorses with his lens cap still on within his housing, but otherwise it had been a successful trip. (Either that or he was just keeping quiet!).
Our first dive of the trip and his first back in the UK was to be the Scylla. As we approached the site the skipper gave us warning to get kitted up. Biff seemed to be a bit agitated, casting about himself and looking around. I took a deep breath and waited to see if this omission to his kit bag was going to be dive-aborting. “What have you forgotten, mate?”
“I can’t find my computer. I know I packed it but it’s not here,” he replied.
Of course you did, I thought. Here we go again! Fortunately someone had a spare computer so our dive was saved. We got ourselves kitted up and Biff never really looked comfortable. We were dropped in at the shot and made our way down to the decks. There we stopped. Biff seemed very unwilling to move on. I signalled to him, asking if he was okay. He signalled that he wasn’t but I couldn’t understand what the problem was. I asked if he wanted to head up and he nodded.
We rose just a couple of meters before he stopped. He was looking down at his feet in some consternation. Looking down I could see that his left fin didn’t seem to be on right. Perhaps the strap had come lose? Anyway, Biff reached down and took the fin off. Next thing he looked into the foot pocket and reached in. He’d obviously found what had been bothering him.
You know what he pulled out? His lost computer!
It never ends. . .
Of course it doesn’t stop there – the incidents are countless and legendary. The lost or aborted dives due to a forgotten dry suit or open zip mounting up.
I get my revenge every now and then, like when we were in Galway and Biff handed me his precious camera while he climbed back into the boat. Unseen by him I passed it up the side to the deck hand, so when he turned to collect his baby, saw me empty handed and I told him I’d dropped it his head nearly exploded! I don’t do that too often though because really I quite like him and he is great to dive with when we do actually get into the water.
And he understands his limitations. Despite his obsession with underwater photography he has sworn never to buy a rebreather. Thank God!
And bottom line, we are a team.
And none of us are perfect!
Contact
Author: Mark Davies
Email: info@travel-dive.com
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