Dominik - Lief, Scuba and Hail

Dominik Platen

Lief, Scuba and Hail

It was Monday morning 8 am when my alarm went off. “Wes”, I said, “Wes! We have to get up,breakfast is at 8.30 and we can't be late.” A mumbling response signalizes that Wes had heard me buthe did not seem very enthusiastic, so I decided to jump in the shower quickly and let him get a fewextra minutes of rest.

My scream must have woken him up though. The water was cold as ice, and I had no idea that theearly morning shower was a sign for how the rest of the day was going to go. Today was our scuba-diving day. McD, Bethany, Wes and me were the first group that would get to go out there and get achance of a short dive, while the others would take their first trip into town. We had the perfectweather for a nice beginner's scuba session, about 70 degrees with a strong wind blowing, a nice littlerain shower, a cloudy sky with no signs of the sun anywhere, and a dull, muddy ocean.

Breakfast was over and the weather against our hopes still hadn't changed, but at least Lief, our divinginstructor, could show his excitement. Before getting on the boat, we went over some principles thathe had in detail explained to us as a whole group the day before. After about five minutes of briefing,the four of us started putting on our wetsuits. All along Lief was telling us that there are two types ofpeople in this world, the ones that pee in their wetsuit and the ones who say they don't, a joke that Iam sure he tells every group of divers that he teaches.

A good 15 minutes later we arrived at a small island where we would practice breathing under water,floating, and descending in the shallow water near the beach. Not only were we practicing to stayunder the water, but nobody really wanted to get out of the water, because the wind was blowing socold and strong, that it felt like the coldest Alaskan winter out there. After about 30 minutes of ourfirst steps as professional scuba divers, Lief said we were ready for our first real descend. We gotback on the boat, wet and freezing until we finally arrived at a deeper spot further away from theisland.

“Go!”, Lief said as I was sitting on the side of the boat with my oxygen tank over the water. I letmyself drop backwards into the water, just like Wes and Bethany before me. McD followed so all ofus were in the water when Lief gave us the signal to start descending. Barely able to see anything dueto the dull, murky water, the only thing I could see right in front of me was two skinny legs pedalinglike a drowning dog in the water. It was Wes, and for some reason he could not manage to go down.Turns out, he didn't have enough weight in his vest.

After about 2 minutes under water, Lief signaled the rest of us, McD, Bethany and me, to come backup. He told us that it doesn't make any sense to do the dive today since we wouldn't be able to seeanything, and on top of that Wes had problems with his equipment. So we got ourselves back on theboat, colder and wetter as ever before, and headed back to the Mango Creek Lodge. This is where thefunnest part of our adventure would begin. With the boat going what felt like 50 miles per hour, thewind was torturing us like crazy as we were wet from head to toe and weren't getting any drierbecause it was pouring down rain. Just as we thought we had figured out a way to keep us a littlewarm by squeezing together like penguins, the unimaginable happened, it started to hail. On theocean, just off of the coast of Roatàn, who would have expected it to hail? What felt like 30 minuteslater in the freezing cold, we were back at our Mango Creek Lodge, where nobody could do anythingbut rush back to their cabanas and hope for a warm shower.