or: Finding a Car is Easier Than Finding a Boat

This week I’ve had the three best car parking spots in the history of the world. They all happened on the same day.

It is also the week where I forgot where a boat was anchored and also the week where I found it again. Almost.

Remembering where a car is parked can be tricky at the best of times. The degree of difficulty increases based on it being a busy car park as well as one in which I am unfamiliar. Having some sort of landmark is important or having an incredibly easy car parking spot.

On this particular day, there was more of the latter.

The first spot was the only vacant one in front of a beachside store.

The second was a few car spots along from the entrance to the only store in the area.

The third was the best by far. It was exactly in front of the shopping centre entrance. It would be impossible to lose a car parked here. It is the best car spot I have ever had in my entire life. Absolutely no need to remember which row, column or level I’m parked on. Just leave the shopping centre and the car is right there, straight in front. It is the spot you want when you have bought more than what you intended and you have a shopping trolley with a wonky wheel, it’s raining and perhaps it’s even Christmas with a lot of over-excited children either crying or running around losing their parents and yelling. Best. Spot. Ever.

Now, imagine being underwater and the object to be found is floating on top. You can see it there if you’re directly underneath it at about 5 metres. Further than 10 metres in any direction and you won’t be able to see the anchor rope, never mind the boat attached to it, bobbing away on the surface.

There are no helpful painted columns with the row number marked. No fish pointing the way back.

My first time I was asked to find the boat on a dive, I was already underwater and hadn’t been paying attention to where we were heading and had just been relaxing, watching the fish and enjoying the dive. I had always been guided back to the boat before and didn’t realize this time would be different and I would be asked to do this.

I confessed to being clueless (it’s amazing what it is possible to gesture underwater) and was guided back.

On land, I asked the various dive instructors and dive masters how they normally know where the boat is when they lead dives. I have always been impressed at how they seem to be able to do this in this particular area.

I was given a variety of responses yet they all centered somewhat on identifying some sort of landmark in relation to where the boat is anchored and structuring the dive based on this.

Yes, a landmark underwater.

I would be a lot better at this if I was more of a coral person since that it does look different if you know what to look for and is fairly stationary (beyond the fact that soft corals waft) as opposed to my preferred underwater species of fish and nudibranches. These are hopeless to use as landmarks for obvious reasons.

As people around the world today were participating in Easter Egg Hunts, I was told before diving that I would be asked to find the boat for the end of the dive. Easter Eggs would be easier to find.

With that in mind, I went underwater and tried to pick out various landmarks. For this particular dive site, I thought the sandbanks would likely be more useful than the corals since the corals are all fairly flat in this area and I struggle with finding some distinguishing features. Some of the other dive leaders remember this site like this too.

I led the dive and when it was time to find the boat again, turns out I was fairly close…

I think I have a better idea of where to go for next time since the boat is always anchored in the same area at this dive site.

On many of our dives, we don’t come up near the boat so it doesn’t really matter that much. If the boat is anchored, it saves a bit of time if we come up closer to it than further away.

Until someone starts labeling and colour-coding the corals so I can find the boat more easily, I will keep working on finding a better way to remember where it is anchored.

Finding buried treasure would be easier – I’d have a map and we are taught how to find things we lose underwater though various search and rescue exercises.

A boat seems to be a bit more of a challenge for me at the moment…

 

* Thanks to U2 for the title to this post.