Come on baby ‘n’ rescue me Punta Gruesa

These last few weeks at Punta Gruesa have seen the PADI Rescue Diver course entertain many of us, and scarily enough a number of us are now qualified Emergency First Response Instructors… Aside from the odd slip up, “Hello my name is Jess and I am an Emergency First Responder…may I get a grown up?”, we are all well versed in the signs, symptoms and first aid treatments of decompression illness, near drowning and lung overexpansion injury to name but a few. So after enduring the necessary (yet informative) pain that is PADI knowledge reviews, we were set loose on rescuing each other in the water.

The seriousness of having to give rescue breaths (mouthy to mouth) to our buddies while simultaneously towing them to shore often gave birth to bouts of hysterical laughter. Needless to say, some buddy pairs now find themselves a little more intimately acquainted with each other than before; some grateful, some a little less so! Many calories were burned practising the different methods with which one can tow a tired diver back to shore. I am pretty confident that the “porno push” method was everyone’s favourite …and no I am not going to explain further.

Dean’s impression of a panicked diver underwater was reminiscent of a toddler having a tantrum in the supermarket. On behalf of all rescue divers; Dean, we apologise for the occasionally violent manner with which we shoved your regulator back into your mouth, but at least we did it…..right?!

Overall, much fun was had by all this week, to the point where one can even overlook the pain experienced from banging one’s head on their tank and nearly having their shoulders ripped out of their sockets while pretending to be dead and being pulled onto the boat. Thanks for that Brian…Hope your back heals quickly.

Some of us are yet to complete a real life scenario and after witnessing the first EM’s experience of this, may we take this blog opportunity to appeal to the GVI gods that be and plead for a tiny staff member to have to carry out of the water please!!!!!

After this is all completed someone had better warn the coral and fish species of the Caribbean because…..Divemaster here we come!

Come on baby ‘n’ rescue me Punta Gruesa