A mermaid struggling to clean a boat!
Well, this is a bit embarrassing, yesterday I had my first (and hopefully last) sea sickness experience. This is extra embarrassing because I grew up on a boat in Amsterdam and have spent my entire life around and on water. For those who noticed there’s a movie with this post, do not worry, there is no disgusting content on the video! 😉 The video is about boat cleaning, which directly gets me to the way I managed to get sea sick. By boat cleaning!
Boat cleaning, part of the Divemaster internship
Every now and then Dive Master Trainees get scheduled to clean a boat. Sounds easy enough you’d say? Well, it kind of is. For a Dive Master Trainee boat cleaning involves getting in full dive gear and cleaning off all the mussels and weeds that are stuck against the bottom and sides of the boat in the water. The boat that we cleaned, Jonas and me, is called the Tahonga. Rich Coast owns several boats but I believe the Tahonage is the biggest one that can comfortably transport 12 divers to the local dive sites in less than 15 minutes.
Cleaning the boat isn’t very difficult. Basically, you enter the water fully suited up and start cleaning. I could explain step by step what we do, but I can do you one better. Here’s a video of Jonas, the captain Jaime and me cleaning the Tahonga.
As you can see you’re half the time nearly on the surface but don’t look at the horizon or land you can get really nauseous. The first hour or so I was fine but after that, wow, so sick! I hope it’s a one time off thing as boat cleaning on its own isn’t that bad. Until I got sick I was quite enjoying myself. Oh well, I guess it’s all part of the full experience. Also after you’re done you can dive around the harbour and practice some dive skills like navigation or knots in a relaxing way.