MEMBER TO MEMBER
N
ot many people have dived the pelagic waters of
Ascension Island, where mahi-mahi swim yards
from shore. The island’s fringing corals hide
immense moray eels and stonefish. Ascension’s
Comfortless Cove, where the swell breaks in clouds of spray,
teems with black durgon, cowfish and triggerfish.
Ascension lies just south of the equator in the Atlantic Ocean,
roughly halfway between Brazil and Angola. Reaching the
volcanic speck by air is difficult and costly, requiring transit by
British military plane. My husband, Seth, and I arrived aboard
our 38-foot sailboat, Heretic, near the end of a four-year round-
the-world voyage. It was the jumping-off point for our final,
monthlong ocean passage.
The route Seth and I traveled to Ascension was actually
much longer and more difficult than the one involving the
Royal Air Force base, but along the way we had dived with
manta rays in an uninhabited Polynesian bay and with
hawksbill turtles at Ashmore Reef on the edge of Australia’s
continental shelf. Experiencing such isolated places is one
of the great advantages of independent travel under sail,
but it requires a great deal
of self-reliance. The fact
that Seth and I never had a
medical emergency during
our voyage was partly due to
luck, but a greater factor, I
believe, was the high margin
of safety we employed.
Diving in remote locations requires the utmost caution.
One simple risk-management technique we adopted when
it was just us was to minimize depth, keeping all our dives
to 60 feet or shallower. We never did decompression dives
on our own, nor did we do more than one dive per day.
Experienced divers often go beyond the limits used in open-
water courses, yet experience does not confer immunity
against mistakes or gear problems. So when outside help was
not an option, we used conservative dive planning as a hedge
against risks such as a stuck BCD inflator button.
Before every dive, Seth and I examined our marine charts.
Our plans were simple: out-and-back excursions beginning
at our deepest depth and returning at a shallower depth.
Our halfway points were marked by as much as 1700 psi,
and we always made three-minute safety stops at 15 feet. We
became proficient at using compasses and finding landmarks
underwater. We checked our gear before donning it and
checked each other before taking giant strides off Heretic’s deck.
When other boats were nearby, we scheduled radio calls to
confirm our return.
Although we had to lug fresh water from shore, we always
rinsed our gear thoroughly. Hydrostatic testing of tanks is
required every five years, but we had ours tested every two.
Our gear was new at the beginning of our voyage, and we
had it serviced after 50 dives. We carried analog gauges as
well as computers.
Finally, Seth and I took care of ourselves. We took basic
precautions such as avoiding alcohol, ensuring sufficient
hydration and getting enough sleep, and we educated ourselves
on matters of dive medicine such as whether any medications
we might take could present problems during or after dives.
Diving from Heretic allowed Seth and me to discover our
own dive sites; some had probably never been dived before. We
watched eagle rays off a deserted islet in Rangiroa, one of the
world’s largest atolls, and we came across 19th-century cannons
in the Indian Ocean’s Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Such isolation
forced us to be completely responsible for our own safety, but
with caution, luck and respect for risk, we enjoyed some of the
world’s most remote and spectacular places without having to
call on DAN
®
.
AD
Tips, advice and updates from your fellow divers
Do you have tips, advice, travel strategies, dive techniques, lessons
learned or other words of wisdom to share with your fellow divers? Alert
Diver wants your story! Email it to
or mail it to “Member
to Member,” c/o Alert Diver, 6 W. Colony Place, Durham, NC 27705.
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T e x t a n d P h o t o s b y
E l l e n M a s s e y L e o n a r d
An Ounce of
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