A snail diving.

A snail diving.

The world of silence perhaps but that does not prevent us from saying what we have to say….

This is how I and a diver friend who came straight, well almost, from Guadeloupe aboard our proud “one-mast” in not very favorable weather, we approach the coasts of Martinique. Objective, a little "bush diving".
In boats, there is everything you need! The stabs, diving computers, wetsuits, bottles, cameras, lamps… The perfect little diver's outfit on the go. It must be said that we are motivated for this second stay on the island. First, Saint-Pierre and its wreck site now accessible from chests reserved for dive boats and the South with an excursion to Diamant to change us from our Sec Paté Guadeloupean.
That is the principle now let's see the realization. I'm going slowly but it's also announced in the title!
First dive on the Gabriella, a pure product of the eruption of 1902. The copper lining of what remains of the hull is still clearly visible. It is very colonized and full of fish because it is quite isolated on a sandy bottom of 35 -38 m. The water is beautiful and the few minutes of landing are busy scrutinizing the inhabitants of the trunk mooring chain functioning like a mini vertical reef. Back to the boats the crucial question now arises… Where to find air? Well yes, the inflated blocks brought from Guadeloupe are at 70 bars… And the diving program has barely started.
We're aiming for Papa d'Lo on the beach. We know a little because we did Roréma with this club during our trip in 2010. Damn! He looks closed. We hope that “Surcouf Dive” will be open. As we slide gently in the dinghy to the south of the bay, we see the club's boat arriving and disembarking its divers. We easily get to know Olivier, owner of the structure, to whom we explain our project and express our need for air. Pani pwoblèm as we say here. We also mention the idea of ​​an outing on the Pearl, a rock in the north of the island, and luckily he takes customers there the next day. We are fine with us. Always ready like scouts, we are grafted onto the group.
I will tell you about this beautiful dive another time but the next day was a good day, Olivier and Gandalf, his boat, offered us a superb outing and a warm welcome. An atmosphere of small structure what, you can chat without having the feeling to delay anyone. You discuss critters and stuff before and after with a guy who loves his job. Extra! Back at the club, he re-inflates our bottles as we should while he describes what else we will find in the area and in particular the “False Theresa and the Teresa” that we want to discover the next day independently. And that's what we will do quietly this time with slightly longer stages because the in-depth getaway has lasted a bit. Well yes, you still have to take the time to find those damn tiles on one and check if the rudder is still visible on the other wreck!
Direction les Anses d'Arlets with a little heartache but the weather pushes us to gain a safer shelter for the next 48 hours. Except that we are leaving with our empty blocks and we do not yet know what awaits us .
Small navigation of 4 H under a reef and the wind in the nose. Not glop, not glop !!!!
The next day, the friend and I are again on a spree to glean a few liters of air. We rush to Plongée Passion, we are immediately greeted by a guy a bit like an expatriate from his Parisian suburb who says he wants to inflate our bottles… but after a little check! I have a feeling his grim eye doesn't fully reflect his thinking. Indeed, he begins with a very natural warning that he is “a pro”, that he does not do anything and that he will check our bottles. We still say to ourselves ”Pani Pwoblèm“. Except that his eye isn't just bleak. He is also nearsighted and he can't read the retest date of less than a year on one block and for the other, he can't read my TIV name on my federal card. While we insist a little and thinking to reassure him, I point out that my two bottles (from ROTH from 2011 and 2013) are new, he retorts that he is wary of today's steel which does not not worth the one before. It's that we immediately feel that we are dealing with a size in the technical field with this guy with both knees in the sand undoing the nets of the bottles as if they were fishnet stockings and telling you bullshit like that. A blond neoprene from the staff hastens to imitate his employer; perhaps there is a need for a second expert or perhaps it is necessary to quickly get rid of these two tourists before the arrival of the real divers, those who bring in 45 to 50 euros per dive. As I am a little annoyed and he offers me the formula himself, I grant him that he is indeed a bully.
Seeing the lost cause after he concluded by, I quote "I don't want you to sue me if your bottle explodes." We decide to end the camp in front of this argument worthy of a drug addict at -60M and before we explode ourselves. So we leave Plongée-Pognon to his business and his schizophrenia. So we didn't have time to ask him if he was taking him to the “Diamant”. Either way, he might have had a hard time reading our license number, our medical certificate, our level card. Either he would have found us too old, or…. Unless with the passion for his business it gets better.
Right next to it, there is “Alpha Diving”. There, the reception is nice. The “boss” is pleasant but as she also has money on the beach (it's like a gear but more expensive) and that you have to live from diving, she tells you that it is 15 euros to inflate a fifteen liters. It almost took my breath away but I abstained because I wanted to avoid a discomfort that would have probably earned me a few breaths at around 4,5 euros in view of my lung capacity.
However, not everything is overpriced. Inquiring about the prices, I learned that the fully equipped diver benefited from a reduction of 3 euros on his dive of 53 euros at the famous site of the Diamant. Which might suggest that the rental of the complete equipment is not that expensive; the PMT set, the shorty, the waistcoat, the bottle and its air, the computer, the parachute perhaps,… the weights? For less than 40 cents per unit (yes 3 euros divided by 8 approximately!)
In fact, I might come back as a tourist with just my swimsuit and my logbook but for now I'm running away because I just need some air.

It is almost despair, when the end of the beach reaches, I see a small sign indicating 500 m further back from the seaside “Abyss Plongée”. There, we find a guy who has a compressor without golden valves. He also has a smile, a taste for sharing and makes you want to go put on your mask, your fins and a regulator to end the day in style. This time, his name is Philippe, the club is simple but like Olivier's, up there, on Saint-Pierre, here, it is the passion for sharing that remains the driving force behind underwater activity. Trade, of course, but you are still welcomed as a diver! We inflate and hop in stride we make the Lézarde point with friends. Super pretty!

Here, I have finished drooling over the morons, fortunately quite a minority, and I continue my journey, my bottle on my back like a snail in diving.

I know some will say that I murder easily but I plead self-defense against thugs who wanted to kill my dream of diving on side roads.

Jean Jacques N4-E2