Diving the Jetties

On March 6, we had our second “out of pool” dive. We dove the Jetties at St. Andrews State Park in Panama City Beach. We dove twice with the first dive focusing on search patterns (the jackstay and the fan search).

The first dive was on beach side where only gets to about 15 feet deep. I know it sounds like this would be a piece of cake, but it most definitely was not. Now we know exactly what we are doing when it comes to the searches; now add in 5-foot seas and an outgoing current that will pull your regulator out of your mouth. It was brutal.

We eventually accomplished our mission and got to move on to our second dive of the day, which involved swimming over the jetty rocks. Once again, sounds easy, but keep in mind the outgoing tide. We each had to hold onto a line that our leader held onto in front of us. It was as if we were in kindergarten again and we had to hold a rope so we stayed single file. In this case, though, we had to hold onto the line so that we would not drift out into the gulf. It was quite the workout.

Once we finished that dive, we thought we could get out and finally have lunch. Nope. Professor Mike Zinszer told us to complete an 800-yard swim before exiting the water. We thought we were exhausted then.

When we finally were done and cleaned up our equipment, we had lunch together. We joked about how hard it was to get the most simple dive tasks done. Another “successful” dive for the books.

— Ashlyn Jernigan

Four Crossed Logs intern
professional communication major