Wenzel instructed me to set the heading on my compass to 180 degrees. We had to reach a 70-foot-deep bowl on Chub Reef to qualify as a deep dive. The skills he had taught me that morning were immediately paying dividends underwater. Instead of focusing on my instruments, I found my bearing and picked three objects along that path to keep in a line. My world expanded from my wrist into the clear, blue Bahamian water, and dropping two pounds from my weight belt right before this dive made me feel like flying. I thought I didn’t need any more PADI courses after 200 dives. I was wrong.
We reached the bowl before crossing the reef line to a coral restoration project. Wenzel showed me how to clean algae off the threads so coral could take hold. On the way back to the boat, we paused to free an enormous green eel and grouper from a fish trap left overnight on the reef. We ascended towards the surface and spent five minutes under the boat, breathing off an auxiliary air tank. Back onboard, Wenzel gave me a high five for completing my Deep Diver Course and becoming a Master Scuba Diver.
I felt pride and accomplishment in obtaining an elite dive certification that less than 2% of recreational divers reach. More than that, I realized how important diving became as a foundational adventure that kept me learning, growing, exploring, and, most importantly, healing.
What Is a Normal Childhood Anyway?
I would like to think that I had a relatively normal childhood, but in retrospect, I’m not so sure. Placing in the top 1% on the SAT didn’t align with my 1.6 high school GPA. Like many kids from Columbus, I stayed near home and went to Ohio State. Technically, I grew up in Upper Arlington, an affluent suburb with two of the nation’s top 100 golf courses. My parents both had agricultural degrees, and we had just moved from Auburn, Alabama. I had wild towhead hair, questionable hygiene, a thick southern accent, and no chance of fitting in.
The one thing you need to know about my hometown is that there is no Lower Arlington, but it’s always Upper Arlington to the natives. I can’t think of anyone from my high school class who was married and had a two-year-old during college. I was undoubtedly the only student in the physics department commuting in from their family ostrich farm. In the mornings, I would get my ass kicked in quantum mechanics, and in the evenings, I would wrangle 300 lb flightless birds.
At 24, I thought I had my life mapped out. I would teach high school physics and manage the family farm. A month into the fall quarter of my senior year, my then-wife was unexpectedly hospitalized. While caring for her, the “silent” partners seized the farm, so we never went home. Instead, we moved back in with my parents in Upper Arlington. I focused on doing whatever it took to complete my degree, which meant studying night and day instead of processing my feelings.
I was well past half crazy, but I graduated. We held a firesale of all our possessions, and what was left was packed into a minivan with our cat, dog, and child. The only solace I could imagine was driving into the sunset to begin a new life.
Growing Into My Own In Tucson
The road west ended in Seattle. We channeled our inner Chris Farley and lived in a van by the Snoqualmie River. It was a glorious time of freedom, long summer nights, and fresh berries. We didn’t spend too long in Seattle before I was recruited to design missiles in Tucson, Arizona.
Living in Tucson was magnificent in its own right. Not only did I have a steady paycheck, but I discovered the healing power of transformative adventures. I started endurance hiking in the Santa Catalina Mountains and soon progressed to exploring underground worlds in the caves of Southern Arizona. After a while, I became the President of the Southern Arizona Grotto and started participating in international caving expeditions.
I loved the specialized gear and skills caving required and lamented that there needed to be a formalized training program like what PADI offers. Still, for caving, instead of actively recruiting the next generation of cavers to explore and protect this resource, the governing policy of the Arizona caving community was “there are no caves to speak of in Arizona.”
I healed with the help of the Sonoran Desert, but my wife felt like a stranger in a strange land. There always seemed to be something keeping her from exploring her new home: kids too young, desert too hot, too many rattlesnakes, too many thorns on cactus. Her wounds festered without transformative adventures, and she longed to return home.
We grew apart, and the seismic collapse of our union sent shock waves through my world when she took the kids back to Ohio. I was ready to burn it down again, buy a new van, and find a new river until I met Jenn.
In Search of Life 2.0
Before I met Jenn, I had already conducted another fire sale of my worldly possessions. She described my home decor, which included a mattress on the floor and all my clothes in baskets alternating between clean and dirty, as “Crackhouse Chic.” I was ready to head west into the sunset again. I honestly think the only thing that stopped me was her belief in transformation and adventures.
Jenn faced challenges with her family’s fall from grace in suburban Denver. She says she learned more about femininity than being a debutante from extreme sports. She had been a ski instructor for twenty years, a white water guide for seven, and was currently on a hiatus leading the spa at Tucson’s Ritz-Carlton.
She moved there to put herself in place for that job, specifically in the hope of health and disability benefits to get two new knees (although she was premature in age, she was in dire need of replacements) before starting her life 2.0.
I was enthralled with the concept that you could build a new life per your desires instead of running from the fires. She wanted to share in adventures with a lust for life that would make Jack Kerouac envious. We were married a year and a month after meeting.
First Breath In The Bahamas
We both tried diving with a Discover Scuba experience during our honeymoon at Sandals Royal Bahamian in Nassau. I knew I was hooked. Like caving, I used specialized equipment to explore a new world. Only, it was a world of light, life, and color. Best of all, PADI offered a regimented training program that kept me safe while progressing my skills.
I was fascinated by the PADI Course Map on the dive shop wall. I traced the path forward from Discover Scuba Diving all the way to Rescue Diver and enjoyed many daydreams, envisioning myself going down the professional diver tract.
Jenn was right; I needed to leave the desert to pursue my life 2.0. Within a year, we had followed the setting sun again to San Diego. Only this time, with Jenn’s help, we had steady corporate jobs and an apartment in Pacific Beach instead of a van down by the river.
Open Water Certification
We jumped into Southern California life with a passion, picking up new hobbies like surfing and outrigger canoe racing. Our first time on Catalina Island was for the Catalina Crossing US Outrigger Championships. It took us just over five hours to paddle there from Newport Harbor. After the race season ended, we returned to Catalina to complete our Open Water Certification with PCH Scuba. We had to drive to Agoura Hills for the classroom and pool sessions, but the certification dives were built into a weekend getaway to Avalon.
The Casino Point Dive Park in Avalon is the best shore diving in Southern California. There’s an easy step entry, dive lines, a marked swim area separate from boat traffic, and even a remote tank-filling truck parked at the point with cold drinks and snacks for the surface intervals. After our skills test, we found a few giant sea bass lurking in the kelp forest. It wasn’t the Bahamas but an exciting dive with decent visibility.
We opted to take Peak Performance Buoyancy and Enriched Air concurrently with our Open Water Certification. Taking Peak early in my dive journey paid immediate dividends in terms of trim posture and breath control for buoyancy. I often used my enriched air training during my scuba journey, including bull shark diving in Playa Del Carmen and a week of repetitive dives onboard the Aqua Cat Liveaboard. However, I still don’t think getting that certification so early was critical or valuable.
Training with Power Scuba
My mind was filled with the possibilities of becoming a dive professional for Life 2.0. Jenn could leverage her Ritz experience at any top-end resort worldwide, and I could work at their dive shop. I was only six, dived in, and filled with dreams and ambitions. I needed more certifications and forty logged dives to start the PADI Divemaster Course, which wouldn’t have happened if I had taken the ferry to Catalina.
Instead, I joined Power Scuba, a San Diego dive club offering training, beach dives at La Jolla Shores, and at-cost boat trips. Bill Powers was a tough but fair instructor who realized the intrinsic hazards of diving in San Diego. Reaching Vallecitos Point from La Jolla Shores was no joke, with a surf entry and 200-yard surface swim. Once you reach the Main Wall, you often have low visibility and almost always 25+ lbs on your kit to offset your 7mm wetsuit.
I completed my Advanced Open Water on a Power Scuba liveaboard trip to the Coronado Islands and my Underwater Navigation in the murky waters off La Jolla Shores. Let’s say it’s a good thing the surge forms sand ridges parallel to the shore, and Bill offers re-tests. My caving experience helped me excel during my Rescue Diving Class. However, I still needed more dive experience, so I signed up for Bill’s Deep specialty course, which was undoubtedly the most valuable lesson I never completed.
Deep Disappointment
I enjoyed the coursework for Deep, and the first day of diving was smooth sailing. The second and final day of diving was scheduled off the Pacific Star Dive Boat on the Palawan Wreck. I’ll admit that the task loading for this deep dive was challenging and led to a series of mistakes. First, I had to get nitrox filled in my tanks but keep the mixture lean enough that I didn’t cross the oxygen toxicity levels at 130′ depth. Then, I had difficulty obtaining and configuring my pony bottle, Bill’s preferred method for training the auxiliary air skill from Deep. Finally, Pacific Star left San Pedro Harbor, so there was a zero dark thirty start for a morning dive.
As I set up my gear, I realized things weren’t looking good. I left my integrated weight pouches back in San Diego. The crew scrounged up a weight belt. It sort of worked, but it was a good two inches short of what I should be using. My budget BCD looked like a Christmas tree, with my auxiliary air and SMB hung off the one free gear hook.
The dive itself went surprisingly well. I solved Bill’s underwater puzzle in record time, and there were no traces of narcosis. After a brief bottom time, I began my ascent. As I neared the surface, I checked my gauges to prepare for my safety stop. I moved the pony bottle out of the way, which dislodged my too-short weight belt. I watched 26 lbs of counterweight sink to the bottom as I floated to the surface without completing my safety stop.
Bill, the consummate teacher, walked me through the mistakes that compromised this dive. He was willing to retry the certification dives another day, but Power Scuba doesn’t regularly schedule deep diving charters. Before the next trip, I accepted a job offer in Orlando. I miss diving with Bill and think of him often, especially when I recognize how his training helped make me the diver I am today.
Diving With Coleman Concierge
Florida was a new, wild, and wacky world. It was no longer a 15-minute drive to La Jolla Shores but only two hours by car to South Florida, where the Gulf Stream Current kissed the coast with warm, clear water. We regularly made the pilgrimage south for drift diving in West Palm Beach, shore diving at Blue Heron Bridge, and wreck diving in Pompano Beach Dive Park.
The new job allowed Jenn to focus full-time on our travel site, Coleman Concierge. We began to land dive campaigns in exotic places like Cozumel and luxury liveaboards. I realized that my path was diverging from becoming a Divemaster who knows every rock and reef of their local sites to a perpetual tourist swooping in for a weekend excursion.
Only I wasn’t just another tourist. I was a travel writer whose voice inspired people to love the ocean and, in return, protect what they love. We made it our mission to highlight the excellent dive companies were doing, from clean-ups to coral restoration, and their ethical choices, like chumming policies and invasive species control.
Return To The Bahamas
We returned to Sandals in 2023 as certified divers on the island of Curacao. We learned how the Sandals Foundation removed more than 160 square meters of ghost nets from Curacao waters and supported infrastructure improvements to the RIF Mangrove Project.
In 2024, we learned that Sandals was the first resort company to join the Green Fins program, which protects coral reefs through environmentally friendly guidelines that promote sustainable scuba diving and snorkeling. Sandals Royal Bahamian was one of the participating resorts, so we began planning to return to the origins of our scuba journey. Only this time, instead of starting on the far left of the course chart with Discover Scuba, I wanted to move to the right and complete my Master Scuba Diver Certification, the most prestigious certification of recreational diving.
Becoming A PADI Master Scuba Diver
The requirements for PADI Master Scuba Diver are:
- 50 logged dives (I have 176)
- Rescue Diver Certification (Thank you, Bill Powers)
- Five Specialty Diver courses (I had Enriched Air, Peak, and Underwater Navigation)
I was two Specialty Diver courses short of the pinnacle of recreational diving. I knew I wanted to take Underwater Photography to take better pictures and videos for Coleman Concierge diving trips. For my second class, I selected Deep, not only because it trains you to go below 100′ but I wanted redemption from the Palawan dive.
My photography instructor was Scuba Sammy, a popular Bahamian dive instructor and influencer. Before entering the water, he said something that reframed my view of this specialty course: “To be a good underwater photographer, you first need to be a good diver.” Sam was my private dive coach, giving me pointers on alternative kicking techniques I last practiced in certification and extending my dive times. We discussed photography equipment and compared photos at the Sandals dive shop. Sammy’s pictures had consistently better colors because he had over four times the light on his custom-made camera rig. We exchanged contact information so he could help us find or fabricate a similar setup back home.
Wenzel Nicolls instructed me through Deep. The farther down the water column you travel, the more it exposes your diving skills. Inefficiencies are amplified when you’re bleeding your tank four times faster than at the surface, and your margins of error shrink dramatically. He identified some quirky underwater navigation habits I picked up during my San Diego days. He also brought an extra two pounds of weight down with him so I could experiment with lightening my weight belt and improve my trim. I must have demonstrated reasonable diving skills because Wenzel felt safe practicing a simulated out-of-air at depth with me.
My Full Circle Journey
I didn’t expect to learn so much from my courses at Sandals. There’s always something more to learn, no matter how many logged dives you have. If you want proof, watch the DM on your next dive and see how beautifully they move underwater. Good dive skills are essential to every Specialty Course; your instructor will be your personal dive coach. You might not leave the course diving like a DM, but you will be a better diver.
I am proud to be a PADI Master Scuba Diver. Every diver who has ever traced a PADI Course Map recognizes the commitment that it takes. Already, it’s opening some doors for me, like making actionable plans to dive the Oriskany in Pensacola. Once an active-duty aircraft carrier, the Mighty O is now the world’s largest artificial reef and a notoriously challenging dive. It’s 22.5 knots offshore in 223ft / 68m water with the flight deck below 140ft / 43m. The currents are tricky that far out, and the floor is below the maximum operating depth for air.
I don’t know where my scuba journey will take me, but I know I will not wait so long between classes. There’s always something more to learn, and I want to be the best and safest diver I can be.
