Honduras - Roatan
01.01.2009
This is what happens when 16 friends old and new....who are all avid divers...have the chance to dive for the new year.....
It all started with the concept of "We have to be underwater for New Years and it has to be good". This later grew into everyone is required to bring a couple dozen glowsticks with them to Honduras.....Which later turned into 'Maybe we'll decorate the Prince Albert shipwreck and have a NAUI sign, orchestrate a picture and send it in for publication later, no problem, easy..." Oh yeah..There is also a planned lift bag deploying with some glowsticks, to symbolize the ball dropping...
If any of you at some point in life find yourself in a situation where someone tells you that all you need to do is do a night dive hold some string attached to a sign with weights, wear some glowsticks and look at a camera. Just walk away, and go to a bar like a normal person.
We prep by stringing up glowsticks on a wreck reel, and add some one pound weights to the bottom of the NAUI flag so it will hang straight. Then 16+ of us start the trek to the waterline all in our gear. We head to the wreck in our buddy pairs. We make the announcement that whoevers fins touch the sand to muck up the visibility first is buying rounds for the night, and then we're off.
Mass Chaos is an understatement of how this disasterous mishap went.
The flag was tangled in a huge heap. Divers everywhere. People too eager to help do the wrong thing. Elbows were thrown. And it was dark, only the glow of the light sticks and flashlights (which were mostly in the eyes) was available. There was also a faint mumbling sound in the water as pissed off divers swore through their regulators and bubbles engulfed their faces. It was intense. Colin and I finally got so overhwelmed that we ditched the sign and swam in the opposite direction of the clusterf***. I hope you enjoy what pictures we were able to capture. Just remember that this was all done with 16 total divers in the water.
We then abandoned the water and went to the bar for a bit. The next morning we found out that after we left ricky totaled 11 shots of Jack and 3 beers....and also crashed his bike on the way back to the beachhouses. Oh man.
It was all worth it when January 1st's 6am dive brought us a free swimming eel and a spotted eagle ray!!!!
Peace out,
~Aubrey
