Last day of pool training before the liveaboard! Today we start early, with pickup at 7:30 from Balaclava Hotel. (I’m sure the reception desk there is confused about us by now, but it’s really the best reference midpoint for getting into town from way out in Bayview Heights.)

We start in the pool with some quick skills: partial and full mask clears, regulator retrieval (if it falls out of your mouth, I guess, which really shouldn’t happen unless you forget to hold onto it during entry…), breathing from a free-flowing regulator, retrieving and clearing a lost mask. I imagine all this will sting way more in salt water.

Then we have some deep end skills: CESA, an emergency ascent in which you slowly exhale the last breath of an empty tank to get to the surface safely; alternate regulator ascents with your buddy; more buoyancy control with fin pivots…

It’s starting to look like the weather pattern is pretty regular around here: sporadic rain, mostly warm, bits of sun. This is supposed to be out of the rainy season, but this year has been a bit wonky.

Finally it’s back into the classroom for the last two instructional modules, some quizzes, and the final exam. Tomorrow’s an early pickup for the start of our liveaboard - we’re getting picked up at 5:40 am, so it’s back home to sort everything out before leaving Rainforest Reiki! We pack our stuff up, cook our last ingredients, trek down for some additional food, get back just in time to miss the evening/night rainstorm, and decide on the next legs of our journey: Singapore, then Vietnam to make good on our visas before they expire. (We have until July 8.) The flight out’s on June 13, so we should have enough time to join a tour of Daintree/Mossman after our liveaboard. ZZZZZZZZZZ