Ed and Nobu have decided to give me some work upgrading their SCUBA certs. Ed did a lot stamina skills today for his Dive Master rating. I had to tie a rope to him for the float test so that the current didn't carry him to the next island. We even got some underwater work done at a little sandy patch we found in the murky water.

After a hard day of dive training we went ashore for lunch. We didn't really want to eat lunch at the restaurant, the people are nice and the place is beautiful but the food They do have pretty good WIFI though so we felt obliged to eat there in conjunction with our four way laptop invasion. After a relaxing afternoon online we rented a golf cart and toured around Contadora. We saw lots of nice vacation homes (they say the Shaw of Iran lived here after he split the middle east), a little store with a respectable stock, a dive shop (surprising given the 0 viz), the airport (props only please) and even a medical clinic. Ed got his SCUBA medical signed off for free at the clinic, I suppose due to the Panama social medicine bit. It was a fun day of exploration.

With the big tides there are no usable docks on Contadora. We left Shooting Star anchored outside of the low tide break so I had to swim for it when we got back to the beach. It turned out that I had the easy part. The waves were breaking pretty big as I approached the beach. Ed and Nobu had to ferry the laptops out to the dink with the waves often going over their heads as they held the backpacks and briefcases aloft. Everyone ultimately made it into the dingy and the laptops were all nice and dry if the people weren't.

Back at the boat everyone was shutting down for the night and I went up on deck to secure some things. I left the bright cabin stepped up onto the side deck in the pitch black overcast moonless night, found the aft cabin hatch with my foot, stepped over it and right into the open hatch. The hatch was not closed it was open and laying flat on the deck. Taken totally by surprise the first thing to make contact with the rim of the opening as my leg plunged down into the cabin was my ribs.

The hatch hinge was not holding up so laying the hatch flat was the only way to get air into the cabin on a hot night. I guess I am used to finding things where I leave them, with guest aboard this is a bad assumption. Certainly all my fault and quite avoidable. A few broken ribs later I decided to hit the hay and rest up. Nothing you can do about broken ribs but suck it up.