My Son Is The Wrong Shape To Dive

“Take him into the shower,” says the dive guy.

It is not easy to find kids dive gear in Dahab and we’re onto the third wetsuit of the day for Z, who is on the long, thin side for his age, and, at approximately 30 kilos (65 pounds), on the light side for a diver.

The first two (junior sizes) went halfway on with only a couple of plastic bags and some parental elbow grease, only to prove so short that, even if we could get his arms into them, he’d be singing soprano for the next fifty years.

This one hasn’t been used in years.

Which, looking at the shape of it, is not altogether surprising. It is very, very long, and very, very thin and has a weird kind of bib effect at the top.

“WHY am I in the shower?” says Z. “This is someone’s ROOM. We shouldn’t be IN HERE.”

“No, it isn’t,” I say. Two guys are painting it in a very Egyptian fashion, which is to say they’re sitting on the beds smoking and eating kofta but there are brushes lying around. “It’s a room they use for when the dive clients want to shower.”

The dive guy directs the water at Z and down the wetsuit.

I tug at the legs of the wetsuit. They’re not going over his feet. Further, I am in danger of breaking a nail.

“OK,” I say. “Stand up.”

Z stands up. I lift him, bodily, by the midsection of the wetsuit, currently hovering at mid-thigh level, and bounce him up and down a few times, hoping to bodily shake him into it, as dive guy directs the shower head in appropriate directions.

No joy. Needless to say, I am used to stuff not going over MY hips. But Z doesn’t even HAVE hips! Who was this sodding wetsuit designed for?

I shrug helplessly at the dive chap. HE lifts Z by the midsection of the wetsuit and bounces him up and down a few times. No joy.

“OK,” I say. “Sit on the toilet and hold on tight.”

Dive guy takes one leg. I take the other. We roll the suit back. To our curious audience of painters on a break is added E, the mother of Z’s friend’s L, and a scuba instructor, who will be diving with us just as soon as….

Well, just as soon as we can get Z into a wetsuit. It needs to fit relatively tightly, otherwise it will balloon as he ascends underwater, making his buoyancy harder than usual to control.

“We buy L’s gear specially in Belgium,” E says, helpfully. “It’s impossible to get kids’ sizes here.”

Dive guy has got a foot in!

RESULT!

I squeeze over to the sink to let him have a go at the other leg. With four of us in here, it’s feeling a little crowded.

Z isn’t even in the bloody suit, and I am already feeling tired. I am not as young and fit as I used to be, it’s been a long time since I carried Z anywhere, and bouncing 30-ish kilos of eleven year old into a wetsuit counts as more exertion than I’d typically associate with diving.

Diving is a sport, sure. And there’s a degree of exercise involved in getting into the water with 20-something kilos of tank and weights on your back, but once you’re down the aim is to use the absolute minimum of air and energy.

In a way, at least in generally easy waters like the Red Sea, diving’s pretty close to yoga.

“OW!” says Z. In the throes of bouncing, I’ve broken a nail on his torso (my perspective) or scratched him (his).

“Sorry!” I say.

Dive guy’s taking his turn at bouncing when there’s an almost audible pop and the waist of the suit bursts up over his hips. “He’s in!” I say.

“We’ll need to get him into it in the water,” says E. “It will be softer then.”

First, of course, we need to get him out of it.

“Sit on the toilet,” I say. “Hold on tight!”

I am irresistibly, if inappropriately, reminded of the fetish clubs I used to attend in my youth, the whole rigmarole of talcum powder, breath-holding, painful shoes and the sharp tang of rubber polish.

I pull hard on one leg of the wetsuit. “Stop!” Z says. “You’re pulling me off.”

“Who WAS this designed for?” I say to E.

“A skinny girl, I suppose,” says E.

At 50, E weighs precisely 48 kilos. But even she wouldn’t be getting into this suit.

“But it won’t even go over HIS hips,” I say.

E shrugs. We get him out of it eventually, load the dive gear into the truck, and set off in the general direction of the underwater playground.

By the time we have Z in his wetsuit, bobbing around in the sea, E and I are both exhausted and rather irritable, while L and S (his father) have been suited up and in the water for approximately half an hour.

No one seems to have an 8-litre tank, the optimal size for someone of Z’s weight and diving experience, so Z’s going to dive on a 5-litre tank.

Nor does anyone seem to have a BCD of an appropriate size: that’s the inflatable jacket that, with your weights and your breath, controls your buoyancy in the water, and also holds your tank and sundry accoutrements.

Z has yet to dive in a BCD that actually fits him. The closest we’ve come was in Komodo, Indonesia, the best dive we’ve had, after the underwater volcano where he went down on a spare regulator: he was confident, fluent and happy in an adult’s XXS BCD. It was a bit big, sure, but not so big…

This time he’s using a small. I weigh more than twice what he does, and have been known to dive in a small BCD.

The trip to the underwater playground, a fabulous affair of tunnels and bridges set in around 12 metres of water, which one swims over, through and under using only one’s breath for control, is marked by sudden and rapid ascents as Z billows around in his gigantic BCD.

E adds weights to the pockets. This doesn’t help much, as the jacket’s so enormous that the weights just wash around, spinning Z with them.

Oh, and his mask keeps flooding. He has a narrow face, with angular cheekbones, which neither kids’ nor adults’ masks seem to fit, the one being designed for round faces and the other being designed for big faces.

He manages a couple of stunts, but it’s hard work for him, not to mention E, who’s stuck resolving the billowing BCD, and has given up almost all her weight to try and keep Z down.

L, meanwhile, who, at 14 is an Advanced Open Water diver with more than 70 dives, is graceful and elegant, turning somersaults in the water.

It’s not long before Z’s mini tank gives up the ghost: he’s low on air and we have to return to base with him on E’s backup regulator.

He sits on a wall for me to remove his suit. I tug so hard that he flies off onto concrete. For a moment, I think I’ve broken his tailbone, but he’s only winded.

A dive guy grabs him and holds him steady while I pull off the wetsuit.

It has not been an altogether successful expedition.

We’ve done a couple of lovely overnight dive trips with E and S, which is to say that the adults have dived, while Z and L happily snorkel, ride horses or even make jellyfish soup.

But yesterday, we gave diving another shot with a new set of kit.

On the plus side, the wetsuit fits! He can get into it, using only a couple of plastic bags, with only a few seconds of parental assistance at the wrists and ankles.

Even better, there is a smaller BCD! Not XXS, but at least XS.

And there’s a kid sized mask!

Unfortunately, the best we can do for a tank is 10-litre: slightly smaller than an adult’s, but still too big for a kid his size. On land, it’s too big and heavy for him to walk into the water with it; under the water, as it empties, it will tug him up towards the surface.

My kit has been changed, which is annoying, as the standard of dive gear in most places in Dahab is such that you can expect at least one thing not to work properly the first time you try it (gauges that leak air and are out by five metres, deflator toggles that come off the first time you use them, yada yada).

I start on the journey of adventure that is assembling new kit in Dahab.

There’s a bang like a gunshot and the O-ring goes on the tank. While not quite as alarming as the time a tank blew off the depth and pressure gauge, it is still unnerving.

“This is why we have our own gear,” says E, helpfully.

And, I think, as I psyche myself up to drop 145 Euros on a dive computer, decent, well-fitting dive gear will be one of my first investments when we get our base in Bali.

E checks the regulator. It doesn’t work, so I use the spare.

Z puts his gear together and opens his tank.

“Look, Mum!” he says. “That’s not good.”

There’s air hissing from the hose that inflates his BCD…

I begin to think that, right now, Z and diving are jinxed.