Can Someone Help Me With This Tag? by Christopher Robinson

Confessions of a beginner with a credit card.

Yep, I was that guy. You know the one. You arrive at the dive boat and square your gear away, check in with the dive master then kick back and watch while everyone else makes their way down the dock. You recognize a few regular faces and a few that you don’t know. Well-worn rolling bags and come aboard and tanks that show plenty of age are strapped into place. Just before the departure time, you spot someone moving down the dock with an urgency that says he hopes the boat’s clock isn’t fast. He comes on board dragging a brand new roller still dangling the store’s hang-tag. Just this glance and you know that when that bag opens, it’s going to be full of a enough brand new gear that you’ll have to wear sunglasses to prevent you from being blinded by the sheen on all of it. Yes, I was that guy.

Back when I was a newly-minted Open Water diver I knew from my first ocean descent that I was in the midst of a profoundly life-changing adventure. I knew that this was going to be more than just a passing hobby for me. I also had a trip to French Polynesia coming up in a few weeks, so I did what I always do when I’m embarking on a trip that involves a lot of gear...I went shopping.

A lot of scuba enthusiasts have a whole group of dive buddies that they’ve come to know well over the years. You dive together, travel together and compare gear amongst each other. When I got certified, I didn’t have a bunch of friends like that or at least I didn’t on the day I went shopping. What I did have was some advice from one or two people scattered around the country, a local dive shop with a knowledgeable staff and a credit card with a high limit.

Now I know what you’re thinking. “Why didn’t you just rent?’ It’s true that there’s often no shortage of rental gear available. Like most people, I had just completed Open Water certification completely decked out with rental equipment and I certainly could have rented everything easily when I got to Tahiti, but I’ve never been much of a renter and when it comes to life-support equipment, I definitely like to know when it was dropped last.

I made a decision to be that guy because I wanted to save money and because I wanted to be a better diver. Sure it would have been inexpensive to rent for a weekend here and a weekend there, but I want to be able to pick up and go diving whenever the opportunity comes about without having to worry about the whole rental process. Can I make it to the shop before they close? Do they have gear available? Will it fit? All of these issues loomed large to me. Then there’s the issue of having to pay up $50 every time I schedule a dive. It bugs me enough to be paying rent on my apartment, I certainly didn’t want to do it on my dive gear as well.

Even more than the money issue, though, was the fact that I wanted to keep getting better. Like most new divers, my buoyancy skills were...um...imperfect. Renting gear that might not fit well, having to get used to the nuances of different brands of gear every time I rented...it seemed to me that these little irritations would be impediments to my being able to concentrate on the actual diving. I wanted to eliminate problems, not create more of them. And because I was learning to dive at the same time as I was working on underwater photography, I needed as much of my brain power as possible to concentrate on photography instead of my BC’s cummerbund.

So there I was, clamboring aboard the boat with a hand tag still attached to my rolling bag. I was that guy, but a year later, when my gear had seen its fair share of use, when my first stage had a few scratches and my rolling case showed some wear, I was climbing aboard with a bag full of equipment that I had mastered. It’s equipment that I know intimately because we have been through more than a few adventures together. By the time my first 100 dives were logged, my gear and I had become old friends and I like to think I’m a better diver and a better underwater photographer because of those old friends.