Into the Drink

The Cayman Islands will – for all time – have a very special place in my diving history.  It was a pivotal experience:  location of my first post-Open Water certification, where I lost my warm-water virginity, the first time I took any kind of underwater images and the first place I got bit by two different species of fish on one dive.  Just magical, I tell you.  And whether it’s a Mudslide, a stingray hickey, 83-degree water or hitchhiking a ride home from a New Year’s Eve party in the middle of January, you never, ever forget your first time.

Before I went there with a college buddy during my sophomore year, the only diving I’d done was in a quarry in Pennsylvania and the love-it-or-hate-it Massachusetts coastline.  So until 1994, all I had at my disposal was what I like to call “stack of dimes” diving.  (Think about the metaphor long enough and you’ll get it.)  My parents recognized the opportunity and even let me cash in savings bonds to go.  I even had to get a new passport for the occasion.  It was a big deal.

I must have read every possible article in every diving magazine about the Cayman Islands in the months leading up to my semester break.  That early in my career as a diver – and given my limited resume at that point – there was no possible way that it could be a disappointment.  And it wasn’t.  It was heaven.  Looking over the boat, you could see the bottom a hundred feet below.  The water was blue.  I only needed a shorty.  There were fish everywhere, the kind of fish I used to have to pay money to see in tanks at the National Aquarium in Baltimore or on television.  Whether it was through 8 inches of plexiglass or brought to me by Mutual Of Omaha, it always seemed so far away.  Now, they were right in front of me.  There was no barrier.  I was in the aquarium.

Twelve years later – almost to the day – I was back on Grand Cayman as part of an article/documentary for the highbrow ocean porno mag known as Fathoms (may it rest in peace).  To be selected for such an assignment meant that you had to be capable of delivering the calibre of content worthy of its glossy pages and you had to know the right people.  By 2007, I don’t mind saying that I had both covered.  I had crisscrossed the globe several times and logged a thousand more dives since my last immigration stamp there and gone pro years before. I’d seen what pristine looked like, been places that I didn’t even know existed and now had a much broader spectrum of colors from which I could form an opinion of wherever I was.  It’s enough to make a dude jaded.  And snobby.  After almost two decades of diving this beautiful blue planet, I’m not even close to jaded but I do wear the Asshole Shirt pretty well.  Just ask the ITD crew.

In large part, after my second trip to the crown colony with the Queen on their money, I left the island convinced that Cayman – or at least Grand – had lost most of its identity.  The Georgetown of 1994 was long gone and in 2007, it was so built up and bulging with high-rent condos and non-endemic businesses that I referred to it condescendingly as “Little South Beach.”  If I wanted to go to Miami, I reasoned, I’d go to Miami.  I wanted Grand Cayman of my college years back.  My punk rock roots kicked in and I wanted the dickwads in white polo shirts and Rolexes to go back to Lauderdale.  Leave your cougars, though.  I’ll keep them happy in your absence.

(I just realized as I was about to start typing the next paragraph that I spend an awful lot of time in this particular section of the website in a perpetual state of admitting I’m wrong.  Here we go again.)

The truth is I left Grand Cayman feeling as though in some way I’d never been there before.  I suppose that’s got a lot to do with never having sunk my teeth into the island, going out and truly exploring.  I’d forgotten how big it was, too.  There were whole sections I’d never been to, and all that does is remind you that your opinion is only as informed as the amount of time you’ve spent educating yourself.

The East End has a completely different feel altogether – everything moves slower, there’s way less real estate and consequential traffic, and I even noticed there was a whole different type of tourist out there from completely different areas of the world.  It’s not that Grand Cayman doesn’t have places that speak amplified to its island charm; it’s just that you have to look for it now.

And that’s not to say I didn’t find a ton of new things to love about Cayman while I was downtown.  Like anywhere else I’ve gone, it’s the things that I wasn’t expecting that I know will yield the most rewarding to watch on TV.  These things also tend to reveal themselves within hours of my arrival, or at the point I dismiss something as not interesting enough to spend a lot of time shooting.  So let’s count the ways I was wrong:

1)     I knew about 7 Fathoms Rum insomuch as I knew it was made in Cayman and they aged it in oak barrels at 42‘ off the reef wall.  What I didn’t know was how good it was, how strong it was, or how awesome the guys who started the company would be.  Co-owner Nelson was cool enough to not only come down and do a tasting for all of our guests, he sent everyone home with their own bottle.    The 7 Fathoms aging location is a highly-guarded secret for obvious reasons, and in an ironic twist we used the product as our tool to convince the guys they needed to take us out to where it was for the sake of good television.  A few drinks in and we were all set.  I’m not going to give too much away about this part of the process, but I can tell you these guys have their shit together and they guard that stuff with a very sophisticated system of surveillance and planning.  Don’t bother going down and trying to find it; because even if you do, there’s no way you’ll get back to your boat.  That’s not a challenge – that’s a fact.
2)    Keith Sahm from Sunset house has been a great friend and very early supporter of what we’re doing and from the very beginning was insistent that I play dominoes with the boys at My Bar.  They take it pretty seriously so I wasn’t sure how any of these guys would react to the snotty white kid jumping in on their fun, but Keith gave them a heads’ up and it was an open invitation.  Again, since Cayman’s proving to be one of the best all-around episodes of the first season I don’t want to give too much away but just try to imagine me – a guy who knew absolutely nothing about Caribbean dominoes – slamming my pieces and shit-talking to some of the most powerful men in the Cayman Islands – all this as the new guy.  It’s gonna be worth watching just for the sunset in the background, but if the crew got half the stuff on tape that I said or did it’s going to be amazing.
3)    Turtle Farm – even with my prior visits, I had never gone.  On this trip, I treated it only as a place to get some establishing shots and move on.  That was until we got there.  I’ve seen zoos in major American cities that weren’t as cool as this place.  At some point it occurred to me that a turtle farm is just that – a farm.  About 75% of the turtles that are raised there end up being sold to restaurants, where the meat is served up in a dozen different ways and the shells are hocked in gift shops.  Quite frankly I thought it was the best example of wildlife management I’ve seen yet in the Caribbean.  Flooding the market with farmed turtles has all but put the poachers out of business, and that means healthier numbers on the reefs.  And those turtles released in the wild aren’t just set free locally – Cayman’s leading the pack in replenishing stocks in a bunch of other regions of the Caribbean.
4)    Guy Harvey – although he is a world-renowned painter and known not only to scuba divers but millions of sportfishermen, there’s a certain other person that tends to get all the credit for their apparent talent.  Whereas that person’s almost too arrogant and overrated to breathe, Guy is humble yet confident of his work, has an astonishing attention to detail on the canvas, moves in and out of mediums with ease, continues to find inspiration and understands the intersection of art and commerce in a way that I completely admire and, actually, shoot for.  Guy’s charitable foundations are funding some of the most important marine research in the Caribbean and we were lucky enough to get him to give a lecture on the results of those studies, particularly with stingrays.  That he gave us another 2 hours of his time later in the week at his gallery was one of the highlights of my career.  Last week he was inducted into the Sportfishing Hall Of Fame.  I suspect it was long overdue.
5)    First night in the bar and someone on the crew discovers that one of the instructors at Sunset House – Jackie – is a member of the Cayman National Women’s Rugby Team.    And just like that, Aaron’s been drafted to play rugby with the girls.  A series of unfortunate rainstorms kept the pitch flooded for most of the week, so the original plan to shoot me practicing with the girls had to be scrapped and instead, they brought me down to play the last two minutes of one of their matches at the end of the weekend.  Aaron was not expecting several things:  a huge audience of people in the stands (most of them burly, macho ex-pats), the need to wear something supportive underneath my uniform, or, most importantly, how hard a woman half your size can hit you when you’ve got the ball.  I’m not going any further – you just have to see it.  Trust me.  Good TV.  (Better be.  I was dizzy and nauseous the rest of that day.)

I’m only scratching the surface – there was some amazing diving (I rediscovered Cayman’s reefs in a whole new way), Tortuga Rum Cakes, $5 Pizza Night at the Palms, a really awesome DJ at the Marriott on Saturday and probably the best night out I’ve had during this whole season at the Aqua Beach club.  The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve noticed that unless I’m specifically going out into the blue and searching for something truly wild, I kinda like a little civilization down the street.  What seemed overdeveloped to me 2 years ago now seems like just the natural forward movement of time, and quite frankly I take comfort in the fact that after I’ve dove on some of the most awe-inspiring underwater architecture ever, I can run down the road to get a Chicken Bacon Ranch at Subway.  I don’t know – maybe it’s me.  Everyone likes something different in their travels.

I’d like to thank everyone who took us in and showed us amazing hospitality, first and foremost the awesome people at Sunset House.  Adrian was not only a great domino teacher/partner he was also a truly generous host and we’re all immensely grateful for that.  Keith Sahm, friend and supporter, and ultimately the reason that such an incredible episode could even happen here in the first place for us.  The dive staff of Sunset House – Andy, Rob, Mike, Jackie, all of them some of the best scuba professionals in the business.  They rolled with a lot of punches and changes in our schedule and never complained, only made it easier for us whenever possible.  Solid folks and exactly the kind of people I want to hang out with at the bar when the day is done.  I need to also point out that My Bar wins the award for Best-Looking Staff of Season One.  Thanks in particular to my favorite seamstress/ex-comedian/Canadian bartender.   And your blonde Kiwi co-worker.

Everyone at the Turtle Farm for treating a media crew with such respect.  Benny, awesome guide and great on camera.  I hope to be able to bring my son back next year.

Monique and everyone at the Tortuga Rum Cake factory.  You make a great product, you adhere to a great tradition.  Keep your secrets.  It’s better that way.

7 Fathoms Rum went out of their way to give us what we needed to hit a homerun and their generosity was definitely appreciated by both us and our guests.  I’ve never seen a more seamless meshing of the underwater world and a local spirit.

Cobalt Coast – the only people who know where the barrels are, and their patience with us as we tried to get “the shot” – whenever we needed it – left a very strong impression on me.

There’s a ton of other people I need to give props to but the only other group I can think of right now is the gang that knocked me down repeatedly and handed me my own ass.  So to all the fine ladies of Cayman Rugby – thanks for leading with your shoulder, rearranging my insides, and just letting me be one of the girls.  It was awesome.  You rock.  Never has being covered in mud, picking grass out of my teeth and feeling dizzy for hours felt so good.

I’m currently in the air (again) and about an hour outside Orlando, Florida.  We are premiering Into The Drink a couple months ahead of schedule at a very large, very important scuba industry trade show.  It’s basically the holy week for the dive business.  There’s always a feeling of “will they get it?” in a profession that is notorious for being stuck in its ways and not embracing change, but I will tell you with my hand on my heart that after the shoot in Grand Cayman, I really don’t care.  It was as if everything came together for me down there, and I still can’t believe how – after a week of straight rain – we still pulled off one of the best episodes of the first season.  It’s a testament to the Cayman Islands – a place I cannot wait to get back to.

I’m about to go up against the dinosaurs.  Prepared to enrage some and enthrall the rest.  And that’s why I think I have the greatest job ever.

So thanks, Cayman.  Thanks for teaching me to look a little deeper, venture out a little further and most importantly, lead with my shoulder.

Got it.

-A